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This article explores the potential for martial arts to support transformation and community building for women. Findings indicate women can derive many individual benefits from learning martial arts. Yet, the benefits must extend beyond the individual level to create social change. Based on an evaluation of literature on women's experiences learning martial arts, I use my perspective as an adult education researcher and a feminist lens to propose creative approaches to supporting women in learning martial arts. Supporting women in learning martial arts requires promoting creativity and invention in practice. Feminist new materialism, transformative learning theory, and communities of practice are the theories that guide the direction of this article. The major contribution of this article is to offer creative approaches for imagining a feminist praxis through martial arts that could foster learning environments that encourage self-determination and build social support and resistance to hetero-patriarchal power and gender inequity, which has relevance to broader educational settings and communities.

In Australia coeducation dominates government schooling, with single-sex institutions usually being the preserve of selective government schools and private, often elite, institutions. For marginalised young people who 'drop out' or are forced to leave the coeducational mainstream system, flexible and/or non-traditional schools provide alternative pathways. Such schools are primarily coeducational. This paper draws upon data from two flexible/non-traditional schools in Australia that attempted to address the issues of educational disengagement via the provision of single-sex schooling: Fernvale Education Centre and Lorem School. The data are insightful with regard to these two very different gender and education paradigms and to their associated discourses about masculinity and femininity. The paper will identify the ways in which these schools both reproduce and challenge dominant constructions of gender within the context of responding to disenfranchised/disengaged young people.

Despite some progress towards gender equality in Western societies, traditional gender norms still shape career choices, perpetuating a gender gap where girls are more likely to pursue traditionally feminine fields like healthcare, elementary education, and domestic roles (HEED), while boys are drawn to masculine domains such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This research investigates whether, and under which conditions, the perception that gender norms are progressively changing towards less gender dichotomy can reduce this gender gap in academic fields. We recruited a sample of 642 high-school students (394 women and 248 men), and experimentally manipulated both the salience of changes in gender norm (stability vs change) and participants' gender prototypicality. The main dependent variable was participants' interest in stereotypically feminine (HEED) and masculine (STEM) academic fields. The results indicated a slight decrease in the gender gap for stereotypically feminine fields (HEED) among participants who saw themselves as typical members of their gender group, but no significant change was observed for stereotypically masculine fields (STEM). These findings suggest that shifting perceptions of gender norms may have a limited effect on modifying traditional educational and career choices, underscoring the resilience of entrenched gender stereotypes.

In this article, the authors argue for a rethinking of kindergarten education from a critical feminist perspective. They illustrate how the devaluation and denigration of femininity and care - otherwise known as femmephobia - that permeates patriarchal societies is present in the seemingly innocent spaces of play in kindergarten. Tracing femmephobia in the spatial-material arrangements of play, teacher-student interactions during play, and children's play practices in two Canadian classrooms, the authors show how care-related activities and learning are deeply marginalized in kindergarten education. Given these findings, the authors propose a femininity-affirmative pedagogy in early learning. Specifically, they discuss the importance of intentional practice around an ethics of care. The authors argue that a refocus on an ethics of care in early childhood education is urgently needed in collective work towards social change.

Identity, as important focus of psychosocial development, are closely related to self silencing and gender roles. Identity development is different in two genders and studies on young women in terms of identity development is limited. Being a part of a formal education or not is also important in identity development as well. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to investigate the effects of gender roles and self-silencing on identity functions in women. Another purpose of this study is to examine whether the identity functions of women with and without university education differ. 269 young women from vocational training courses and 234 young women from universities participated in the research. Functions of Identity Scale, Silencing the Self Scale, Bem Sex Role Inventory, and demographic information form were utilized to women in a both individual and group session. According to Structural Equation Modelling results, gender roles were found directly and indirectly effective through self silencing on functions of identity. Direct relationships have shown that feminine gender characteristics increase self-silence while masculine gender features decrease self silencing. Self silencing also reduces identity functions. Self silencing mediated the relations between gender roles and functions of identity in young women. In addition, according to MANOVA results, functions of identity didn't differ significantly according to education. Finally, the findings were discussed in the context of gender roles and self-silencing in raising the level of identity functions of women considering education context.

This research captures early childhood educators' (ECEs') perspectives when communicating with families about their children's diverse gender expression. Since families and ECEs play a pivotal role in shaping young children's understandings of gender it is necessary to learn more about ECEs' communications with families. The data that informs this paper is derived from a qualitative research study that used semi-structured focus groups with 15 ECEs who work with young children, ages 3-5 years, at licensed early childhood centres in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The ECEs were invited to participate in two focus group sessions to discuss their experiences after recalling conversations with families whose children identify outside the traditional constructs of masculine boy/feminine girl. One central finding the ECEs observe is the displeasure fathers have when their sons engage in feminine interests, including the affective actions the fathers then take to remove stereotypically feminine coded activities from their sons' lives. This research highlights the need for ongoing early childhood education training on gender diversity to better support non-binary, transgender children, and children from 2SLGBTQIA+ families.

As social media use has risen, teachers have also taken up the medium in specific ways. This study investigates the ways in which teachers are using Instagram, particularly at a moment in time during a global pandemic, when teachers are both more isolated and dealing with multiple modes of instruction, many that involve some new use of instructional technology. Top posts made by teachers using the hashtag #teachersofinstagram are categorized and analyzed using a feminist critical discourse analysis through a visual methodology. Findings indicate that the top posts on #teachersofinstragram portray teachers as heteronormative White females with a focus on sharing the positive aesthetics of the teacher, her classroom, and her life, but that teachers are also experiencing stress and resilience as they connect with other teachers on this platform.

Gender studies have become relevant for English language teaching and initial teacher education. This study uses a narrative inquiry approach to inspect two language teachers' life stories in an initial teacher education program. We document how their femininities and identities are embodied through their language pedagogy since it is a praxis that allows resistance and resurgence against paradigms that limit their identities. Findings reveal that femininities provide a broader spectrum of individual gender realities and constructions. Teachers' femininities are embodied in teachers' practices. This is why some traits of these embodiments can be related to hegemonic aspects of gender, without this necessarily meaning that there is no resistance in the pedagogical field. On the contrary, it shows the capacity to redefine these attitudes that, from the pedagogical perspective, resist the hegemony of teacher gender identity.

In the field of physics education research, numerous studies have been dedicated to investigating the relationship between gender identity and physics learning. However, these studies have predominantly employed binary gender measurement methods, which may limit the range of research questions that can be explored and impede the discovery of crucial insights. In this study, we adapted gradational measures from prior research to investigate students' self-identified femininity, masculinity, and androgyny, as well as their reflected appraisal of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny (i.e., perceptions of how others perceive them) in both algebra-based and calculus-based introductory physics courses. The use of gradational measures revealed significant variation in students' self-identified femininity, masculinity, and androgyny within the binary categories of women and men, providing new insights into gender dynamics in physics. We found that self-identified women in the calculus-based courses, where they are underrepresented, tend to perceive themselves as more masculine and less feminine than how they believe others perceive them. Similarly, students of color are also more likely than White students to perceive themselves as more masculine than they believe others perceive them. Using structural equation modeling, we found that students' gender stigma consciousness plays an important role in mediating the effects of identifying as women and students of color on the observed discrepancies. Additionally, we found that women also exhibit a tendency to perceive themselves as more androgynous than they believe others perceive them in both algebra-based and calculus-based physics courses, and this phenomenon is also related to gender stigma consciousness. Moreover, our analyses revealed that students in the calculus-based courses tend to have a higher level of gender stigma consciousness even after controlling for gender and race. Our findings underscore the potential of gradational gender measurements in deepening our understanding of gender-related issues in physics education, shedding light on the complex interplay between students' gender identity, perceptions from others, and their educational experiences in the field.

To address teenage learners' risk of HIV, STIs and pregnancy, good quality school-based sexuality education is of great importance. In this paper we address Zimbabwean young people's construction of sex and sexuality education. We draw from semi-structured individual interviews conducted with forty-seven teenage boys and girls aged between 15 and 19 years in two rural schools in Zimbabwe. The study's findings suggest that teenagers make sense of sex and sexuality education within dominant discursive frameworks that stress the importance of sexual innocence and abstinence, with the sexuality of teenage girls receiving special surveillance. However, the learners in our study also occupied positions which suggested young people's sexual agency beyond innocence. In the light of these contradictions, teenagers in Zimbabwe are caught up in producing both sexual innocence and sexual agency, making abstinence only education irrelevant to their day to day lives. Implications for future forms of sexuality education and teenagers' sexual agency in rural Zimbabwean schooling are suggested.

What might femme pedagogy offer to sexuality education? Inspired by Jessica Fields's (2023) observation that femme pedagogies create intellectual, powerful, and intimate possibilities marked by love and care, we theorize how a femme pedagogy might be used to disrupt the cis-heteronormative, deficit spaces of conventional sexuality education. Centrally, we expand this pedagogy through four key concepts that routinely appear in our own sexuality research and teaching as two queer femmes: bodies, desire, joy, and love and care. In our analysis, we incorporate visual data we created alongside pre-service teachers who we taught in the course Comprehensive Sexuality Education Methods at a university in New Brunswick, Canada in 2023. We describe how art production informs what femme pedagogy looks like in our own sexuality education practice. We suggest that femme pedagogy can be used to mobilize and highlight queer sexualities in sensuous, imaginative, and creative ways--calling upon us to reconsider what sexuality education could be otherwise.

While decades of scholarship show the oppression of women by the enforcement of patriarchal gender norms, little research has explored the ways in which masculinity receives preferential treatment over femininity, independent of a man/woman binary. This exploration is needed to understand why femininity is devalued within the heteropatriarchal masculine social context under which much of current Western society was formed. In response to this anti-femininity sentiment, an emerging area of study called critical femininity was developed to add unique insights into the way in which femininity is embodied and rejected across genders. In this paper, critical femininity is used to explore how masculine-identifying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students holding minoritized identities of sexuality and/or gender (MIoSG) experience and navigate their campus environments that are steeped in anti-femininity. Only by documenting complex understandings of how men and masculine-identifying STEM individuals (who are the majority of STEM learners and faculty) learn, enact, and reproduce anti-femininity can educators begin to resist and alter harmful patriarchal STEM environments.

Objective: To examine the associations of dimensions of masculinity--respect/toughness and anti-femininity/hypersexuality--with sexual risk behaviors and protective behavioral intentions and the effects of awareness of anti-Blackness. Participants: 127 Black heterosexual men were recruited from four Historically Black Colleges and Universities and one Minority Serving Institution in the South. Methods: Students completed an online survey as part of a pilot study to assess the sexual health needs of Black college students. Results: Our results indicated that respect/toughness and anti-femininity/hypersexuality were significant correlates of protective behavioral intentions. After accounting for awareness of anti-Blackness and age, anti-femininity/hypersexuality was a significant correlate of sexual risk behaviors. Conclusions: Our study highlights the complex multi-dimensional construct of masculinity and how forms of anti-Blackness continue to influence HIV vulnerability. Therefore, there is a need to include structural factors within research to better understand behaviors among Black college men and incorporate dimensions of masculinity that promote healthy sexual behaviors in interventions and programming.

Disparities in sexual minority (SM) sports participation have become better established in recent years, yet factors contributing to sport persistence among those who are involved in sport remain relatively unexplored. Using data from 23 qualitative interviews with SM college students who were high school athletes, we examined factors that influence sport persistence among this group. Our analyses revealed that physical aspects of sports participation - the embodied sense of movement and/or the physical contact with other athletes - influences sports persistence in different ways for sexual minority (SM) athletes of various genders. SM men frequently discussed participating in sports for external reasons that related to their perceptions about their own bodies' attractiveness. For SM women and non-binary individuals, however, the internal physical sensations derived from sports were empowering and facilitated sport persistence. However, for participants of all genders, the sexualization of their queer selves by others within their sports context affects their safety, performance, and presence depending upon the physicalness of the game. We argue that making queerness more visible in sports may alleviate the burden faced by SM athletes who are isolated as the only queer person on their teams and allows for a positive physical experience.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is an environment where binary discourses produce gendered bodies. Following a qualitative approach, this study has two major aims: (a) to analyze ECEC educators' and parents' perception regarding gender as a correlate for explaining toddlers' physical activity (PA) and (b) to discuss from a critical perspective how these perceptions could impact PA promotion from a very young age. The major findings were as follows: while some educators perceive no differences in PA patterns between girls and boys, others consider that girls are less active than boys and attribute this tendency to a greater propensity for symbolic play and biological determinants; and families perceive that their daughters are physically active and with natural predisposition to movement. In conclusion, despite the fact that some teachers' perceptions of young children continue to be encouraged into binary gendered practices, families show resistance and alternative ways to interpret the emphasized femininity.

This article examines the construction of femininity and sexuality, specifically as trans* intersect with race/ethnicity, in sport. The third author (S.F.'s) lived experiences as a Hong Kong Chinese gender-fluid bodybuilder who competes in international women's bodybuilding contests serve as an impetus to examine cultural norming and marginalization in professional sport. Narrative analysis and autobiographical memory are used to understand SF's construction of identities in relation to her sociocultural environment and as a political process that alerts us to the power structures that permit certain stories to be told while silencing others. Specifically, this article problematizes how professional women bodybuilders are being constructed as objects that are expected to embody Whiteness and 'authentic heightened femininity'. It highlights how the intersection of genderfluidity, race/ethnicity and bodybuilding defy dominant understandings of what is aesthetically, experientially and physically acceptable within the 'norm' in both 'Eastern' and 'Western', and masculine and feminine worlds. The discussion aims to provide implications to moving beyond the enduring binary gendered, racialized and sexual assumptions in women sport.

This paper reports the findings of a mixed-methods study which investigates the socio-cultural impacts of UK gendered school sport uniform and the role uniform plays in shaping female school sport experiences. Drawing on an extensive analytical survey with over 400 women of all-ages and 8 interviews with women aged 18-24, it explores how school sport uniform directly impacts female sporting experiences and participation in physical activity, and how uniform policy could be changed to promote greater female sport participation. Gendered school sport uniform continues to operate as a socio-spatial mechanism that names, frames and positions young people in heteronormative school sport spaces. This paper assesses how gendered school sport uniform contributes to the disciplining of the 'ideal feminine body' in schoolgirls and the construction of behavioural gender binaries in sport. The data reveal gendered sport uniform influences the development of a 'fear of masculinisation' in sport and common athletic-feminine identity tensions in teenage girls. The research finds gendered school sport uniform plays a major role in the high drop-out rates of teenage girls in school sport and offers practical insight into how policy could be changed to promote inclusivity, comfort and greater female sport participation. This paper proposes redesigning traditional gendered school sport policy to focus on 'enabling' participation has huge potential to transform female embodied and psychological experiences of school sport and increase school sport participation and enjoyment.

The 2020 Norwegian national curriculum for primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary education includes a "competence aim" after Year 7 that expects pupils to be able to "investigate how gender, gender roles, and sexuality are presented in music and dance in the public sphere and create expressions that challenge stereotypes." This article reviews four focus group interviews in which music teachers discussed the relevance and application of the new competence aim and their own experiences with gender roles and gender-expansive expressions among their pupils in their music practices. Using analytical tools from the field of discourse psychology, we trace and identify the discursive resources or "repertoires" that music teachers draw on when approaching questions of gender roles, gender identities, and sexuality. While the repertoires in question imply that the teachers hold progressive views about gender identities and expressions, the notion of "ideological dilemmas" enables us to ask whether the progressive attitudes may in fact also work to confirm perceptions of normative, binary gender conformity, hence also delimiting the diversity and freedom of gender expression that the repertoires seem to celebrate. We suggest that a queer pedagogical thinking can offer music teachers tools to address topics related to gender roles, sexuality, and queerness in their music educational practices.

Defining leadership and student leader identity often brings a complex and complicated reality for Black students in higher education settings. Leadership identity, models, and practices are often grounded in Whiteness, heteronormativity, and cis-heteropatriarchy, which causes complex ways of understanding leadership. Thus, the purpose of this research is to explore how Black gay, bisexual, and queer men (BGBQM) redefine leadership as resistance and nuanced activism within Black male1 initiatives (BMI) and Men of Color (MoC) mentorship programs, given their Blackness and queerness identities. Using arts-based research (ABR) methodology, this research explores the following research questions: (1) How do BGBQM define masculinity and queerness and (2) how do BGBQM experience and enact nuanced activism in challenging heteronormativity and cis-heteropatriarchy in BMI and MoC mentorship programs? Findings are presented in a podcast script format to illuminate how these men center queerness and femininity, while challenging hegemonic masculinity and heteronormative notions of leadership engagement and development within BMI and MoC mentorship program settings.

Domestic abuse in childhood is seriously impactful, but very little literature uses a critical lens to consider implications for counsellors and psychotherapists working with young adults following domestic abuse in childhood. This article draws on research that explored 10 young women's accounts of transitions to adulthood after domestic abuse in childhood. Interviews with young adult women in England were conducted and a feminist dialogical narrative analysis was used. Findings suggest that socio-cultural structures and ideologies that shape dominant discourses about what growing up after domestic abuse in childhood means, and what "successful" adult femininity looks like, shaped how women made sense of their experiences. This has implications for counsellors and psychotherapists working with this client group. This article concludes that storytelling could be a powerful therapeutic tool, and attention to power, ambiguity and tensions when working with this client group might facilitate and generate important meaning-making and knowledge in therapy.

Generating data from small group interviews with 41 boys aged 10-11 years from two London schools in 2022, this paper contributes to the field of gender by introducing a new form of non-hegemonic and positive masculinity, which I am calling 'blended' masculinity, and which was the most common formation in each school. Although its features differed a little in each setting, this blended formulation broadly consisted of orthodox qualities of masculinity (e.g. athleticism, assertiveness, confidence, independence), combined with feminine-associated traits (e.g. kindness, caring, sociability, emotional literacy). I argue that this blended form is different from previous conceptualisations of hybrid masculinity in the gender literature and is more akin to recent conceptions of hybrid femininity. There were no dominant forms of masculinity with hierarchical connotations of superiority, and no hegemony that legitimated unequal relations, with obvious subordination of other masculinities or femininities. Boys and girls generally got on well with each other and there was also no evidence of homophobia or misogyny. The paper also explores notions of peer-group popularity, which was based on a series of resources, and delineates the characteristics of a fictional, 'ideal', schoolboy, whose features and attributes were connected to the different versions of masculinity on show.

Through language, children participate actively in the construction of meanings around sexuality, which is governed unequally according to gender. This article examines the articulation of the social constructions of sexuality and gender with the pictorial and narrative representations of boys and girls from 9 to 11 years of age from four public schools in Barcelona province in the 2020-2021 school year. We used participatory methods, including drawing activities and focus groups. The findings suggest that hegemonic social constructions of masculinity and femininity guide children's practices and narratives about sexuality, (re)producing differences between 'boys' and 'girls'. The desire to fit into these hegemonic models puts pressure on boys to make their genitalia and bodies visible, and talk about sexuality through joking, while female genitalia are rendered invisible, and girls have calm discussions about sexuality. The article shows how children navigate, negotiate, or resist such governmentality and the inequalities that result.

The present study addresses the gender gap in leadership roles in Mexico through the lens of three leadership constructs. The objective was to compare female and male individual cultural values to explain differences in leadership style and agentic behavior. The sample consisted of 185 graduate students in Baja California, Mexico. Participants were surveyed using the Short Schwartz Value Scale. The responses were analyzed by running independent samples t-tests. The results suggest that males attribute greater importance to Power and Achievement values, which are associated with transformational and transactional leadership constructs. No differences were found across several values associated with other transformational, transactional, and transformative leadership constructs. The implication is that aspiring female leaders should embrace agentic behaviors in pursuit of ambitious goals along with seeking to create democratic and just workplaces. This study is novel because it uses individual cultural values as leadership variables, an approach that is seldom employed, but worth exploring.

Collaborative online learning (COL) has been associated with positive outcomes, such as critical thinking, shared problem-solving skills, and deep learning. Such outcomes require pedagogies that consider students' backgrounds, including the cultural context in which they operate. This study reflects upon the role of culture through the lens of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI) and the elements of social - and teaching presence. German and Thai students were selected due to cultural differences in values of power distance, collectivism, and femininity. 20 in-depth interviews on students' experiences with COL were conducted. Findings revealed differences in perceptions of and factors influencing social- and teaching presence across the two samples. German students were hesitant to initiate contact with non-familiar classmates through digital communication tools. The use of the camera overall supported social presence but also affected Thai students negatively, who were more concerned about the judgment, and emotions of classmates. Teaching presence differed as social media and messenger applications were more readily utilized for collaboration in Thai universities. While the presence of the lecturer in break-out rooms increased Thai students' voicing behavior, German students opened up as the lecturer was absent. The possible influence of educational-, national- and cybercultures is being discussed.

This review is aimed at exploring the association between the two aspects of Hofstede's model i.e. cultural dimensions with language learning behaviours and learning styles under different cultural contexts and learning environments. Although there are many models of cultural dimensions, Hofstede's model has been selected for this study because of its relatively high popularity. The language learning environments discussed in this study include a vast number of types of learning such as the classroom, online, web-based, self-directed, blended and mobile learning. Further, cultural contexts of single, dual or more than two countries are included here. Available literature on the reviewed topic has been selected using Google Scholar as the main search engine with suitable search terms and periods of searches to ensure the availability of maximum number of research reports. Generally, power distance, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity /femininity and to a lesser extent, orientation, either in the long term or the short term, have been associated with cultural dimensions, learning styles and behaviours. Kolb's (2005) is the most accepted learning styles' categorisation. Differences in cultures of nations have been found to be relevant to the learning behaviours and styles in a number of studies. The relationship of the above four dimensions in the case of single or multiple nations have been described by several authors. The relationship of cultural dimensions with language learning environments like classroom, online, web-based and self-directed have been studied. Most studies were on online learning environments. However, there is lack of studies on learning styles in online environments and their relationship to the cultural dimensions, and hence, there should be more studies on this aspect. Even after reviewing a large number of studies the question remains: Are we ready with a definite answer on what approaches are required to motivate learners to adopt specific learning styles in specific cultural contexts for most beneficial learning outcomes to them?

This paper explores how participants in a Swedish secondary school do gender talk with comics. Swedish schools are tasked with working with gender, but this can be a challenge for many teachers, and finding materials to work with gender aspects can be difficult. Meanwhile, literary research on comics has shown them to be a potential tool for problematising gender, but little educational research has investigated the gender discussions that comics can promote. Therefore, using conversation-analytical methodology, we have documented situated classroom talk through video observations, focusing on the social construction of gender. Five excerpts are shown, where different aspects of gender talk are displayed and discussed. Results indicate that although students deconstruct and criticise gendered binaries in characteristics and behaviour from comics' imagery, this critique remains superficial, revolving around the hypersexualised body imagery of the muscular superhero the Phantom or the outdated femininity of the girly Daisy Duck. Although comics present an opportunity for discussions of norm critique in the classroom, we suggest that more social-realistic comics, wherein gender roles are more subtle and nuanced, be used for furthering the research on this topic and allowing students more width when it comes to deconstructing gender binaries.

Persona design aims to increase students' ability to understand their target users and address their needs. Yet, there is a lack of conceptual frameworks that help students systematically conceptualise user needs, specifically the two key requirements of persona design: representativeness and empathy. In this study, we find an alternative method using cultural dimensions to ensure that students conceptualise personas by reflecting representativeness and empathy in a systematic way. We justify cultural dimensions and engagement aspects and suggest a classified table for representative and empathetic persona design. In a design course, we analyse personas created by students in two different groups with the table (Group 1, n = 16) and without the table (Group 2, n = 17) through comparative thematic analysis to evaluate the qualities of representativeness and empathy. As a result, the cognitive aspect of engagement is predominated in Group 2, whereas the cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and social aspects of engagement are evenly distributed in Group 1. 11 cultural dimensions are identified in Group 2, whereas 20 cultural dimensions are identified in Group 1. In Group 2, a particular dimension is predominant (44.4% of individualism), whereas, in Group 1, the rate of the most used dimension is 12.2% (femininity and collectivism). The study results indicate that the method allows students to diversify and deepen their understanding of user needs and thereby conceptualising personas in in-depth and analytical ways. From instructional perspectives, it can be used by educators to help students systematically conceptualise user needs in design activities.

Gender-typical characteristics are associated with popularity and acceptance, suggesting that gender typicality is an important component of how adolescents are perceived by peers. The current study addressed the contributions of self- and peer-perceived gender typicality in predicting popularity and liking among same- and other-sex peers. Participants were 131 7th and 8th graders from a rural, midwestern school. Same- and other-sex peer status were measured via peer nominations; gender typicality was measured via both peer nominations and self-report. Hierarchical regressions showed that self-perceived gender typicality was negatively associated with popularity among other-sex peers, and it was not closely tied to liking by same- or other-sex peers. Peer-perceived gender typicality was positively associated with liking by same-sex peers, and strongly associated with popularity among both same- and other-sex peers. The findings also suggest that gender typicality plays a more significant role in reputational, power-based status than it does for being liked.

Modern Foreign Language (MFL) education has long been described as being 'in crisis' by virtue of a long decline in the numbers of students being entered for exams at age 16 and 18. Whilst this decline is generally attributed to policy, harsh grading and the rise of global English, this paper challenges this view by positioning the decline at the intersection of the feminising of the subject and an othering of the speakers of the languages taught. Using a loosely Foucauldian form of discourse analysis, academic literature, published reports on language needs and language teaching, and original qualitative data from two studies are drawn together. A feminising discourse around the subject of MFL is identified, juxtaposed with a masculinising discourse around education more generally, leading to the devaluing of the subject. Edward Said's orientalism is explored as a framework for the discussion of the media and public 'othering' of the speakers of the languages commonly taught and the 'fetishisation' of less commonly taught languages. It is argued that overcoming the decline in uptake of modern foreign languages will require reconceptualising of the problem at policy level and a change in the media and public discourses surrounding the subject.

Background: This paper reports on the gendered embodiment of physical education (PE) pre-service teachers, as they learnt to teach gymnastics using mobile website technology. Methodology: Framed within an interpretivist paradigm and informed by a constructivist grounded theory, qualitative data from module observations, focus groups and semi-structured interviews were analysed as part of an iterative process. The participants included PSTs from two secondary physical education teacher education (PETE) cohorts and a teacher educator (TE, female) in a single higher education institution. Author one designed the mobile website and at times took on the role of TE within the study. Bourdieu's central tenets of habitus, field and capital were employed as part of the conceptualisation of the following categories: (1) The gendered body in gymnastics (2) The dominance of masculine characteristics; and (3) Gender and competition. Results: Analysis of data revealed that male and female PSTs' pedagogical engagement with the mobile website in gymnastics reflects stereotypical notions of gender. The dominance of masculinity worked to privilege those bodies that possessed the necessary attributes and often emancipated males in what historically has been considered a female activity. Conclusions: This study recognised the role of the gendered habitus in constructing normalised bodily movements for both male and female PSTs in a PETE gymnastics context. However, it is recommended that PETE teaching pedagogies be explicitly deconstructed to offer more nuanced gendered practices that challenge the gender order, offering equity for the more marginalised PE bodies.

Underrepresentation of women in physics is a prominent issue in the western countries. Since physics teachers are in a unique position to affect new generations of students, it has been suggested that they are an important part of the solution. In this paper, we explore how trainee physics teachers create spaces for themselves as learners of physics while negotiating their positioning as women and trainee teachers. The empirical data consist of interviews with 17 trainee physics students, and the analysis focuses predominantly on the identity negotiations of three woman students. We find that the women simultaneously submit to and master a "physics nerd" discourse that connects physics with nerdiness, masculinity, and intelligence, which enables them to successfully create subject positions incorporating physics student, teacher-student, femininity, and constructive study practice. This is of particular importance to trainee physics teachers, who will be responsible for creating inclusive and productive physics learning environments for their students.

This article utilises the model of authentic leadership by Bill George et al. to explore the extent to which gender influences teacher leader authenticity in the school workplace. Four male and four female Secondary Heads of School were asked to complete George et al.'s authentic leadership self-assessment tool and provide a written commentary reflecting on and contextualising their performance in five key areas identified by George et al.: Purpose -- Passion; Values -- Behaviour; Heart -- Compassion; Relationships -- Connectedness and Self-discipline -- Consistency. The responses of the four male teacher leaders were compared with those of the four female teacher leaders and the results show that the male teacher leaders rated themselves more positively than female counterparts in all areas except Relationships -- Connectedness. In all five categories the written reflections suggest that male and female leaders have gendered approaches to the notion of authenticity and conceive of school leadership in markedly different ways.

This article presents results from qualitative research on children's dominant gender discourses in kindergarten and the influence of the socio-pedagogical aspects of kindergarten culture, transmitted via teachers' gender discourses and personal epistemologies, on the construction of children's gender discourses and identities. The main questions guiding our research were: What gender stories are narrated in a group, and under which influences do these stories become established as norms? Our understanding of gender is based on the feminist poststructuralist perspective. Our research in two Montenegrin kindergartens with 54 children and four teachers during a two-week period showed a dominance of the binary opposition discourse of "hegemonic masculinity" and "emphasised femininity", with an emphasis on gender-stereotyped toys, games, role-play, and professions. Additionally, it has been found that the kindergarten culture strongly shapes and "normalises" children's perception of "right" gender practices, by reflecting and mirroring teachers' gender-typed expectations and a value system based on an objectivist personal epistemology that implicitly promotes "feminine" values of subordination, peace, silence and obedience. The findings suggest the need for research focusing particularly on the relationship between teachers' epistemological theories and the dominant gender discourses in kindergarten. It is also recommended that Montenegro's early childhood education policy and strategy documents consider and elaborate more thoroughly the concept of gender identity and gender-flexible pedagogies.

Background Researchers have long studied the social stratification of physical activity patterns in terms of 'determinants' of physically active lifestyles. In this article, we set out to explore how Bourdieu's concept logic of practice can be used as an intermediating analytical tool to promote understanding rather than the calculation of human participation in movement culture. Theoretical framework The logic of the practice is similar to the logic of the logician, but it differs in terms of temporality and directionality. Specifically, where the logician needs not take notice to such worldly matters, they are inevitably inherent in social life. Thus, logics of practice guide how practice is played out as well as, on the level of the unconscious, the attitude of its participants towards themselves, the practice, and each other. Different logics of practice, as previously theorised by Engström, may 'taste' differently to people depending on their habitus, that is, their embodied dispositions. In this article, such logics of practice of movement culture are investigated further. Purpose The purpose of the article is to investigate how gender and social position relate to participation in movement cultures that are guided by different logics of practice. Method In 1968, just over 2000 Swedish teenagers who were born in 1953, answered a questionnaire about their participation in movement culture. New data collections took place in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1994 and 2006/2007. The current paper is based on data collected from 846 individuals, now 63 years old, who chose to participate in a new data collection. Data about self-reported participation in movement culture, and the stated taste (or dis-taste) for certain logics of practice in movement culture, was calculated in relation to gender, level of education (cultural capital) and self-reported class affiliation (economic capital). Results and conclusions The statistical analysis indicates that while the logic of performing in this study indicates masculine and upper-class values, the logic of experiencing indicates feminine and academic values. The logic of improving seems to hold a middle-ground position. Importantly one of the logics, experiencing nature, which is actually also the one that most of the 63 year-olds express a taste for, seem not to be linked to either gender or social position. We conclude that this may have important societal and pedagogical implications, for example, that increasing the possibilities to experience nature could facilitate participation in movement culture at least among Swedish upper middle-aged people.

We investigated how the endorsement of gender stereotypes affects disciplinary identity across three different science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) areas: physics, biology, and chemistry, and whether such relationship is mediated by self-concept constructs, such as self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Building on the ambivalent sexism theory and masculine ideology paradigm, we focused on gender stereotypes based on hostile and benevolent sexism and on male role norms. A sample of 1406 Italian high school students (girls = 742) was involved in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships. Results show that the adherence to male role norms and the rejection of hostile sexism have a significant effect on the development of a disciplinary identity in the three targeted STEM domains. However, such an effect is fully mediated by self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Moreover, the identity in the three addressed STEM domains is differently affected by the endorsement of stereotypes, with physics and biology being more largely affected than chemistry. More importantly, the endorsement of hostile sexism stereotypes significantly decreases the perceived self-efficacy, while higher levels of perceived academic control are predicted by higher levels of endorsement of male role norms, for both girls and boys. Our findings suggest that to reduce the perception of femininity as incongruent with STEM identification, it would be necessary to deconstruct the masculine view of self-efficacy and academic control.

In the hairdressing occupation emotional labour has often come to overshadow other vocational skills. The present study, using ethnographic methods, explores how students and teachers in vocational education and training (VET) for hairdressers in Sweden describe and explain the emotional labour being carried out when a hairdresser perform good service. The results show that to look happy and smile has a central position in students' and VET teachers' descriptions of how an ideal service worker is expected to act. A positive attitude and a special voice are other signs that characterise the hairdresser who provides good service. The happy ideal is both reproduced and challenged from students in the hairdresser education. One conclusion is that an ideal service worker reinforces femininity norms to act as a professional, which is in line with the requirements of the hairdresser education and the customer's and employers' expectations. At the same time, the happy ideal limits students' opportunities to challenge and question prevailing power structures, which is also part of the Swedish upper secondary school mission.

Across the contemporary global higher education sector, there is an increased focus on gender and the academic profession, particularly inequalities. Previous studies construct a clear picture of the academy as an unfriendly profession for women, particularly highlighting the challenge to 'belong'. A growing body of literature demonstrates how conferences contribute to the development of academic careers but are also shown to be exclusionary spaces for many different groups, including women academics. This study focuses on how gender manifests in "cultural representations" of conferences -- and the academics involved. Based on a qualitative gender analysis of symbolic references to academic conferences from a sample of written fictional texts, the article reveals how fictional representations of conferences portray gender and especially how they contribute to depictions that reproduce gender inequalities. Focusing on who is attending fictional conferences and what these characters are doing at or in relation to conferences, our analysis highlights how women's viability as academics is challenged across a range of texts. We argue that cultural representations of academics cannot be ignored in gender analyses of academia, due to the role they play in constructing a dominant imaginary of academics.

International tests demonstrate that students' mathematics and reading skills vary widely across countries. I investigate whether a country's cultural characteristics are the fundamental cause of these differences, while family and school characteristics are the proximate causes. I find that while either cultural characteristics or family and school characteristics can explain average student scores on PISA mathematics and reading literacy tests across countries, when the effects of both types of characteristics are examined together, the cultural characteristics explain most of the differences. These results indicate that families and schools function as agents of society and that schools have a limited capability to improve students' skills absent accompanying changes in a country's cultural characteristics.

This study addresses eugenics and their relationship with the discourse on sex and gender in the field of Physical Education in Uruguay, specifically in Physical Education teacher training (1948-1970). The sources used include the main works and articles of national and regional leading authors in the field, the syllabi of several subjects of the Physical Education Teacher Training Course in Uruguay as per the 1948, 1956, and 1966 academic programmes, and documents with the details of candidates who took the entrance examination. In Uruguay, there was a special reappropriation of biometrics which combined different measuring instruments and techniques with indices and coefficients of Latin origin (influenced by Nicolas Pende's ideas) and Saxon-based anthropometric measurements. Eugenics and hygienism often overlapped, making it hard to distinguish one concept from the other. The eugenic discourse that permeated this training course contributed to producing and legitimising hegemonic masculinities and femininities through multiple mechanisms. This was confirmed by test indices based on the ideal male model and by the higher proportion of men who were admitted. The sources studied, fundamentally in the fields of biology and medicine, contributed to building a series of femininities centred on the most sacred goal, procreation, while regarding masculine transvestite and homosexual bodies as abnormal.

Hélène Cixous is perhaps best known for her paper, 'The Laugh of the Medusa' (1976) and her literary contributions outside academia. In this paper, we pick up a lesser known Cixous text, 'Le Sexe ou la tête?' that offers an interesting and provocative perspective on the traps associated with being feminine in a masculine environment. As we converse with Cixous, weaving our own words and experiences with hers, we link her work more closely with the feminine in modern-day academia. We suggest that Cixous's remarks on decapitation and voice offer a way forward for academic women to be; to speak; to recognise the double jeopardy of decapitation in the university; and to use laughter as a strategic, powerful, political act of resistance and subversion against oppressive masculine power structures. We draw on and seek to enact Cixous's notion of "écriture feminine"--a disruptive style of writing that provides a mode of being, speaking, and writing that subverts the power of masculine norms in order to be heard and to bring possibilities for change.

In this paper, Kate Kirkpatrick argues that the recent return to moral exemplars in exemplarist moral theory might benefit from engaging with existentialists' use of exemplars in two ways: first, by considering the role of negative exemplars and the power of emotions other than admiration in moral formation; and second, by considering objections to exemplarist education, in particular Simone de Beauvoir's objection that narrative exemplars often serve an ideological function and perpetuate oppressive ideals -- especially (but not only) about women. After situating this discussion in ancient and recent debates about the role of literary narratives in moral formation, Kirkpatrick outlines a moral perfectionist reading of Beauvoir and an objection to exemplarist moral theory's reliance on exemplars that "we" admire on the basis that "the admirable" often serves to promote the interests of the powerful rather than the flourishing of all human beings. Finally, while agreeing with this symposium's editors that efforts to improve our understanding of how to use narrative exemplars in educational settings are valuable, she asks how, given the force of the Beauvoirian objection, their criterion of "appropriate critical reflection" might be met.

Through her epistolary correspondence and her novel "Ifigenia" (1924), Teresa de la Parra (1889-1936) questions racial stratification systems reminiscent of colonial times and still present in twentieth-century Venezuela. Parra establishes the malleability of racial categories through a moderate racial discourse that intends to re-classify whiteness as the sole marker of economic wealth. Via its young and naïve protagonist, "Ifigenia" depicts how white elites reluctantly adapted to modernity's significant socioeconomic changes, leaving previous racial stratification systems--and their whitening projects--obsolete. Parra's moderate approach to race has been consistently overlooked by numerous scholars who often focus on "Ifigenia's" feminine discourse. However, Parra's novel thrives in the nuanced juxtaposition between racial purity and "mestizaje" that mirrors the tension between Paris and Caracas as opposing geographical and racial spaces. Parra's nuanced discourse reveals a moderate racial theory that underscores the importance of controlled racial mixing and intends to negotiate between a European ideal of racial purity and a Venezuelan "mestizo" reality at the turn of the twentieth century. Ultimately, her protagonist willingly sacrifices herself for the continuation of a national narrative where modernity has enforced an acceptance of "mestizaje."

Drawing on archival material and oral testimony of former students, this paper examines the lives and experiences of women in Catholic primary teacher training colleges in Ireland in the period 1922-1974. It commences with a brief overview of the historical context in which these colleges emerged, situating their development within the socio-political and cultural context of the emerging Free State and the changing primary school curriculum. Residential and single-sex, the paper argues that the colleges promoted a gendered ideology and culture of femininity which mirrored the conservative, nationalistic and ultramontane agenda of post-Independence Ireland. Paradoxically, while this often led to a limited, anti-intellectual experience and a hegemonic framing of women teachers' professionalism, many graduates used their new-found professional status as teachers to embrace high-profile leadership roles in twentieth-century Ireland, often in male-dominated fields.

According to attributional theory, when the application of effort leads to success we praise the achievement. Effort and ability, however, are seen as compensatory and thus, paradoxically, being praised can lead to attributions of low ability. Our study investigates whether praise, not for academic performance, but for social classroom behavior, would also incur attributional backlash. We examined whether prosociality relates to attributions of high effort and low ability, mediated by expected teacher praise and happiness. In adolescence, prosocial behavior is displayed more by females and aligns with femininity. We conducted an experimental vignette study with 324 German ninth graders to examine whether prosocial students experience a denigration of achievement via expected teacher reaction. Multilevel modelling showed that compared to nondescript students, prosocial students were judged to receive good grades as a result of effort and less due to ability, but this was not related to expected teacher reactions. Prosocial students were also judged to be more likeable and popular. Examination of gender-related outcomes showed that prosocial students were believed to be more feminine, but also more masculine than the nondescript student. Female prosocial targets were thought to be more typical, but not as occurring more frequently than their male counterparts. The results are discussed in reference to the paradox of praise. The limitations and implications of the research are discussed, particularly regarding female students' achievements.

In this essay, told from my perspective as a white woman, I spend time critically analyzing the caricatures of racist white women as I hold them up against stories of actual white women. My goal is illuminate how stereotypes of white racist women serve as a normative yardstick for the construction of another kind of white woman: the antiracist one. Aspiring antiracist white women spend much time in search of white racist women embodied in such stereotypes. They search for them to learn how to be and how not to be. Ultimately, this is a distraction from the actual work of antiracism, which relies on relationality and intimacy. I argue white antiracist women would be better served to banish these stereotypes so our time can be spent -- not in search of them to measure ourselves -- but with our own complexity, inner conflicts and distorted psyches. Until we do that work, antiracist white women will be little help to racial justice movements.