Course Description
Issues, research, theory, and policy on gender and education. Gender effects in socialization, schooling, and lifelong learning are analyzed for their implications for individuals, society, and culture.
Athena Title
Gender and Education
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
1. Given a set of issues on gender and education, students can analyze them for a. alternative ways of framing the problems raised b. the research and policy literature appropriate for examining the problems c. the moral and ethical principles involved, and d. the consequences for individuals, groups, and societies of solutions proposed. 2. Students can describe how gender divisions are defined across cultures and assess effects of these divisions and resulting sexism on men’s and women’s experiences of work, knowledge, power, leadership, and education. 3. Students can specify relationships between gender and other ways that humans differ: race and ethnicity, socioeconomic class, immigration status, religion. 4. Students can identify, describe, and apply relevant theoretical perspectives to the examination of selected issues in gender and education. 5. Students can distinguish social science theory from social action theory in their implications for and applications to gender issues in education. 6. Students can locate, organize, and synthesize research studies on gender and education from multiple disciplines; they can abstract from these syntheses the major constructs formulated and relationships proposed. 7. Students can identify and discuss implications for gender of research in school achievement, peer interaction and socialization, teacher-student interactions, hidden curriculum, institutional organization and hierarchies of schooling, literacy and numeracy, knowledge production and distribution in higher education, divisions in schooling across cultures, teaching as work, teaching and learning outside schools, and patterns of lifelong learning. 8. Given the variety of policy positions toward gender and education, students can identify the origins, the operational requirements, and the potential conse-quences of each; they can generate applications of each position to their own lives and anticipated futures, and specify and defend their preferred policy(ies).
Topical Outline
I. Current issues in gender and education (variable across quarters) A. Sexism and its critique B. Defenses across cultures of traditional gender divisions C. Equal recompense for equal training D. Equal access to knowledge traditionally limited by gender E. Knowledge and the distribution of private and public power F. Leadership and control of educational decision making G. Human diversity and its relationship to gender and education 1. Race and ethnicity 2. Socioeconomic class 3. Immigration 4. Religion II. Theoretical perspectives toward gender and education A. Social science theories B. Action theories III. Research on gender and education A. School achievement B. Peer interaction and socialization C. Teacher-student interactions D. The hidden curriculum E. The institutional organization and hierarchies of schooling F. Literacy and numeracy among males and females across cultures G. Knowledge production and distribution in higher education H. The history of gender divisions in schooling across cultures I. Teaching as gendered work J. Teaching and learning in the family and other social institutions K. Patterns of lifelong learning IV. Policy positions on gender and education A. Sources of opposition to equalizing power and resources B. Compensatory efforts to promote gender equity C. Equal opportunity approaches to gender equity D. Empowerment efforts to promote gender equity
Syllabus