Gender in school - An investigation on teachers’ views and work with gender

This degree project investigates teachers’ views regarding issues of gender in school. The main questions in this study are: To what extent do some teachers of English take gender into account in their teaching and how do they define gender? What are the same teachers’ views on gender roles, gender pedagogy and equality work in school? I also want to take a closer look at teachers’ thoughts regarding boys’ poorer results in school. Research and PISA-reports show that girls outperform boys, irrespective of ethnicity and class. Since my interest has been to gain insight into teachers’ daily work concerning gender I decided to base this degree project on questionnaires and interviews with teachers working at secondary school. I have also placed my study in the context of previous research on gender pedagogy and equality work. The findings of this project imply that gender pedagogy not always is a natural part of teachers’ work in classroom, but there is awareness and the teachers I interviewed had a wish to get more time for these issues. Keywords: Gender equality, gender pedagogy, gender role, gender awareness