33. Gender and Education
Paper
School, Online Communities, and Creative Workshops as Spaces for Non-normative Pre-teen Gendered and Sexual Cultures
Eveliina Puutio1, Suvi Pihkala1, Jukka Lehtonen1,2, Tuija Huuki1
1University of Oulu, Finland; 2University of Helsinki, Finland
Presenting Author: Puutio, Eveliina
Pre-teens explore and express other than cis- and heteronormative forms of gender and sexuality in their peer relations. Despite this, these ‘non-normative’ ways of being and doing often threaten to drown under mainstream assumptions that follow the common idea of gender-dichotomy and the mutual attraction of boys and girls (Hawkes & Dune, 2013). Although the national curriculum outlines that schools should support the development of students’ gender and sexual identities (Finnish National Board of Education, 2014), particularly non-binary and non-heterosexual youth tend to find the school's practices cramped and are often left to ponder these issues by themselves in their other life spheres (Kennedy, 2020). The aim of this study is to focus on youth everyday spaces, and to look at how they come together in shaping pre-teen non-normative gendered and sexual cultures.
To do this, the research draws on case study, which was implemented in Northern Finland and consists of an arts-based case study of a group of three 12- to 13-year-old students. As we worked with the group of friends and their nine classmates, what stood out was the trio’s powerful, iterative reflections of non-normative gender and sexuality that emerged during our engagement with them. As they were sharing their thoughts with us, they especially discussed two life spheres as vital for expressing gender and sexuality: school and online communities. We became interested in exploring how these spaces operate; although they might seem distinct or even separate from each other, they act together in co-constituting pre-teen gender and sexuality.
Earlier research on young people’s gender and sexuality has focused on their romantic and/or sexual relationships as well as on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) youth (Kennedy, 2020; Lehtonen, 2021). Despite this, there is a lack of research examining young people’s relationalities which transgress hetero- and cisnormativity in the transition to adolescence (see however Neary, 2021). In addition, these themes have been primarily approached through human-centred, talk-based methodologies, which can make it challenging for young people to explore these topics. In recent years, a growing body of feminist new materialist and posthuman work (see e.g., Allen, 2018; Renold, 2019; Taylor, 2013) has begun to explore new methodological, ethical, and ontological possibilities of mapping youth sexualities in expansive ways. We join this scholarship by employing creative, arts-based approaches in exploring young people’s views on gender, sexuality, and power in the less-studied elementary school context.
Firstly, we turn to ask, how school and online communities are constantly coming together with other entities and co-constituting possibilities for pre-teen non-normative gendered and sexual relationalities. Our intention is to focus particularly on the flux and flow school and social media entanglements create for navigations and ruptures of gendered and sexual norms and the alternative visions and ways of being they enable. Secondly, to consider and encourage the transgressive gendered and sexual practices in young people’s everyday lives and draw insights for the development of more supportive youth spaces, we focus on our creative workshop space and ask how it acts as a space for expressing pre-teen gender and sexual diversity.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe data was produced in two stretches together with three Northern-Finnish students. First, the students participated in our creative Friendship workshops together with their nine classmates. The workshops were organised during two consecutive five-hour school days in a separate space outside the school premises. The activities included movement, talking, writing, and crafting, and were designed to invite the children to ponder themes related to gender, sexuality, and power in their relationships and then to express their ideas on what needs to change in their peer relations to make them more ethically sustainable.
As the constellation of the workshops generated powerful reflections on non-normative gender and sexuality in a group of three friends, us and the trio were keen on continuing the work after the two-day long workshops ended. In the second part of the data generation, one of the authors visited the students in their school which was located in a white middle-class semi-rural neighbourhood in Northern Finland. In two separate six-hour school visits, one of the authors first spent time with the students for two school days, engaged in school practices, and organised the trio of two-hour-long arts activities and group interviews in a separate school space. The data consists of processes of making a series of crafted artworks addressing the students’ peer experiences and different life spheres from the perspectives of gender and sexuality, screenshots the students took to present their social media accounts and fieldwork notes and audio-recorded discussions from the workshops and school visits.
As the group of friends emphasised how the possibilities to express gender and sexuality differed particularly in two of their essential life spheres – school and online communities – we began to ‘think with’ previous research that explored spatiality as critical to the material-discursive landscapes of young lives (Allen, 2018), and reconsidered the idea that only human actors are responsible for producing social identities and relationships. We combined Doreen Massey’s (2005) conceptualisation of spaces as intertwined relational networks with Karen Barad’s (2007) new materialist insights to view spaces as performative and emergent material-discursive entanglements, which produce material meanings of gender and sexuality in pre-teen lives. Thus, the pre-teen everyday experiences, new materialist ontology and previous research conceptualising the spaces of young people led us to analyse how school, social media communities and our Friendship workshops acted in producing non-normative gendered and sexual cultures.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBased on our findings and previous scholarship on the school experiences of LGBTIQ+ youth (see, e.g., Lehtonen, 2021; Neary, 2021) we propose that as schools mostly act on constituting and strengthening normative flows of gender and sexuality, the students’ transgressive expressions of those can emerge only in the ruptures of mainstream gendered structures and power hierarchies and as entangled with heteronormative assumptions of friendship and romance. Compared to school, online communities seem to offer a more fruitful ground for non-normative explorations of youth gender and sexuality. Entangled with human and non-human elements, online communities have the capacity to enable transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality through creative visions and connections to wider terrains of LGBTIQ+ cultures. Intriguingly, our Friendship workshops seemed to operate as sort of an intermediate-space, as they enabled expressions of transgressive gender and sexuality through artmaking, iterative activities, and multichannel reinforcement. In the material-discursive workshop composition, it became possible for diverse gender and sexual expressions to be openly articulated and extend to school and its cis-/heteronormative practices.
The results underline the meaning of space in forming and shaping pre-teen diverse gender and sexual expressions and relationalities. Furthermore, they offer insights in those material-discursive entanglements that already promote non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality in young people’s lives. By drawing from these, we can enable educational spaces for pre-teens to express their gender and sexuality and to discuss with their peers, educators, researchers, and decision makers, about how to address these themes in ethical, encouraging ways.
ReferencesAllen, L. (2018). Reconceptualizing qualitative research involving young people and sexuality at school. Cultural studies, Critical Methodologies, 19(4), 284–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708618784325
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe Halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
Finnish National Board of Education. (2014). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education. Next Print Oy.
Hawkes, G. & Dune, T. (2013). Narratives of the sexual child: Shared themes and shared challenges. Sexualities, 16(5/6), 622–634. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460713497459
Kennedy, N. (2020). Deferral: The sociology of young trans people’s epiphanies and coming out. Journal of LGBT Youth, 19(1), 53–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2020.1816244
Lehtonen, J. (2021). Heteronormative violence in schools: Focus on homophobia, transphobia and the experiences of trans and non-heterosexual youth in Finland. In: Y. Odenbring & T. Johansson (Eds.), Violence, Victimisation and Young People. Education and Safe Learning Environments. (pp. 155–172) Springer.
Massey, D. (2005). For space. SAGE Publications.
Neary, A. (2021). Trans children and the necessity to complicate gender in primary schools. Gender and Education, 33(8), 1073–1089. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2021.1884200
Renold, E. (2019). Ruler-skirt risings. Being crafty with how gender and sexuality education research-activisms can come to matter. In: T. Jones, L. Coll, L. van Leent & Y. Taylor (Eds.), Uplifting gender and sexuality research (pp. 115-140). Palgrave McMillan.
Taylor, C.A. (2013). Objects, bodies, and space: gender and embodied practices of mattering in the classroom. Gender and Education, 25(6), 688–703. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2013.834864
33. Gender and Education
Paper
Online and Offline Intimate Partner Violence in Adolescents with Diverse Sexual Orientations
Rachida Dalouh Ounia, Encarnación Soriano-Ayala, Verónica C. Cala, Carmen Ujaque Ruiz
Universidad de Almeria, Spain
Presenting Author: Dalouh Ounia, Rachida
Teen dating violence is a complex and multifaceted problem. This violence has been defined as that in which acts that hurt the other person occur, in the context of a relationship in which there is attraction and in which the two members of the couple date to go out together (Close, 2005). Although for some authors this type of violence has a structure similar to partner violence in adults, it presents certain peculiarities related both to the relationship (there is no cohabitation, absence of children, economic independence) and to the dynamics of violence (bidirectionality and reciprocity) (Borges & Dell'Aglio, 2017 ; López-Cepero et al., 2015; Rubio-Garay et al., 2017).
The studies on partner violence have focused mainly on couples made up of both binary sexes and where their sexual orientation was defined as heterosexual (Díaz & Nuñez, 2015). Intragender violence occurs between people of the LGTBI collective and can be defined as the violent behavior or attitude of one of the members towards their partner of the same gender (Tomás Cánovas, 2019). For their part, Rodríguez et al., (2015) point out that in couples in which a member belongs to the transsexual, transgender or intersex group, violent behaviors are an exercise of power by the "normative" member in order to dominate, control, coerce and/or isolate the victim, as happens in heteronormative couples. That is, the difference with intragender violence lies in the absence of sexist or patriarchal reasons, although the purpose is the same, to exercise domination and control over a member of the couple.
Another important point to note is that the difficulty of identifying an unhealthy relationship by the partner is attributed to the invisibility of intra-gender violence itself in society and the lack of information to be able to recognize this type of violence (Janice Ristock, 2005). Along the same lines, the Yogyakarta Principles identified the key role that educational methods and resources play in increasing understanding and respect for the diversity of gender identities and expressions, including the particular needs of those who receive it and their families (Commission Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2020).
The prevalence of violence among adolescents, both in the case of the violence committed and in the scale of violence suffered, several types are distinguished: verbal-emotional (insults, humiliation, threats, depreciation, false accusations, ridicule, etc.), violence physical (acts of physical force and other restrictions aimed at causing pain), sexual violence (forced sexual relations, abuse, the use of sex as a form of pressure and manipulation), cyber violence (control of the partner's mobile phone, harassment with continuous messages , knowing where that person is, what they are doing and who they are with, spying on their activity on social networks or with their phone, etc.). Since new technologies have been used to exercise violence (Borrajo & Gamez-Guadix, 2018). Violence through NICTs includes violent behavior through electronic media, mainly mobile phones and the Internet (Ocampo Botello et al., 2015).
The objective of this study is to determine if gender identity influences the violence suffered or exercised in adolescent dating relationships. Also, know the types of violence are more prevalent based on the gender identity of the person who suffers and exercises it and on sexual orientation.
For this reason, the approach of the null hypothesis was: the three groups with different gender identities (non-binary) are equal depending on the types of violence that are analyzed. The alternative hypothesis being: At least one of the groups is not identical depending on the types of violence that are analyzed. With a significance level of 5% (0.05).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used1. DesignThis research work is quantitative, descriptive and exploratory in nature. Research with a quantitative approach offers the possibility of collecting data that can later be evaluated to know the psychometric aspects that are intended to be measured by means of data collection instruments, and with this to be able to establish some generalizations of the population from which they were extracted (Ocampo BotellO et al., 2015).
2. Sample
The selection of the sample was intentional and not probabilistic. The sample was filtered based on the gender identity of the respondents.
From the sample n= 2120, a sample was obtained that was made up of 28 subjects of non-binary gender identity and self-identified as Fluid or non-conforming gender (N= 14), male transsexuals (N=10) and female transsexuals (N=4). The minimum age of the respondents is 13 and the maximum is 21, with an average of 15.61 years.
The nationality of the parents of the adolescents, 50% (n=14) is of Spanish origin, 25% (n=7) from Morocco, 7.1% (n=2) is from Romania, 3.6% (n=1) from Bolivia, Peru 3.6% (n=1), England 3.6% (n=1), Uruguay 7.1% (n=2).
Relating the nationality of the parents with the gender identity of the participants, the 64.3% declared as fluid gender is from Spain, Morocco and Uruguay share the same percentage, 14.3% and in last place is Bolivia with 7,1%. For male transsexuals, the highest percentage is of Moroccan origin (40%), 30% is from Spain, with Romania, Peru and England sharing third place with 10% each. Finally, the female transsexuals, the origin of 50% is from Spain, and with the same percentage (25%) are Morocco and Romania.
3. Instrument
For the data collection, a questionnaire divided into sections that included indicators related to age, nationality of the parents, gender identity, sexual orientation, the experience of violence in a sentimental relationship, as a victim and as a perpetrator, was used.
4. Procedure
In this research, the data was collected through printed surveys, which were administered to the participants in the classrooms of the Secondary Education centers. A trained member of the research team provided instructions for completing the questionnaires and was available to answer any questions. Subsequently, they were captured in the statistical package IBM SPSS Statistics 27, to later proceed to the data analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe 48% have declared themselves to be bisexual, 20% are heterosexual, 16% do not know it, 12% are homosexual and 4% consider themselves something different from the above. On the other hand, 50% self-identify as gender fluid or non-conforming, 35.7% as male transsexuals and 14.3% consider themselves to be female transsexuals.
To respond to the approaches of this study, the statistical test that was used was the Kruskal Wallis H, which is a test applicable to situations in which there are free distributions, this test is used when you want to analyze the degree of association or independence between a quantitative variable and a categorical variable that integrates more than two groups. In order to verify the established hypothesis and thereby analyze the relationship between the types of violence and the gender identity of the respondents, which was the objective of this research; the data analysis of the values obtained in the factors: victim of social cyberviolence (1), victim of social cyberviolence (2), victim of emotional violence 1(3), victim of physical violence (4), victim of sexual violence (5), victim of emotional violence 2(6), perpetration of cyberviolence-total(7) and victim of cyberviolence-total (8), it is observed that these are higher than the established level of significance (5%), which indicates that the null hypothesis is accepted. In this sense, it can be confirmed that no significant differences have been found that relate the types of violence suffered or exercised and gender identity.
In this study, there are no significant differences to cyber-violence against a partner between the different gender identities.However, the commission or suffering of acts of cyberviolence is greater for the group of male transsexuals.
For effectiveness of violence prevention programs in adolescent couples in educational centers has to take into account gender differences and ethnic-racial and cultural patterns.
ReferencesBorges, J.L. & Dell'Aglio, D.D. (2017). Aspectos teórico-metodológicos de la investigación sobre la violencia en las relaciones de pareja adolescentes. En D.D. Dell'Aglio & S.H. Koller (Eds.), Niños y jóvenes vulnerables en Brasil: Enfoques innovadores desde la psicología del desarrollo social (pp. 41-54). Springer International Publishing
Borrajo, E., & Gamez-Guadix, M. (2016). Cyber dating abuse: Its link to depression, anxiety and dyadic adjustment. Psicología Conductual, 24(2), 221-235.
Close, S.M. (2005). Dating violence prevention in middle school and highschool youth. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing,18 (1), 2-9 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6171.2005.00003.x
ComisiónInteramericanalde DerechosHumanos, [CIDH], 2020). InformesobrePersonasTransy deGénero Diversoysusderechos económicos,sociales, culturalesyambientales. https://www.oas.org/es/cidh/informes/pdfs/PersonasTransDESCA-es.pdf
Díaz, J. & Núñez, J. (2015). Violencia al interior de parejas de la diversidad sexual (LGBTI). Liminales. Escritos sobre psicología y sociedad, 1(7), 43-63.
López-Cepero, J., Rodríguez, L., Rodríguez, F. J., Bringas, C. &, Paíno, S. G. (2015). Percepción de la victimización en el noviazgo de adolescentes y jóvenes españoles. Revista iberoamericana de psicología y salud, 6(2), 64-71.
Ocampo Botello, F., De Luna Caballero, R. & , Pérez Vera, M.G. (2015). Relación entre violencia y semestre en estudiantes de ISC. RIDE Revista Iberoamericana para la Investigación y el Desarrollo Educativo, 6 (11).
Ristock, J., & Timbang, N. (2005). Relationship violence in lesbian/gay/ bisexual/transgender/ queer [LGBTQ] communities: Moving beyond a gender-based framework. Violence Against Women Online Resources. https://vawnet.org/material/relationship-violence-lesbiangaybisex ualtransgenderqueer-lgbtq-communities-moving-beyond
Rodríguez, LM., Carrera, M., Lameiras, M. &, Rodríguez, Y. (2015). Violencia en parejas transexuales, transgénero e intersexuales: una revisión bibliográfica. Saúde Soc. São Paulo, 24(3,) 914-935.
Rubio-Garay, F. , López-González, M.Á., Carrasco, M.Á., & Amor, PJ (2017). Prevalencia de la violencia en el noviazgo: una revisión sistemática. Papeles del Psicólogo, 38, 135-147. https://doi.org/10.23923/pap.psicol2017.2831
Tomás Cánovas, L., Moral de Calatrava, P. &, Canteras Jordana, M. (2018). Violencia de género dentro de las diferentes orientaciones sexuales en España. Enfermería Global,18, 1 (, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.6018/eglobal.18.1.310471.
33. Gender and Education
Paper
Digital Skills and Gender Equity: Perceptions and Practices of Portuguese Primary Education Teachers
Ana Mouraz1, Marina Duarte2, Ana Nobre1
1Universidade Aberta, Portugal; 2Instituto Politécnico do Porto
Presenting Author: Mouraz, Ana
Although gender equity is a fundamental right, the 2020 gender equality index (GEI) places Portugal at 16th in the European Union, below average, despite recent progress. According to the Portuguese Government, education and communication are the two areas that can transform more the rigid conceptions of gender social roles, pointing to technological and digital developments that integrate artificial intelligence as one of the biggest challenges for the future of gender equality, with education being a priority area of intervention. The 2020 GEI also accounts for the enormous segregation in education and the labor market in Portugal for ICT graduates (18.6% women), specialists (15.7% women), and scientists and engineers in highly technological sectors (20.2% women). Considering the impact of these fields to present and future societies, it is urgent to revert such figures.
According to UNESCO, efforts to promote gender equality should start early, as children begin to understand the concept of gender in the 3-7 age group. On STEM Education, UNESCO considers that children can be exposed to learning opportunities in science and mathematics from an early age, that initial educational experiences have a positive effect on the subsequent choice for science and mathematics courses, as well as on career aspirations and that in primary education,… gender role stereotypes are reinforced in this age group. On the other hand, UNESCO also highlights how teachers' pedagogical practices are partially shaped by their prejudices, which in turn affect students' values and learning.
Considering that in Portugal, and compulsory schooling, it is in the 1st level of basic education that the percentage of women teachers is higher (87.0% in 2020), this can sharpen the difficulty of STEM education at this level.
We consider that the use of emergency remote education motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic forced teachers to use digital media in a way that would hardly have happened outside this context, constituting an opportunity to build knowledge about digital literacy, pedagogical practices and gender equality and how they intersect. Therefore, we seek to answer the following research questions: how current 1st level teachers perceive or integrate their existing digital knowledge into their teaching? how current 1st level teachers perceive differences between boys’ and girls’ digital skills? how current 1st level teachers support differently boys and girls, to achieve equity regarding digital skills? How teachers’ characteristics, both personal and from context, explain their perceptions and practices concerning digital skills promotion among pupils?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo answer the research questions, the research focused on 1st level teachers, as they are those who can make a difference concerning digital skills among students from an early age, thus contributing to diminish the gender gap. Considering the Portuguese population of 1st level teachers, 22 182 in 2020 (Instituto Nacional de Estatística – National Statistical Institute), we aimed to reach at least 15%, following a cluster sample process. To do so, schools and their directors were the path to reach the teachers. An online questionnaire survey was carried out with teachers from April to June of 2022, having obtained 3871 valid responses, representing 17.5% of the population.
The questionnaire was organized in three sections. The first section (S1-questionnaire) was a Lickert scale to measure “gender equality in digital skills awareness” (GEDSA), which comprises three subscales: 1) teachers’ digital knowledge; 2) their actions by using digital tools in the classroom; ans 3) perceptions regarding gender differences concerning students’ digital skills. The second section (S2-questionnaire) regarded the support teachers give to gender equality promotion and had a descriptive approach with closed questions aiming to organize teachers’ answers in trends that frame teachers’ practices regarding GEDSA. The third section (S3-questionnaire), designed to collect data concerning personal and professional information of teachers, allowed the characterization of the sample in terms of clusters and have been used as independent variables. It combined closed questions with others with predefined answers. We used Statistical Package for the Social Sciences for the statistical analysis of data. Which was mainly descriptive.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIt was found that teachers perceive themselves as digitally competent to develop the essentials of their teaching tasks. Most have already carried out a diverse set of pedagogical practices and activities using digital resources. However, as the overwhelming majority did not find differences between the uses that boys and girls make of digital, they also do not act in a way to promote digital skills differently among girls. The small group of teachers that recognizes differences between boys and girls (n=173), use activities most frequently perceived as favoring boys. Therefore, even these teachers do not contribute to gender equality in terms of digital skills.
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