In her 1983 Study ‘Invisible Women, Dale Spender argues that women are made invisible in our culture because their lives and achievements are not seen as being of any significance. She also argues that this is reflected in the way knowledge in the national curriculum is from a male point of view. Economics for example, studies paid employment but gives little consideration of unpaid housework to the economy. In history the achievements of male kings, soldiers and politicians are highlighted, but the role of women in bringing up children and running homes is rarely considered. Spender and others suggest that many teachers often have a negative view of boys and they can frequently name all the boys in the class but see the girls as an undifferentiated mass. It is as if the girls are ‘invisible’ in the classroom as individuals, being treated merely as a group and an inferior one at that.
She argues that schools reinforce gender inequality in wider society. Social relations in the classroom, the content of the curriculum, the attitudes and expectations of teachers, all prepare girls for male domination and control. Spender tape recorded lessons given by teachers and her and found that boys received over 60% of the teachers’ time, but in her case boys received 62% of her time. Even though she tried to divide he time equally. Also teachers usually allowed boys to get away with insulting and abusive comments to girls. When the boys questioned or challenged a teacher they were often met with respect and a serious response whereas girls tended to be rebuked or fobbed off. She also found that boys’ and girls’ written work was judged by different standards. When she asked teachers to mark essays and projects, the same work got better marks when the teachers were told it was written by boys. This finding is supported by research by Goddard – Spear (1989). She gave science teachers some work to grade. Half the teachers believed that they were marking girls’ work and the other boys’ work. When the teachers believed they were marking boys’ work they gave higher ratings for scientific accuracy and organisation of ideas than to identical work they believed was done by girls. She concluded that in a mixed education, the dice were loaded against girls. If they behaved as boisterously as boys they were considered ‘unladylike’, if they were docile and quiet they were usually ignored. This is based on gender role expectations. This relates to my rationale because this shows that teachers can even label their pupils based on the quality of their work.
A girl interviewed by Sue Lees complained, ‘Girls get much less attention than boys ‘cos boys make a fuss and make themselves noticed – they wanna be noticed so they make a racket’ (1986). This shows that just because boys only make noise because they want attention from the teacher. This links to my rationale because Lees’ study shows that if girls cause a fuss they just get told off and sometimes they are labelled as being passive for example.
In her 1988 study ‘School Processes: an ethnographic study, Wright found that in a Midlands comprehensive school when conducting observation that teachers frequently made racist comments in class. The children who refused to let the ‘jokes’ go unchallenged ended up becoming known as troublemakers. These pupils became the centre of an anti-school group that consisted of black girls and boys who were structured like a gang and they used their own dialect to distance themselves from the school and tried to make themselves appear threatening. This links very well into my rationale because I want to find out if this sort of thing goes on in Primary school classrooms.
It has been shown that even in primary schools, where girls are more successful than boys, the excellence of their work may be attributed by teachers to a desire to please rather than to creativity or intellectual promise (Clarricoates, 1980). Expectations – because they involve ideas about what, ‘such pupils’ are ‘really like’ – enable ideologies about ethnic groups, social classes, and genders to shape relations between pupils and teachers in the classroom. This links to my rationale because this shows that the relationship between the teacher and the pupil can decipher what label if any they are given.
Most of the studies mentioned are from the 1980s so they are a little out of date. Examples of equal opportunity initiatives are: ideas like numeracy and literacy hours in primary schools as well as ideas like the wise bus in secondary schools.
