Alexandra Allan

Bright and Beautiful: High achieving girls, ambivalent femininities, and the feminization of success in the primary school

This paper refocuses attention on and problematizes girls’ experiences of school achievement and the construction of schoolgirl femininities. In particular, it centres on the relatively neglected experiences and identity work of high achieving primary school girls. Drawing upon ethnographic data (observations, interviews, and pupil diaries) from a broader study of girls’ and boys’ perceptions and experiences of schoolwork and achievement from two contrasting primary schools in a city in South Wales (UK), the paper will explore the gendered subjectivities of high achieving girls from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. Three narrative case studies are re-presented and analysed to explore the feminization of success and thus the tensions and contradictions as girls negotiate the pushes and pulls to be both “bright” (i.e. succeeding academically) and “beautiful” (succeeding in “doing girl”). Of key interest are the possibilities, costs, and consequences of girls producing ambivalent femininities and the rearticulation and transgression of normative ways of “doing clever” and “doing girl” in 21st century primary schools.

The importance of being a ‘lady’: hyper‐femininity and heterosexuality in the private, single‐sex primary school

Drawing on recent ethnographic research in one single‐sex, private primary school, this paper will explore what it meant for the girls in this setting to embody the discourse of the ‘lady’. The paper will propose that classed and gendered discourses of respectability featured strongly in the girls’ lives, as they were expected to behave like ‘proper’ upper‐middle‐class ladies. However, the paper will also suggest that these discourses were being reworked through post‐feminist, neo‐liberal notions of modern girlhood, meaning that the girls also felt compelled to make themselves as heterofeminine ‘girly’ girls; as sassy, sexy and successful, as well as respectable and upper‐middle‐class(y) enough. By exploring the clash between these two sets of discourse, the paper will specifically seek to examine the lived embodiment of intersections of class, gender and sexuality and to explore the relevance of Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix for these upper‐middle‐class girls.

Speaking the unspeakable in forbidden places: addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the primary school

The present paper interrogates the ways in which school is produced as a particular bounded place (or collection of places) where sexuality, and particularly non‐heterosexuality, is carefully policed by these boundaries. Drawing upon data generated in primary schools during a nationwide action research project (‘No Outsiders’), we focus on three very different school places: the classroom, the staffroom and a school‐based after‐school art club. Our analysis engages with the contingency of place‐making to show that place is neither a unitary experience nor a neutral stage upon which social relations are enacted. The three vignettes analysed offer insights into the critical potential of consciously and persistently working across (apparently) boundaried spaces within and beyond schools.

Cosmo girls: configurations of class and femininity in elite educational settings

In this paper we offer a unique contribution to understandings of schooling as a site for the production of social class difference. We bring together the rich body of work that has been conducted on middle-class educational identities, with explorations of the centrality of the feminine in representations of class difference from the field of critical girlhood studies. This is done in order to explore how young femininities mediate the representation of class difference in the environment of the private girls’ school. Drawing from our two research studies, located in private girls’ schools in Australia and the United Kingdom, we argue that the notion of ‘disgust’, commonly used in recent engagements around class, has only limited purchase in understanding the representation of class difference in these schools. It is the inconsistencies and complexities in how class and class relations are produced that we wish to illuminate.

Power, Participation and Privilege - Methodological Lessons from Using Visual Methods in Research with Young People

The practice of using participatory visual methods in research with young people is one that has come under scrutiny in recent years. Many scholars have examined these practices in order to question the singular and simple notions of voice that are often represented in these accounts. Taking up the challenges laid down by these scholars, this paper attempts to critically disturb some of the claims that have been made about this supposedly inherently collaborative and empowering practice. Drawing on research with a group of privileged young people the paper will argue that there is a real need for researchers to examine the ways in which different subjectivities are performatively produced in the participatory research process - to explore the ways in which the methods themselves may work to constitute difference and to position young people as powerful or powerless in this process. A call is also made for researchers to inspect their own practice and use of visual methods, in order to recognise the particular knowledges, subjectivities and truths that are constituted as a result.

Teenage Sexual Health Needs: Asking the Consumers

Purpose – In response to rising prevalence of sexually transmitted infection (STI) among teenagers, this study was designed to examine teenage perceptions of sex education, access to services, and attitudes relevant to STI.Design/methodology/approach – A focus group study was conducted in three schools to discuss the sexual health needs of teenagers. Four single sex groups of 14‐15 year olds (two male and two female) comprising six to nine participants met for two one‐hour sessions. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed by two researchers.Findings – Sex education was reported to vary considerably in quality and content both between and within schools. Participants felt that this was due to some teachers being embarrassed, resulting in didactic delivery and lack of discussion. Most participants had received very little information about STI, including how it could be avoided or what to do if infection was suspected. Many felt that it would be useful to have an organised visit to a sexual healt...

Using Photographic Diaries to Research the Gender and Academic Identities of Young Girls

Photographs have been used in ethnography for some time now; Pink (2001, p. 49) has argued that the camera has become a ‘mandatory element’ of the ‘ethnographers toolkit’. Photographs were primarily used in ethnographic studies as mere illustrations or to add authenticity to the written text (Davies, 1999). But as time has progressed, the photograph has moved from the ‘sidelines’ of ethnography to claim a more central position. One of the first studies to use the visual as a central method in the ethnographic process was the study ‘Balinese Character’ completed by Bateson and Mead (1942). Davies (1999) reports that their use of the visual was central to the research process; it was as much a part of the collection of data as it was the analysis and the final written report. Pink (2001) suggests that due to these advances in visual research it is now possible to speak of a ‘visual ethnography’.

Preparing for life in the global village: producing global citizen subjects in UK schools

This paper adds to a growing body of literature which views global citizenship education as part of a broader social and cultural process of subjectivity production. Rather than focus on global citizenship in relation to pedagogy or curriculum content, as much of the previous research literature has done, this paper examines it in relation to the practice of travel. Drawing on data generated in ethnographic fieldwork in two UK schools, the paper explores the way in which the young people in these settings used travel to position themselves as successful, mobile, global citizen subjects. The paper argues that these subjectivities were negotiated as part of a dynamic process: one which took place across multiple spaces, in a myriad of different relationships, and in the deployment of a number of different power relations. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the practice of school travel and how it might effectively be focused upon in future research.

Body image in the primary school

new femininities. These chapters show the recent changes in the way in which female agency is being configured and perceived, and the possibilities for resistance against heteronormative assumptions, including Ryan-Flood’s (Chapter 16) discussion of the challenges facing lesbian parents and Erel’s (Chapter 15) focus on the ways in which migrant women actively challenge heteronormative assumptions of women’s role within the family. Attwood (Chapter 13) also highlights the possibilities for resistance in her analysis of the ways in which women’s online sexual identities are actively produced, and not in response to male ideals, but are spaces opened up that enable women to present new forms of female sexual subjectivity. Logically, the final part of the collection discusses new femininities within the context of feminist theory. Collectively, these chapters ask questions of feminist theory’s ability to adequately theorise the recent developments in femininity as highlighted by the rest of the chapters in this book. Particularly, third wave feminism’s links with neoliberalism and individualist discourses (Budgeon, Chapter 18), and the way in which new feminisms are limited by their rejection of second wave feminism (Scharff, Chapter 17), are highlighted by this section as key issues to be addressed in order for feminist theory to adequately theorise ‘new femininities’. This collection’s insightful and critical focus on emerging forms of female subjectivity in relation to neoliberalism and postfeminism is long-awaited for those working in the field. Anyone with an interest in gender, femininity and its cultural and social construction will find many of the chapters in this volume particularly interesting. For those with specific interests in relation to the construction of new femininities, there are chapters that focus on class, race and age. Finally, in order to highlight its particular relevance for Gender and Education readers, I wish to highlight the point made by Jessica Ringrose in Chapter 6 that was also explored in McRobbie’s preface: that this collection highlights the need for a feminist pedagogy around the difficult terrains discussed within this collection. Ringrose argues that we need to find spaces to engage young people in discussions around gender and sexuality, for example, the normalisation of soft porn cultural texts and images. Providing these spaces within education will form a significant part of ‘developing a range of alternative scripts for performing creative sexual feminine subjectivities; sexual subjectivities that hopefully will not remain so heavily bound to the phallogocentric, pornified discourses’ (p. 113).

Taking stock: a framework

‘Taking stock is to think carefully about a situation or event and form an opinion about it, so that you can decide what to do’ (Cambridge Definition Online). The phrase is an English idiom, but its meaning has international resonance. ‘Taking stock’ is an everyday activity, but this special edition focuses on ‘taking stock’ as an important and timely aspect of our practice as scholars of gender and education. This Special Issue begins a process of taking stock of the gender and education field. Our approach stresses the importance of taking stock as a broad range of practices and foci that embrace the past, present and future. This is potentially a huge undertaking and far too large to be accommodated in a single issue of Gender & Education. The aims of this Special Issue are, therefore, more modest and geared towards enabling an ongoing process. The articles featured in this volume provide examples of taking stock of different aspects of gender and education from a range of perspectives. We hope these will spark productive discussions but also encourage further reflections on where we have come from, where we are and where we are heading. To this end, we hope that this special issue will create further openings for dialogue and that others will be inspired to move beyond the ideas represented here and submit articles on this theme in the future. In this introduction, we suggest a number of ways in which authors may consider taking up this exercise, but it would seem particularly apt that this future work is done from a range of different vantage points in order to extend the work started here (e.g. further ‘looking’ and ‘asking’ from beyond the Global North). To facilitate this ongoing project in gender and education, here we present a framework for taking stock and address some of the challenges involved in this practice. Before doing this, we reflect briefly on previous appraisals of the gender and education field and why it is timely to engage in a more extensive taking stock.