Education and Child Study 256 - Gender and Education

This course explores gender in schools, primarily focusing on P- 12 schooling in the U.S. The course explores how gender is socially constructed in schools, and how gender and sexuality are performed, controlled, and contested in schools. The course examines how peer interactions, teacher practices, school policies, as well as the roles of broader cultural norms, family, media, and government, shape gender and sexuality in schools. An intersectional approach is used, so that the course can examine how gender is co-constructed with other social categories, and how inequality is produced at these intersections. While learning about this theoretical and empirical content, students learn the qualitative research method of participatory observation, applying the method in a research study of children and gender in school. Enrollment limited to 30.