Teaching in the Bed of Procrustes: Macho Culture and Gendered Teacher-Student Interactions in Secondary Education

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• Dr Dimitri Van Maele, Ellen Huyge & Els Consuegra. Supervisors: Prof Dr Nadine Engels & Prof Dr Mieke Van Houtte
• Monday 20 May 2013, 17:30-18:30
• Room GS5 Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact rmk33.

Please contact Ruth Kuhn (rmk33@cam.ac.uk) if you plan to attend

In this seminar the general aim and research approach of the project “Teaching in the Bed of Procrustes” will be presented. This project is funded by the Flemish government agency for Innovation by Science and Technology and explores the effectiveness of gender-sensitive strategies with regard to academic achievement, school retardation, drop-out, the motivation to learn and the aspirations of boys and girls in secondary education. We will particularly focus on the role of macho culture and gendered teacher-student interactions in secondary schools. The seminar takes off with an overview of the primary research questions and methodologies of the Procrustes project in which three research areas are put at the centre: (1) (gender) identity and development, (2) anti-school culture and teacher-student interactions, and (3) well-being and belonging at school. Next the longitudinal research framework will be discussed, which is characterized by quantitative data gathering among students, parents, teachers, and principals of 59 Flemish secondary schools, and by four distinct interventions across 20 schools. The seminar proceeds with a conceptual and theoretical framework of macho cultures in secondary education. Macho cultures in education are important to investigate because they inform the presence of anti-school attitudes and behaviors among boys and girls. We discuss what may constitute macho attitudes and behaviors of students, such as traditional gender ideologies, risk behavior, and low motivation. We further elaborate on how such attitudes and behaviors may become shared among boys/girls from a same school, yielding the presence of macho cultures in school, and how the latter might relate to compositional school features and affect educational processes. We end with a discussion on how the method of ‘video stimulated recall interviewing’ (VSRI) is a promising road to increase awareness among teachers of their different interactions with boys and girls in class. Numerous studies have already indicated that teachers interact in another way with both sexes. We claim that in order to establish positive interactions with both boys and girls, a first step is to make teachers aware of their gendered interactions in class. Our empirical findings indicate that VSRI is a suitable intervention method to improve this teacher awareness.

See CCE Seminars page for further info: http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/cce/events/seminars.html

This talk is part of the Centre for Commonwealth Education (CCE) series.

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• All Faculty of Education Seminars
• Centre for Commonwealth Education (CCE)
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• Room GS5 Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge

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