Women and Education

1
Women and Education

• Gender Changes

2
Educators

• The importance of the role of the teacher as an
  agent of change, promoting understanding and
  tolerance, has never been more obvious than
  today.
• (Delors, 1996).
• Women comprise an increasing majority of
  elementary and secondary educators, and men
  comprise a decreasing majority of university
  faculty.

3
Gender distribution in Education

• The number of women educators has increased
  steadily over the last decade, however, women
  continue to be greatly outnumbered by men among
  full-time university faculty. At the elementary
  and secondary levels women are the growing
  majority.
• At all levels of education, women outnumber men
  in part-time employment.

4
Gender and High School Completion

• There has only been a slight increase in the
  number of students graduating from high school,
  and male students are still less likely than
  female students to finish.
• Question Why do you think high school completion
  is a problem for males?

5
Gender enrolment in trade-vocational

• Women in trade-vocational programs increased
  slightly overall in Canada, but decreased in
  Ontario.
• (these programs generally do not require high
  school graduation)

6
Gender enrolment in College and University

• Women outnumber men in college and university.
• Men outnumber women at the graduate level.
• More women graduate from university at the
  undergraduate level.
• In college women are the majority in social
  sciences and services, while men are in
  protection and correction services.
• In university men outnumber women in the
  sciences.
• Although the gap is lessening for male and
  females in math and science, at present, male
  graduates outnumber females.

7
Gender and Education in the Future

• Women and men as educators?
• Completion of high school for males?
• Women as the majority in university at the
  undergraduate level?
• Men outnumbering women at the graduate level of
  university?
• Men outnumbering women in science and technology?

8
Race, Class, Gender and Education

• Class
• The most common conceptions of class, derived
  from a functionalist analysis, emphasize social
  stratification, relying on such indicators as
  income, occupation, parental education, and other
  variables that can be empirically measured and
  compared.

9
Social Class and Education

• Alternative conceptions of class from a Marxist
  or critical analysis, emphasize class as a
  relational concept that requires much more
  intensive scrutiny of what people do and how they
  do it in relation to other people, productive
  property, and labour processes.
• e.g. cultural capital, issues surrounding poverty

10
Race and Ethnicity and Education

• Two themes in race and ethnicity and education in
  Canada
• Race and ethnicity does have an impact on
  peoples educational experiences and social
  opportunities.
• Ethnicity and race cannot be understood in
  isolation from class and gender

11
Race and Ethnicity and Education

• Race and Ethnicity
• People of Aboriginal ancestry have the lowest
  educational attainment in Canada, people who are
  of Jewish and Chinese have the highest average
  number of years of schooling and are the most
  likely to hold a university degree.

12
The Practice of Multiculturalism

• Institutional Inclusiveness a process by which
  institutions proactively and positively engage in
  diversity, both internally and externally.
  Inclusiveness is about acceptance and promotion
  of differences as necessary, normal and
  beneficial.

13
Multicultural Schooling and Education

• Enrichment multicultural education an
  appreciation for cultural diversity by exposing
  students to a variety of different cultures
  special days are set aside for multicultural
  awareness projects are assigned that reflect
  multicultural themes and specific cultures are
  singled out for intensive classroom study.
• Intended effect tolerance, sensitivity, harmony

14
Multicultural schooling contd

• 2. Enlightenment multicultural education focused
  more on enlightening students about race
  relations in society and their impact on
  education and schooling. It goes beyond the
  descriptions of specific cultures and focuses on
  how majority-minority relations are created and
  maintained.

15
Multicultural schooling contd

• 3. Empowerment multicultural education directed
  at the needs of the minority student.
• i.e. struggle by aboriginal peoples to gain
  control of aboriginal education
• 4. Antiracist Education concerned with the
  identification and removal of discriminatory
  barriers at interpersonal and institutional
  levels. It is a proactive approach that seeks to
  balance a value on difference with a sharing of
  power.

16
Antiracist education

• It seeks to avoid tokenism (such as certain
  festivals without reference to the lifestyles and
  daily traditions of the chosen group, or telling
  a story now and then about a child in a wheel
  chair), and instead reflects the diversity of
  experiences of the children in the classroom.
• It attempts to accomplish this through
• Community involvement.
• The notion that children can and should become
  participants and decision makers in their own
  learning.

17
Four main elements in Antiracist Education

• Critical insights into interlocking differences
  that are brought into the classroom.
• A critical discourse that focuses on race and
  racism as issues of power and inequality rather
  than matters of cultural difference.
• An interrogation of existing school practices to
  uncover the structural roots of monoculturalisms
  and inequality.
• Challenge and rupturing of the status quo through
  political and social activism

18
Antiracist education

• Multicultural and Antiracist Education differ
  sharply in that Antiracist education seeks to
  change racism through awareness, challenge and
  confrontation, and multicultural education is
  simply intolerant of racism in practice.

19
Integrative Anti-racism

• Refers to a framework of anti-racist education
  that draws on the interconnections between race,
  class, gender and disability and sexual
  oppression.
• Therefore one should be anti-classist,
  anti-sexist, anti-homophobic in his or her
  teaching.
• Teachers who practice anti-racist pedagogy must,
  admit to their own privileged middle class
  background when speaking to students about
  oppression.
• George Dei

20
Demographics, Globalization and the Future of
Teaching

• Canadas population is aging.
• Issues in education for Natives are important.
• Immigration is increasing.
• Our world is globalizing.
• Differences in world views will become more
  apparent and it is increasingly important to
  incorporate these views into ones teaching.

21
Differences in World Views and Teaching

• The sense of time Western culture concentrates
  on the future, whereas many other cultures have a
  sophisticated sense of the past.
• The sense of family Extended families are
  common for many cultures.
• The sense of hierarchy In the western culture
  students are encouraged to disagree with their
  teachers to show their individuality. But in
  many nations and cultures, such behaviour is
  called putting yourself forward, often a major
  sin.