Gendered aspects of classroom practice

The previous chapter introduced the concept of inclusive education as broader than the provision of “special education” for youth with disabilities to mean education for all youth who, by virtue of belonging to a particular racial, class, ability, or gender group, have traditionally been excluded or marginalized in a country’s education system. In this chapter, we focus on gender relations in secondary education, and particularly on girls’ experiences in the schools in this study. Although girls in Tanzania currently constitute a slight majority in Standards 1–7, this situation changes significantly in secondary and tertiary education: by the end of Form 4, girls make up 46 percent of the student body; by the end of Form 6, 39 percent; and at the undergraduate level they are only 36 percent (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training [MOEVT] 2010a). Thus, in our exploration of inclusive education in this volume, both disability and gender warrant attention