Sandra Acker

Sleepless in academia

The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and means of coping and resisting, sometimes collectively, although one of the major responses—working harder and sleeping less—might be considered somewhat short of empowering. We also look at what the prospects are for changes in university policies and practices.

Carry on Caring: the work of women teachers

This paper is based on an ethnographic study in one English primary school, ‘Hillview’. First, I review feminist and other approaches in the literature to the familiar association between women and caring. After a description of the school and the study, I consider Hillview teachers’ caring activities in the classroom and whether maternal imagery is justified. Sources of stress and struggle, which lend a sober side to romanticized notions of teachers as mothers in the classroom, are noted. Next, I look at the ways in which the Hillview teachers cared for each other, creating a workplace culture characterized by collaboration, compassion, and community. Although a gender analysis is extremely important in understanding teachers’ work, this does not mean that teachers’ caring activities or workplace cultures are simply derived from any essential qualities of women. Hillview teachers struggled with ‘their’ children and with material conditions that contained sources of stress and frustration. Their close‐kni...

Thesis Supervision in the Social Sciences: Managed or Negotiated?.

The project upon which this paper is based is a qualitative study of the supervision [thesis advising]1 of research students [graduate students] in departments of education and psychology in three British universities. Two models are apparent in the literature of supervision. Thetechnical rationality model gives priority to issues of procedure or technique, while thenegotiated order model conceptualizes supervision as a process open to negotiation and change. We look at supervisory style, reporting findings on the nature of tutorials [meetings] between supervisor and student, the extent of direction given by the supervisor to the project, and the nature of the interpersonal relationship between the parties. We also consider student strategies. Our findings suggest that although the technical rationality model has much to recommend it, a negotiated order model is a better description of what happens in practice.

Women ‘learning to labour’ in the ‘male emporium’: exploring gendered work in teacher education

This article reflects an interest in exposing links between womens academic work and the gender codes which organize and shape working life in the university context, both now and in the recent past, as a contribution to the sociology of womens work. Our specific focus is the gendered division of labour in teacher education in universities in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu and McNay, and through an analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 19 women who worked in faculties of education between the 1960s and 1990s, we examine how the gendered division of labour has influenced the careers and working lives of women university teacher educators during those decades. Our data are organized under three themes: public and private lives; womens work/place; and talking back. We identify continuities and changes as well as qualifiers, ironies and paradoxes.

Becoming a teacher educator: Voices of women academics in canadian faculties of education

Abstract Although much has been written on teacher education, voices of teacher educators have been ignored; we know little about their struggles and strategies. This article juxtaposes narratives of five women academics in Canadian faculties of education against the literature on continuity, change and critique in teacher education. I contend that a better understanding of these trends requires approaching them through narratives of involved individuals. The article focuses on the recruitment stage of a university career. For many, teacher education is a second career. Late entrants must “catch up,” while younger high flyers strive to reach ever-rising expectations of academic productivity.

Gender Issues in Education for Science and Technology: Current Situation and Prospects for Change.

Girls and women remain substantially under-represented in mathematics, science, and technology in school and in the workplace. Although this problem is recognized, its complexity is widely underestimated and causes are not well understood. We review prevailing explanations, which tend to concentrate either on possible gender differentials in qualities such as self-confidence, or on school practices that allow boys to dominate classroom interaction and monopolize such technology as computers. We also identify disadvantageous features of higher education and the workplace. We then consider what is known about educational innovation, especially in the area of gender equity, and describe some interventions concerned with gender and science and technology education. Finally, we raise unresolved questions and issues about gender equity efforts in science and technology education and suggest directions for research. Les filles et les femmes sont nettement sous-representes en mathematiques, en science et en technologie a l’ecole et sur le marche du travail. Bien que ce probleme soit reconnu, sa complexite est largement sous-estimee et ses causes ne sont pas bien comprises. Les auteurs passent en revue les explications qui ont presentement cours, lesquelles tendent a mettre en relief soit les differences qui existeraient entre les sexes pour ce qui est, par exemple, de la confiance en soi, soit les pratiques scolaires qui permettent aux garcons de dominer l’interaction en classe et de monopoliser la technologie, comme les ordina- teurs. Les auteurs identifient egalement les caracteristiques desavantageuses de l’education superieure et des milieux de travail. Ils se penchent ensuite sur les connaissances actuelles au sujet des innovations en education, particulierement dans le domaine de l’egalite entre les sexes, et decrivent quelques interventions tenant compte du sexe dans l’enseignement des sciences et de la technologie. Ils terminent en soulevant quelques questions non re- glees au sujet des efforts a faire en matiere d’egalite des sexes dans les cours de science et de technologie et proposent des orientations pour la recherche.

New perspectives on an old problem: the position of women academics in British higher education

Women academics in Britain are an elite group among women. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that they are disproportionately in lower grades and less secure posts than their male counterparts. These are longstanding inequities which appear to have been met with complacency rather than commitments to bring about change. This paper draws upon feminist theory to outline a range of perspectives which can be used to analyze this situation. Different approaches define the problem differently: it can be located in sex-typed socialization; family-career role conflicts; under-investment in womens education; sex discrimination; or the working of capitalism and patriarchy. The strategies which follow from each approach are discussed and evaluated. Certain features of the British university system may operate to the detriment of women, and there is no network of powerful liberal feminist organizations that can act as a watchdog to safeguard their interests. The unsettled situation of higher education in Britain would seem to make this an inauspicious time to initiate reform, but there are contradictions which might be a basis for feminist action. Socialist and radical feminist frameworks go further than liberal ones in making sense of the entrenched inequalities and resistance to change. Yet there is a case for pursuing liberal feminist strategies, at least in the short run.

Chairing and caring: gendered dimensions of leadership in academe

This article uses three frames of analysis, each with gendered implications, to interpret the authors narrative of experience as a department chair (head of department) in a Canadian university from 1999 to 2002. The narrative is based not only on memory but on transcripts of interviews conducted with the author at various points during her term as chair. The three frames are: (1) learning leadership; (2) surviving organisations; and (3) performing leadership. The methodology is an unusual one, a mix of personal narrative with theory and literature, an approach that demonstrates the relative merits of different theoretical perspectives when applied to an account of experience as well as the difficulty of settling on one ‘true’ analysis. Throughout the discussion, a ‘critical incident’ is repeated several times in slightly varied ways, in order to illustrate how different analytical frames can lead to different interpretations. The conclusion considers the implications of the analysis for understanding the gendered experience of academic leadership.

Gendered games in academic leadership

This article looks at women’s efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women’s leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in‐depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada, Australia or Britain, I focus on four contrasting case studies. For some women it is possible to build a satisfying academic leadership career, while for others, the surrounding contradictions encourage a more or less graceful end to leadership ambitions. I question the circumstances under which women attempting to construct academic leadership careers will be ‘fish in water’ or show a ‘feel for the game’, as well as the potential and problems of the game metaphor itself in this context.

’Girlies on the Warpath’: addressing gender in initial teacher education

ABSTRACT Gender issues in education are not simply a womans problem. They constitute a more general problem of theorising about the nature and processes of education. Where studies advocate the eradication of inequality via education it is most often teachers who are seen as the crucial agents of change. Despite this recognition, surprisingly little attention has been paid to preparing teachers for taking on such a task. This paper considers, firstly, how and why teacher education in England and Wales largely fails to provide a framework or ethos conducive to the inclusion of a gender perspective. Secondly the paper examines some of the ways feminists are responding, arguing that despite institutional and informal resistance, good anti‐sexist work in teacher education is happening and should not be overlooked.