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Gender and school

A blog about my reading and research on gender constructions and performances amongst secondary school pupils

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I love talking about education and gender, and I think that other people do too.

If you would like to get in touch then please email me on stnvrrc@ucl.ac.uk.

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Data and schools

In this post I talk about educational research and how it’s used in school policy. I sort of ramble about a bit, but quite liked the process of writing it whilst the exploring sources at the same time! In recent weeks I’ve been enjoying being part of a teacher researcher group that we have setup at school. In the group we’ve talked about what we’re interested in and thought about the theme of autonomy in a bit of detail. More generally, we’ve discussed what constitutes good evidence in educational research with a common thread being that it’s important to look critically at studies that appeal to big data. This is prevalent in the educational research that informs practice in schools and arguably with good reason, as drawing from large meta-analyses can be seen as a ‘best bet’ when schools have limited means to conduct their own research and draw their own conclusions. But in this post, I’m going to first make the case that we need to be cautious about accepting large-scale quantitativ...

About Adolescence

I loved watching the Netflix series Adolescence and thought it was amazing television that carried some important messages with it. As a researcher who has been involved for the past few years in exploring the influences of schools, peer groups and social media on masculinity and femininity, it has been exciting to see the amount of attention that the series has drawn. With people talking about the program it feels like a great time for more research to be happening into adolescent gender constructions and performances (which is another way of talking about what it means, and what it’s like, to be a boy or a girl). There is some fascinating research around, and there is a fault somewhere that means that much of it is largely missed by the general public. So when something like Adolescence manages to get people thinking then that’s definitely a good thing. However, I would argue that a focus on incel culture, the influence of social media and the plight of young m...

Gender Regime

A post about the 'Gender Gap in Attainment', gender regime and Erikson's stages in psychosocial development. Potentially of interest to school and department managers. I’m having a slightly weird experience trying to write this in the school library surrounded by 5th year pupils who are working on a Design Technology project (to be clear, I do have a free period, so I’m doing this on my time), whilst searching up on the computers about the moment of fertilisation. Hopefully I’ll find a biologist to check this, but from what I’ve read, the genetic makeup of the pupils around me was fixed within about 24 hours of sperm and egg cells meeting and their biological sex was determined by their chromosomes. In terms of the most significant days in a person’s life, that one has got to come right up there: so much about your physical characteristics, cognitive function, susceptibility to different physical and mental illnesses and all sort of other things, is formed for your future...