Emma Charlton

Being the ‘right’ kind of male teacher: the disciplining of John

In a context where the lack of male teachers is constructed as a worrying concern for many Western education systems, men who make the decision to become teachers, particularly in early childhood and primary education, are often adulated. However, alongside this adulation sits an expectation to be a ‘real man’. This paper tells the story of John, a male primary school teacher who left the teaching profession after one year as a result of incommensurable differences between the expectations held of him as a male teacher and his identity as a primary school teacher. While not an attempt to position John as a victim, this paper suggests that expectations of male teachers, such as to be effective disciplinarians, have normalising effects on men within the teaching profession that, in this case, led to a rejection of teaching as a career path. We contend that the image of the ‘imagined male teacher’ that underpins both current calls for more male teachers and John’s departure from schooling is likely to have a negative impact upon all students (boys and girls) and also denigrates the work of female teachers.

Sacrificial girls: a case study of the impact of streaming and setting on gender reform

This article reports on research funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate school responses to gender equity. It addresses the efforts of a disadvantaged school to tackle what they perceived to be gender inequalities, but in the process of constructing a top-set and bottom-set/stream class they are developing new forms of old inequalities and new forms of inequalities. This research indicates that despite popular assertions that girls education has become the priority of schools and education systems, girls are being further disadvantaged through attempts to implement market strategies coupled with gender reform agendas grounded in liberal notions of equity and relying on unsophisticated notions of affirmative action. In addition, this study highlights the extent to which a media-driven debate about boys education has influenced the constitution of boys as the new disadvantaged with the capacity to determine the nature of gender reform agendas and programmes in schools.

Place-Related Identities Through Texts: From Interdisciplinary Theory to Research Agenda

ABSTRACT The implications of the transdisciplinary spatial turn are attracting growing interest in a broad range of areas related to education. This paper draws on a methodology for interdisciplinary thinking in order to articulate a new theoretical configuration of place-related identity, and its implications for a research agenda. The new configuration is created through an analysis of place-related identities in narrative theory, texts and literacy processes. The emerging research agenda focuses on the ways children perceive and represent their place-related identities through reading and writing as inspired by and manifested in texts.

My Place: Exploring children's place-related identities through reading and writing

This paper considers how children perceive and represent their placed-related identities through reading and writing. It reports on the findings of an 18-month interdisciplinary project, based at Cambridge University Faculty of Education, which aimed to consider childrens place-related identities through their engagement with, and creation of, texts. This paper will discuss the project, its interdisciplinary theoretical framework, and the empirical research we conducted with two classes in primary schools in Eastern England. A key text used in our research was My Place by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins. Drawing on our interdisciplinary theoretical framework, particularly Doreen Masseys notion of place as a bundle of trajectories, and Louise Rosenblatts notion of the transaction between the reader and the text, this paper will examine pages from My Place, children talking about how this text connects with them, children talking about their sense of place, and maps and writing the children produced based on their place.

Place-related identity, texts, and transcultural meanings

The spatial turn has been marked by increasing interest in conceptions of space and place in diverse areas of research. However, the important links between place and identity have received less attention, particularly in educational research. This paper reports an 18-month research project that aimed to develop a theory of place-related identity through the textual transactions of reading and writing. The research was an in-depth qualitative study in two phases: the first phase involved the development of an interdisciplinary theory of place-related identity, which was ‘tested’ in a second empirical phase. Two contrasting primary school classes were the site for the research that included the development of a unit of work, inspired by the book My place, as a vehicle for exploring place-related identity. The data were interviews, classroom observations and outcomes from pupils’ work. The construct of transcultural meanings, established from the analytic categories of localising identity, othering identity and identity as belonging, was identified as a defining phenomenon of place-related identity. The conclusions offer reflections on the development of our initial theory as a result of the empirical work, and the implications for practice and future research.

A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Supermarket-Based Interventions Involving Product, Promotion, or Place on the Healthiness of Consumer Purchases

IntroductionThe supermarket is increasingly recognised as a key environment to promote healthy eating. No previous reviews have focused specifically on the effectiveness of interventions that target the in-store supermarket environment for improving the healthiness of population food purchases.MethodsSystematic review of supermarket-based interventions related to nutrition. Interventions were included if they related to the type of products available for sale, promotion or consumer education and/or product placement. Interventions related to price and on-pack labelling were excluded. Outcomes included food purchasing, food consumption or body weight. Study quality was assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project quality assessment tool.ResultsOf 50 included studies, the majority were conducted in the USA (74xa0%), with 33xa0% published in the last 3xa0years. Seventy percent of studies were rated as moderate (nu2009=u200911) or high (n=u200924) quality. Positive effects were observed in 35 studies (70xa0%). Of the 15 studies that reported null or negative findings, most (nu2009=u200912) did not have a strong study design, large sample size or duration longer than 1xa0month.ConclusionsMost high-quality studies targeting the supermarket food environment reported improvements in the healthiness of consumer purchases in response to the intervention. Although it is difficult to identify specific intervention options that are likely to be most effective and sustainable in this setting, shelf labelling (particularly using nutrition summary scores) stands out as being particularly promising.

Supermarkets and unhealthy food marketing: An international comparison of the content of supermarket catalogues/circulars.

BACKGROUNDnSupermarket marketing activities have a major influence on consumer food purchases. This study aimed to assess and compare the contents of supermarket marketing circulars from a range of countries worldwide from an obesity prevention perspective.nnnMETHODSnThe contents of supermarket circulars from major supermarket chains in 12 non-random countries were collected and analysed over an eight week period from July to September 2014 (n=89 circulars with 12,563 food products). Circulars were largely English language and from countries representing most continents. Food products in 25 sub-categories were categorised as discretionary or non-discretionary (core) food or drinks based on the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. The total number of products in each subcategory in the whole circular, and on front covers only, was calculated.nnnRESULTSnCirculars from most countries advertised a high proportion of discretionary foods. The only exceptions were circulars from the Philippines (no discretionary foods) and India (11% discretionary food). Circulars from six countries advertised more discretionary foods than core foods. Front covers tended to include a much greater proportion of healthy products than the circulars overall.nnnCONCLUSIONSnSupermarket circulars in most of the countries examined include a high percentage of discretionary foods, and therefore promote unhealthy eating behaviours that contribute to the global obesity epidemic. A clear opportunity exists for supermarket circulars to promote rather than undermine healthy eating behaviours of populations. Governments need to ensure that supermarket marketing is included as part of broader efforts to restrict unhealthy food marketing.

Schooling and sexualities: twenty years on

While there have been significant shifts in relation to schooling and sexualities over the last two decades, some conversations are remarkably reminiscent. This special issue of Sex Education aims to capture some of the shifts and gaps emerging in a trio of decennial collaborations held in Australia, known as the Schooling and Sexualities Conferences. In this introduction, we describe the history of the conferences, the papers in this collection, and highlight some of the silences/gaps that remain. Perhaps these will be foci of attention in the coming decade?

Not yet Queer, Here and Now for Sexualities and Schooling.

Abstract This paper represents our collective engagements and productive struggles with queer pedagogical-methodological (im)possibilities across a constellation of educational contexts. Following in the footsteps of queer theorists-pedagogues before us, we approach queerness as a horizon, a unique opportunity to experiment, take risks, explore new forms of undoing and to move-be-think-do otherwise. We begin by attending to the ways in which researchers-educators in the field of sexualities and schooling are pushing these conversations forward, followed by two vignettes from our own work. Our intention in sharing these vignettes is to slow down and expose some of the methodological-pedagogical processes that guide our work, our attempts to stay in the moment that trouble creates, and the challenge of staying in that moment to learn from it. This paper suggests that embracing new forms of enquiry, which account for queer methodological-pedagogical sensibilities, requires researchers-educators to actively embrace the failures of their own practice and engage with the contestations of theories that matter/materialise.

Incidental Moments: The Paradox of Belonging in Educational Spaces

Too often sex-gender-sexuality intersects with pedagogy and shapes the belonging of young people in ways that teachers do not see. This chapter shows how the unexpected presence of a jumping mat in a middle-class, middle-school, co-ed drama class leads the teacher to devise an impromptu, incidental activity that exposes the embodied nature of belonging in the pedagogical space of the classroom. It reveals that normative notions of sex-gender-sexuality and belonging are embedded and inherent in schooling practices and structures, privilege certain types of sex-sexuality-gendered belonging over others and influence the way teachers view and treat young people. The chapter exposes how this constellation of conflating conditions works to constitute young people as students who belong/do not belong and are successful/unsuccessful in any pedagogical moment.