Conference Agenda

Educational research on LGBTIQ students and teachers is increasing and has a long tradition at ECER conferences for over a decade. At the same time empirical research is still marginal (De Witte et al. 2021). In this symposium, we spotlight Australia, Germany and Sweden which have all had legal and policy changes concerning gender and sexuality diversity, such as recognition of same-sex marriage or gender diversity (IGLYO 2022). But these legal improvements do not necessarily translate into better conditions for LGBTIQ students and teachers. Educational institutions are shaped by heteronormative traditions and are often structured in binary gendered ways; this is apparent in language, policy, facilities and curriculum taught or omitted at school (Heasley & Crane 2012; McBride & Neary 2021). Teacher training generally omits gender and sexuality diversity, and teachers often feel uncomfortable or incompetent to address gender and sexuality diversity in class (Shepherd 2022). Universities and schools also lack measures to protect LGBTIQ students, teachers, lecturers and staff from bullying and discrimination, and currently violence against gender non-conforming students has increased in the wake of an anti-genderist right wing backlash (EU-FRA 2020; UNESCO 2021).

This symposium brings together researchers who analyze these paradoxes and focus on questions of gender and sexuality diversity in educational settings and practices. Framed within empirical educational research, they study conditions which might help to improve the educational opportunities for trans, intersex, non-binary and gender expansive (TIN) students or support the professionalization of LGBTIQ teachers. The symposium will be composed of presentations from three countries. Lundin will present the narrative of Kim, a trans teacher in a Swedish school. He will present supportive conditions of inclusion and recommendations to educators based on Kim’s narrative. Ferfolja and Ullman will introduce a professional research-informed learning module from Australia with multiple guidance resources, including a short film for teacher education. Fütty and Götschel will discuss challenges and requirements in teachers training at German universities about gender and sexuality diversity at school with a focus on ambivalences, entanglements, and uncertainties in education. The presenters are united in the goal to enable inclusive education systems and the symposium aims to foster synergies between these scholars.

In many ways, Sweden can be considered as an open community with respect to LGBT people. This notion includes the school setting and LGBT teachers’ situation, although research points out that their everyday situations yet not seem to fully reflect legislation and policy documents. However, the knowledge on trans people’s situation is limited in comparison to what we know about homo- and bisexual teachers’ situation. This session will address Kim’s experience of being a trans person in school to elicit the importance, also to acknowledge trans people’s work conditions as those can differ from homo- and bisexual teachers work experiences. The aim with the session is to present Kim’s narrative and to make explicit how Kim forwards education. The aim is also to point out how values are communicated in the narrative, facilitating identification and emotional attachment for all, in the school setting. During the session, a brief overview of what LGBT teachers’ situation can be like in Sweden will be made and Kim’s narrative will be presented. The session will also explain the data collection in which Kim took part. The analysis of Kim’s narrative will touch upon the educational affordances and the impact of the values that are communicated by applying two different theories to identify functions of education (Biesta, 2009) as well as how a sense of belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2006) can be seen as facilitated in Kim’s narrative. The support that the principal gives to Kim is highly important for the positive outcome in Kim’s story. Nevertheless, the session will also address the impact of our different approaches and attitudes. That is, we can learn a lot from Kim’s narrative, but we also need to consider that settings differ as well as people’s expectations. The session will conclude by suggesting a few recommendations to educators based on Kim’s narrative.

Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9 Yuval-Davis, N. (2006): Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197-214, https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220600769331

While ample evidence positions positive primary/secondary school climates and inclusive curriculum as protective factors for gender and sexuality diverse (GSD) youth (Waling, Bellamy, Ezer, Lucke, & Fisher, 2020), educators are often reluctant to engage with related topics due to pervasive concerns about parental and community backlash (Cumming-Potvin & Martino, 2018). Educators express particular concerns when considering how acknowledgement of diverse genders might be incorporated into their classrooms. This paper will commence with a discussion about the recent political and educational climate in Australia with respect to gender and sexuality diversity (Thompson 2020). This backdrop provides a context for the authors’ research, a large-scale, nationally-representative research project which investigated Australian public school parents’ attitudes towards GSD-inclusivity across Kindergarten through Year 12 education – the final year of education. Their findings demonstrated that over 80% of parents support a GSD-inclusive curriculum, including acknowledgement of gender diversity (Ullman, Ferfolja & Hobby, 2022). This session will focus on the development of a suite of professional learning resources for K-12 educators as a central outcome of this national project, inclusive of an asynchronous micro credential; a professional learning module designed for educator professional development - which includes multiple guidance resources; and a short film. The authors will provide a partial screening of this film resource titled, “What Parents Want: Talking about Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools”, developed verbatim from both in-depth interviews and an online forum with parents of GSD students (see Ferfolja & Ullman, 2023). In this film, parents share their experiences of navigating the school system for/with their GSD child and suggest how educators can best support GSD young people.  Parents’ narratives featured in the film were inclusive of three children assigned male at birth who had transitioned/were transitioning while at school; one child assigned female at birth who identified as gender-fluid and who shared this with their teachers/peers; an adolescent boy who identified as bisexual; and a same-sex attracted adolescent girl. Accordingly, a particular feature of this film are the experiences of students and their families navigating the constrictions of a normative, binary framing of gender at their schools and how expanded understandings and provisions can support gender diverse children and young people. The session will conclude by presenting educators’ responses to these professional learning resources and preliminary data on their impact within the school setting.

Cumming-Potvin, W. & W. Martino (2018). The policyscape of transgender equality and gender diversity in the Western Australian education system: A case study. Gender and Education, 30(6), 715–735. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2018.1483491. Ferfolja, T. & Ullman, J. (2023). Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Schools. https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/gsds/educator_resources accessed 25th January 2024. Thompson, J. D. (2020). Your parents will read this: Reading (as) parents in journalistic coverage of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia Controversy. Journalism, 21(12), 1–14. Ullman, J., Ferfolja, T., & Hobby, L. (2022). Parents’ perspectives on the inclusion of gender and sexuality diversity in K-12 schooling: Results from an Australian national study. Sex Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2021.1949975. Waling, A., Bellamy, R., Ezer, P., Kerr, L., Lucke, J. & Fisher, C. (2020). ‘It’s kinda bad, honestly’: Australian students’ experiences of relationships and sexuality education. Health Education Research, 35(6), 538–552. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyaa032.

Legal gender/sex categories refer to a binary understanding of biological sex and gender identity in Western societies. In the last decades though, the acceptance of LGBTIQ+ people has increased in many countries (IGLYO 2022). In Germany, a third civil status ‘divers’ was legally established for intersex persons in 2019. Since 2021, the ‘Law to Strengthen Children and Youth’ mentions the well-being of trans, intersex and non-binary (TIN) youth in the ‘Social Security Statute Book’ (SBG VIII). Furthermore, a debate about a ‘Self-determination Law’ (SBGG) is ongoing. The visibility of TIN students and the thematization of gender:sex-diversity—the diversification of biological sex and gender identity beyond the binary–increases in science, society and at school (IGLYO 2022; Klenk 2022). At the same time, German schools are still structured on binary gender:sex-norms such as language, subjects or facilities (Oldemeier 2021). These developments affect education and teaching (Klocke 2017). They provide the context for an ongoing empirical research project on the consequences for teacher education with an interdisciplinary, intersectional and multi-method research design that incorporates crucial interconnections between theory and practice. It aims (1) to collect and analyze data on the discrimination faced by TIN students, as well as the requirements for their inclusion in school; (2) to review the current literature; (3) to investigate current (non-university) training programs on gender:sex-diversity and education and (4) to include a pilot project to teach future teachers (at universities) about gender:sex-diversity. Specifically, the research project asks how the establishment of a ‘third gender:sex’ option impacts school requirements to promote the education of TIN students and identifies the transformations that schools will need to undergo in connection with the new ‘divers’ civil status. In our presentation we will briefly outline the research project and its qualitative empirical methodology, being rooted in Discourse Analysis and Situational Analysis. We will present first findings of the demands and needs of TINA+ students, reflect upon restrictive binary gender:sex-norms at school and thematize gender:sex-diversity as cross-sectional topics in teacher education. Most of all we will place emphasis on the question how future teachers should be trained to be able to cope with ambivalences, entanglements and uncertainties in school and education. Last but not least, we wish to discuss our findings with other researchers on a trans-national level.

IGLYO (The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer & Intersex Youth and Student Organisation) (2022). LGBTQI Inclusive Education Report 2022. https://www.iglyo.com/resources/ie-2022 accessed 15th January 2024 Klenk, F. C. (2023). Post-Heteronormativität und Schule. Soziale Deutungsmuster von Lehrkräften über vielfältige geschlechtliche und sexuelle Lebensweisen. Opladen & Toronto: Barbara Budrich. Klocke, U. (2017). Homophobie und Transphobie in Schulen und Jugendeinrichtungen: Was können pädagogische Fachkräfte tun? Loccumer Pelikan, 17(1), 11-17. https://www.rpi-loccum.de/material/pelikan/pel1-17/1-17_klocke accessed 24th January 2024 Oldemeier, K. (2021). Geschlechtlicher Neuanfang: Narrative Wirklichkeiten junger divers* und trans*geschlechtlicher Menschen. Opladen & Toronto: Barbara Budrich.

In education, transformation diagnoses of masculinities can be identified throughout Europe in recent decades. Some European countries have proclaimed a “boys crisis” on the basis of a change in educational successes. Currently, boys in public media as well as in educational science are being discussed as the so-called “new educational losers,” as they perform more poorly at school than girls. Subsequently in these countries, there has been a call for more men as professionals in the field of education in Germany (Pangritz, 2019), the Czech Republic (Fárova, 2018), Sweden (Diewald, 2018) or the UK (Skelton, 2002) and more, in order to provide boys with seemingly alternative concepts of masculinity as role models. Furthermore, more fathers are undertaking or want to undertake caring roles within the family, which is discussed on a theoretical level under the heading of “caring masculinities” (Elliott, 2016).

On the one hand, these transformation processes of masculinities initially cause uncertainty. For some men and boys, but also women, they mean breaking away from established (behavioral) patterns and structures that have given individuals stability and security. But these traditional structures and behavioral patterns are also linked to power and dominance relations. On the other hand, the transformation or change in constructions of masculinity therefore always holds the potential to democratize gender relations (Elliott, 2016; Pangritz, 2023a). Therefore, the uncertainty is also associated with the hope that the transformation of masculinities will contribute to improving gender equality and greater diversity.

However, when it comes to the transformation of masculinities, mainly men and boys are discussed as the driving force. For example, male professionals in the educational context are considered to have the potential to stimulate a transformation of masculinity among boys by acting as role models. This assumption repeats the discursive triangle of boys - men - masculinity (Budde & Rieske, 2022), which links masculinity to the male body. Accordingly, boys have to learn or unlearn what masculinity means from men. Through this discursive triangle, all other forces that have an influence on the transformation of masculinity are ignored. This discursive triangle also shows what Gottzén and colleagues (2022) had already highlighted: In the negotiation in CSM as well as educational science of masculinities, queer or female positions are mostly left out. However, these perspectives can initiate a change in masculinity or equally contribute to the stabilization of the hegemonic male norms. In this context, Connell (1987) had already pointed out the relevance of emphasized femininity: A form of femininity that supports hegemonic masculinity.

Against this background, this paper aims to examine the perspective of girls with regards to current negotiations of masculinity. I will present four episodic interviews (Flick, 2022) with girls aged 14-16, which are dedicated to the question of what concepts of masculinity the girls support and how these relate to their own femininity. The interviews are analyzed using the documentary method according to Nohl (2010, 2017).

The girls initially show an orientation towards a hegemonic masculinity norm. They relate femininity to this norm in different ways. On the one hand, they relate to it as a subjective reference to be able to construct their own femininity and female identity and on the other hand as a counter-horizon that retains an outdated image of femininity that is linked to the domestic sphere. In addition, some of the girls formulate the need for a change in masculinity, as it is associated with violence and danger. In this context, the girls identify educational institutions such as schools as places that should initiate a transformation of masculinity.

Internationally, males from low socio-economic backgrounds remain severely underrepresented in higher education, and significant gaps exist in our knowledge of how they transition to an experience university life. Many who enroll in higher education do not finish which the pressure to earn money and secure employment as soon as possible being a key factor. Despite an emphasis on widening participation in the Australian university sector, the path to university is still precarious, particularly for first-in-family (FIF) students. Drawing on longitudinal data, this presentation will provide the first detailed account of how gender, ethnicity and social class impact on Australian males (n = 42) from low socio-economic backgrounds as they transition to university. The focus is on understanding the role that gender – interacting with low SES status and ethnicity – plays in FIF males who are seeking to become socially mobile through their education.

In terms of a theoretical framework, FIF undergraduates are not only expected to be less primed to take advantage of university resources but also to participate less in university life (Jack 2014). Research suggests this limits their acquisition of social and cultural capital, which has implications for lifelong consequences regarding family formation, job acquisition, and network development. Researching how aspirations interact with socioeconomic status in reference to occupational certainty, prestige, choice, and justification, Gore et al. (2015) shows how students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds have stronger financial motivation, indicating their aspirations are for occupational futures that provide financial security. However, according to Gale and Parker (2013) students from low SES backgrounds ‘typically have diminished navigational capacities – the result of their limited archives of experience – with which to negotiate their way towards their aspirations’ (p. 51).

The presentation addresses how FIF males transition to and experience Australian university study in different locales and institutions. The data analysis captures how experiences at high school, the use of formal and informal support, and geographical locations contribute to FIF males’ transition to university. We further highlight the role of masculinity (e.g. the breadwinner, etc) and how this informs how FIF males navigate university life. The project has three sub-aims to probe the nature of FIF male student experience:

• Aim 1: How do experiences at high school, the use of formal and informal support, and geographical locations contribute to FIF males’ transition to university?
• Aim 2: In relation to gender, how does low socio-economic status – shaped through access and operationalisation of different forms of capital (economic, social and cultural) – influence the experiences of FIF young men at university?
• Aim 3: How do cultural beliefs regarding gender influence the transition of FIF males to university and their experiences during the first year at university?

This paper investigates high achieving racialized and minoritized female junior scholars’ negotiations of (in)visibility in academia – more specifically within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in Denmark. Women are generally underrepresentated in STEM and even more so when it comes to women with ethnic minoritized backgrounds.

Some bodies by their mere presence become a source of surprise and disruption in the settings and spaces of academia. This paper takes, as its point of departure, the question of what it means to become a surprise. Working from a conceptual framework of racialized differentiation as an affective, intersectional, and spatialized process (Deleuze 1990, Ahmed 2012, Manning 2023) and an empirical foundation of qualitative interviews with racialized minoritized female scholars in STEM, the analysis delves into the affective, spatial and embodied experiences of standing out or passing as a racialized and gendered Other in academia. Focus is specifically on how the experience of being a surprise element relates to structural and hegemonic orderings of the university as a space embodying some bodies and not others as naturally belonging (Puwar 2004). This entails a focus on the meritocracy of academia, the negotiation of visibility-invisibility and the right to stay opaque.

The analysis shows how the female scholars’ narratives, experiences and strategies can expand our knowledge on how processes of racialization, othering and opacity take form in higher education in ways that fixate them in a state of perpetual arrival and as a source of potential surprise. This has relevance to how it is possible to think about diversity and inclusion in higher education.c

Promotions criteria are often held to be neutral, objective descriptors of the standard tasks and levels required to achieve promotion. As such, they provide institutions with apparently transparent mechanisms for sorting out the deserving and the not yet deserving, and they offer those applying for promotion an apparently clear list of requirements and standards that must be demonstrated in order for promotion to be achieved. And yet, research indicates the continuation of gender pay gaps (HESA, 2023), research funding gaps (Weale and Barr, 2018), and an academic promotions success gap shaped by gender, race and class (Bailey, 2022). Despite many years of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives in institutions, promotions practices continue to act as gatekeepers for women academics, producing inequitable outcomes. The result is that in the UK women are highly underrepresented in senior management roles, particularly in SET subjects, but overrepresented in part time roles, lower salary bands and teaching only contracts (AdvanceUK, 2021). In 2019/20 fifty percent of academics were women but seventy-two percent of professors were men (AdvanceUK, 2021). These UK trends are mirrored across Europe.

In this context of these ongoing equities, this paper puts promotions criteria and promotions practices in the spotlight. It argues that the apparently ‘neutral’ promotions criteria are the vehicle for the enactment of deeply embedded and often hidden gendered political micropractices. Many women academics applying for promotion to professor have had the experience of being told they are ‘not ready’ for promotion by male peers but this notion of ‘readiness’ is itself deeply shaped by gendered factors that hide under the radar. Interpretations regarding who or how ‘professorship’ or research leadership should and can be demonstrated, or who possesses the required attributes for promotion, are shaped by gendered assumptions. The paper builds on work by Yamamoto’s (2019: 167) which indicates that women in research leadership positions are often there at the behest of a patriarchal powerbase built on ‘elite, academic, male, social and cultural capital’; on Thornton’s (2013: 3) exploration of the masculinist cultural practices of neoliberal universities; and on Morley’s (2016: 5) comments on the ‘virility culture’ of competitive individualism that thrives in contemporary HEIs.

This paper arises from a current UKRI/UK University funded project entitled WomenCAN: Breaking Promotion Barriers, Changing University Cultures, this paper develops a feminist theoretical approach which highlights, attends to, and seeks to address the demonstrative mangle of promotions practices in the performative university. The objectives of the project are to:

• Provide a robust evidence base for culture change initiatives to advance women’s research leadership skills and career progression;
• Build a flexible, distributed leadership structure of women change agents to embed practical systemic change across the university
• Pilot a coaching programme of targeted initiatives for women academics.

Based on empirical data, the paper explores how promotions criteria contribute to the invisibilisation and stigmatisation of women’s’ chosen career and promotion pathways. It illuminates how prevailing structures, cultures and identities (O’Connor, 2020) within HEIs construe women’s choices as lacking in legitimacy in academic authority structures which continue to privilege research over leadership, teaching, citizenship and engagement. The paper contributes a detailed understanding of how the specifics of promotions criteria and promotions practices gain micropolitical animacy, force and power in institutions, in ways which have significant and negative effects on women’s career progression and on perceptions of women’s institutional value. Project findings indicate that, while long-standing patterns of inequality are changing, they are doing so at a glacial pace, and that institutional EDI initiatives are insufficiently agile or targeted to prevent the continual re-entrenchment of power and the reproduction of inequitable gendered practices at the micro-level.

Generating greater gender justice for diverse students, academics and professional staff is currently stated as a priority for higher education institutions and this is encouraged by many national governments and international policymakers (e.g. European Institute for Gender Equity, 2022; OECD, 2023). Paradoxically, universities are both places where knowledge and theories about justice are taught and developed but also spaces in which inequities are reproduced and even exacerbated daily (McLean et al, 2019). However, initiatives aimed at generating equities for students, academics and others have been a longstanding and burgeoning trend in universities' but inequalities of genders, sexualities, ethnicities, (dis)abilities, and more remain intransigent (Ahmed, 2021; Bhopal, 2016; Blackmore, 2022; Dolmage, 2018). It is striking that intersecting gender inequalities are a global phenomenon across universities. Whilst there is variation in the specific types of inequalities, what they look like and how they play out in national contexts, there are vertical inequalities (with different genders being focused in particular disciplines being the most well-understood) and horizontal inequalities (with males prevalent in taking up higher status and more influential positions) across the international higher education sector (EIGE, 2022). Even those disciplines most enmeshed in building knowledge that explains inequities, such as the social sciences and humanities, have the same inequities embedded within their research, teaching and administration: within universities and in their professional associations and conferences (Biggs et al 2018)). Consequently, there are questions about how those of us who work in universities can remain hopeful and try to generate more just relationships and practices from within the unequal academy.

The four papers presented in this session present research that is making significant efforts to generate changes toward greater equity. They focus on intersecting gender inequalities. The first presentation relates to a project called Women Can, which is taking place at the University of Bath, UK. It is funded by UKRI (national research funding) and it focuses on how promotion practices might be changed to address a lack of women taking up leadership positions in universities. The second, third and fourth papers are linked by a UNESCO Global Chair Project, led by the University of Newcastle Australia and are partly funded (in the University of Bath, UK and Cairo University Egypt) by the British Council. All focus on attempting to promote equity in STEM by generating research findings exploring how staff in Engineering and STEM faculties see current equity practices and then working with colleagues in these faculties to turn these findings into materials that can be used in pedagogical work with faculty members to co-construct knowledge and practices for their contexts. Each university team works independently on their project but they are related and we learn and work together to build understanding and practices. The projects are theoretically framed with critical and transformative theories and they use pedagogical methodologies and critical pedagogical approaches as fit their contexts (Burke et al, 2016; Burke and Lumb (2018).

This paper focuses on the origination, development and implementation of a women academics’ change agents network in a UK university. Data informing this paper were gathered during a UKRI funded research project: WomenCAN: Breaking Promotion Barriers, Changing University Cultures, and include narrative interviews with 21 women academic leaders in a range of disciplines, and two follow-up participatory workshops with women academics at all career levels from a range of disciplines. Widespread statistical and research evidence indicates that, despite increased diversity in the workplace and greater numbers of women academics in universities, women are still under-represented in leadership roles (Bierema, 2017, p.148), that there is still a gender pay gap, and that women in leadership positions are often marginalised, isolated and experience epistemic injustices (Madsen, 2017). The WomenCAN project focused specifically on how promotions practices and cultures maintain gendered patterns of inequality regarding a ‘women’s leadership gap’, and the practical measures needed to change this. Situated at the theory-praxis interface, and drawing on feminist theories of organizational change within higher education (Acker, 1990), the project generated nuanced, situated insights into how the structure-culture-institutional nexus produced powerful micropolitical effects that disadvantaged women in very specific ways. Building on feminist critiques of how institutions ‘bear responsibility for social justice, equality, solidarity and care for others’ (Benschop, 2021, p.2), the paper discusses how the Women Academics’ Change Agents Network sought to ‘develop alternative value systems’ (Benschop, 2021, p.2) to current hierarchical and individualizing practices, and contested ‘oppressive organization structures that have not worked, are not working, and will not work’ (Bierema, 2017, p.145). Morley and Lund (2021, p.114) argue the need to ‘consider how we “do” gender in the academy.’ Project data indicated that the proposed network should be there ‘to help and guide women’; be a place for ‘sharing the challenges’; and provide ‘a confidential space for women to get advice from other women.’ The two workshops were a clear call to collective action (‘let’s get organised!’) to ‘influence relevant university policy’ on promotions practices, and to improve the ‘visibility of women academics.’ Envisaged as a driver for change, fuelled by women’s collective agency, and embedded within changes to university cultures and structures to ensure its sustainability (Kassotakis, 2017), the WomenCAN network activates feminist praxis (and activism) through the aim to ‘trouble power relations, imagine better worlds and work to achieve them’ (Ferguson, 2017, p.283).

Acker, J. (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender and Society. 4: 139–158. Benschop, Y. (2021). Grand Challenges, Feminist Answers. Organization Theory. 2: 1–19. Bierema, L.L. (2017). No woman left behind: critical leadership development to build gender consciousness and transform organizations. In, Madsen, S.R. (Ed). Handbook of research on gender and leadership. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Ferguson, K. E. (2017). Feminist theory today. Annual Review of Political Science. 20: 269–286. Morley, L., & Lund, R.W.B. (2021). The affective economy of feminist leadership in Finnish universities: class-based knowledge for navigating neoliberalism and neuroliberalism. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 42:1, 114-130. Madsen, S.R. (2017). Handbook of research on gender and leadership. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kassotakis, M.E. (2017). Women-only leadership programs: a deeper look. In, Madsen, S.R. (Ed). Handbook of research on gender and leadership. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

In recent decades Australian universities have tried to strengthen forms of equity in STEM fields. While there has been some progress, inequitable outcomes remain in relation to intersecting disparities around gender, class, race, and (dis)ability (Australian Government Department ISER, n.d.). This situation is compounded by uneven regulation and commitments to equity, which are often relegated to peripheral roles with limited capacity and resources. Despite a broad understanding of the need to attend to discipline-specific strategies across the diversity of STEM, little attention has been directed towards building this understanding to foster more equitable and inclusive practices. This paper discusses a research project on the different perspectives of students and academic and professional staff in the diverse environment of a large comprehensive STEM faculty at an Australian regional university. The focus of the project is to examine how equity is articulated within and between disciplinary, teaching, research and administrative contexts and to generate practical recommendations and pedagogical resources to strengthen staff engagement and awareness of equity issues. A question the project pursues is how does the relegation to peripheral roles and units affect differently positioned staff and the capacity institutionally to address complex questions of inequality that impact all levels of activity including teaching and curricula development? Drawing on data from over 200 surveys and 51 in-depth interviews with staff and students this research shows how understandings of equity emerge through different experiences related to positionality (how participants are socially, politically and culturally located). We explore how academic and professional staff and students experience forms of structural marginalisation and exclusion that are often ignored or hidden. Our analysis is framed by an intersectional lens drawing on critical feminist, decolonial social justice theory (Battiste, 2013; Behrendt et al., 2012; Fraser, 2005). A critical approach to understanding the tensions raised by participants focuses on deconstructing power structures and hierarchies that continue to reproduce systems of inequity through White-centric, masculinised, neoliberalism and ‘Eurocentrism in science’ (Dudgeon & Walker, 2015). Through a pedagogical methodology (Burke, Crozier and Misiaszek, 2017; Burke and Lumb, 2018), the project brings a social justice lens to equity by calling for collective spaces and dialogue that challenge socially oppressive environments and enable deeper reflections and engagement with equity issues. The outcomes of this research have the potential to inform future policy decisions within higher educational institutions and guide the development of professional learning programs that promote equity in STEM education.

Australian Government Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. (n.d.). Focus on understanding progression of different demographic groups through STEM. https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/stem-equity-monitor/data-focus/focus-understanding-progression-different-demographic-groups-through-stem Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Purich publishing Behrendt, L. Y., Larkin, S., Griew, R., & Kelly, P. (2012). Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People: final report. Canberra, A.C.T.: Dept. of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education Burke, P. J., Crozier, G., & Misiaszek, L. (2016). Changing pedagogical spaces in higher education: Diversity, inequalities and misrecognition. Routledge. Burke, P. J., & Lumb, M. (2018). Researching and evaluating equity and widening participation: Praxis-based frameworks. Evaluating equity and widening participation in higher education, Trentham, London 11-32. Dudgeon, P., & Walker, R. (2015). Decolonising Australian psychology: Discourses, strategies, and practice. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 276-297. Fraser, N. (2005). Reframing justice in a globalising world. New Left Review, 36.

Egypt boasts a rich history of national and international efforts aimed at promoting women's participation across various levels of higher education, particularly in STEM fields (National Council for Women, 2017; Egypt National Observatory for Women, 2015). While these initiatives have led to a notable increase in female enrolment in STEM higher education, there remains a pressing need to establish robust standards of equality (El Nagdy & Roehrig, 2019; Kyoung, Fernandez & Ramon, 2022). Despite widespread acknowledgement of this need, there has been insufficient focus on developing inclusive strategies and practices. This paper delves into the diverse perspectives of both academic staff and students regarding equity issues within the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University. Through an examination of the supportive and obstructive factors influencing equity across various domains within the faculty—such as teaching, research, and administrative contexts—the study sheds light on the nuanced dynamics at play. The paper draws on data obtained from 200 surveys and 50 in-depth interviews conducted with faculty members and students at the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University (Egypt). Thematic analysis is used to identify key themes related to equity issues across different dimensions of teaching, research, funding and administrative practices. By critically examining these themes, the study aims to uncover both the supportive factors that promote gender equity and the hindering aspects that perpetuate inequitable practices (Nakayiwa et al., 2020). The research uses feminist theory which offers a powerful framework for understanding the multifaceted nature of gender equity experiences within the Egyptian academic setting, considering the unique social, political, and cultural contexts in which female academic, professional staff, as well as students, encounter various forms of structural marginalisation and exclusion that often go unnoticed or unaddressed. Through its intersectional approach, feminist theory acknowledges the intersecting axes of identity that shape the participants’ experiences and opportunities within their educational institution. By centring the voices and experiences of female academics and students, feminist theory exposes the underlying power structures and systemic biases that perpetuate inequality. The study aspires to inform evidence-based interventions and policy recommendations aimed at fostering a more inclusive, equitable, and empowering academic environment for all (Mott, 2020).

National Council for Women (2017). National Strategy for the Empowerment of Egyptian Women 2030 Vision and Pillars. Available via: https://ncw.gov.eg/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/final-version-national-strategy-for-the-empowerment-of-egyptian-women-2030.pdf Egypt National Observatory for Women (2015). Women’s Empowerment Strategy Vision 2023. Available via https://en.enow.gov.eg/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A4%D9%8A%D8%A9%20%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%AF%D9%81%20%D9%81%D9%8A%202030 Kyoung, R. O., Fernandez, F. & Ramon, E. (2022). Gender Equity in STEM in Higher Education. New York: Routledge. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/eee1ae49-405f-4a98-ba2d-9b3050feebf0/doi.org/ Mott, H. (2020). Going Global Partnership Gender Equality in Higher Education: Maximising Impact. British Council. Available via https://www.britishcouncil.org/gender-equality-higher-education-maximising-impacts Nakayiwa, F., Elhag, M., Santos, L. & Tizikara, C. (2020). Strengthening higher education capacity to promote gender-inclusive participation in Science, Technology and Innovation. African Journal of Rural Development, 5(3), pp.65-86. Bothwell, E., Roser-Chinchilla, J., Deraze, E., Ellis, R., Galán-Muros, V., Gallegos, G., Mutize, T. (2022). Gender Equity: How Global Universities are Performing. Times Higher Education and the UNESCO International Institute of Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC). Available via Gender equality: how global universities are performing, part 1 - UNESCO Digital Library El Nagdy, M. & Roehrig. (2019). Gender Equity in STEM Education: The Case of an Egyptian Girls’ School. In K. G. Fomunyam: Theorizing STEM Education in the 21st Century. Intech Open. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.87170

This paper will describe and reflect on the methodology, processes and practices of the workshops and activities the research team will undertake with students, academics, professional staff and leaders based in the Faculty of Sciences and the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bath. The workshop materials will draw upon 50 qualitative interviews and 200 surveys exploring students, academics, professional staff, and leaders' experiences and perceptions of current equity practices in the university and their faculty. The workshop will aim to develop new understandings of equity practices that are framed in ways that feel appropriate to colleagues and students in STEM subjects and can be used to develop more contextually appropriate practices and processes. The workshop materials, content, and pedagogical approaches will be collaboratively developed by the research team with representative members of these faculties. We do not anticipate this task will be easy when it is carried out in April 2024. Our preliminary analysis of the data so far indicates that there are a wide variety of views and likely to be conflicting views and forms of intersectional inequalities that need to be considered and included. Hence, in doing this work we will employ a range of ideas and practices around co-creating knowledge, decolonising knowledge; and we will use feminist and other critical pedagogies, and models of interdisciplinary research to generate spaces for different voices and inputs into the process. For example Bryson;s (2003) Webb's (2004) principles for feminist pedagogy and generating inclusive spaces. Also, Fam et al's (2018) ideas about collaborative and transdisciplinary learning and Danermark's (2019) model for interdisciplinary knowledge generation.

Bryson, Bj. (2003) The Teaching and Learning Experience: Deconstructing and Creating Space Using a Feminist Pedagogy, Race, gender & class. 10.2 (2003): 131-146.. Danermark, Berth. (2019) Applied Interdisciplinary Research: A Critical Realist Perspective. Journal of Critical Realism 18.4 (2019): 368-382. Fam, Dena., Linda. Neuhauser, and Paul. Gibbs (2018). Transdisciplinary Theory, Practice and Education: The Art of Collaborative Research and Collective Learning. 1st ed. 2018. Cham: Springer International Publishing: Imprint: Springer, 2018. Print. Webb, Lynne M. (2004) Feminist Pedagogy in the Teaching of Research Methods International Journal of Social Research Methodology 7.5: 415-429.

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This upcoming study is part of a doctoral project that examines the discourses and discourse variation of Finnish queer, or LGBTQ+, teachers in the workplace. Teachers are professionals in a highly visible and socially relevant occupation who are at the same time part of a population that has historically been stigmatized and whose experiences have been marginalized. Their experiences mirror those of all queer people in our society, but their position as teachers provides a platform of conducting research through the societally significant and relevant context of schools.

The current study constitutes an investigation into the various ways of Finnish queer teachers disclosing or revealing their non-heterosexuality or non-normative gender in their work environment. With this study, I aim to examine how “coming out” as queer occurs at the workplace in the Finnish teacher context, and to explore how the discursive choices teachers make when they discuss and construct their coming out experiences connect to heteronormativity and to the prerequisites of being a teacher. This study also seeks answers to questions such as: how do queer teachers talk about coming out in the workplace and what kind of attitudes and opinions they have on the matter? What elements and factors are shaping the ways in which coming out is performed by queer teachers in the workplace? How do queer teachers disclose or reveal their queerness in different situations and contexts in the workplace? The data for the current study is going to be group interview data, produced in three separate group interviews, with 15 participants in groups consisting of 3-5 teachers. Group interviews are utilized for this study due to the sensitive nature of the topic being researched within a sensitive research population; group setting can reduce the power of the researcher and provide a safe context that allows for higher level of consensus and elaboration on mutual issues (Barbour & Kitzinger 1999).

The premise for this study is that there exists a hegemonic discourse of heteronormativity in society that is reproduced and enforced in schools (e.g., Lehtonen 2021; Ferfolja & Hopkins 2013) which maintains power relations that come into play in discourses related to queer teachers’ language use. The basis of this study also relies on sociolinguistic research, which claims that language use and language use variation can construct social and ideological meanings and establish discourses, identities and speech communities. In reference to many other languages that have been analyzed in terms of gender, sexuality and the teacher context, Finnish language characteristics (e.g., gender neutral third person pronoun) bring an interesting aspect to this research setting. Revealing and disclosing information about non-normative sexuality or gender is a complex and challenging interactional speech act with multiple forces and factors influencing the way it is uttered or performed, especially when considering the intentions behind what the speaker is hoping to achieve (Chirrey 2003). By “coming out”, queer people challenge the existing heteronormative power structures and simultaneously communicate their position as the other in the community, and their resistance to the dominant norms (Llewellyn & Reynolds 2021). Earlier research about coming out in the teacher context points out to a high level of ambivalence and conflict surrounding the individual teacher in their decision-making process about disclosing their sexuality (Connell 2015; Gray 2013; Rasmussen 2004). For example, the norms around teacher professionality and queer visibility are often experienced as contradictory and complex (e.g., Ferfolja & Hopkins 2013; Neary 2013). The various factors behind coming out in educational context may be connected to issues and questions surrounding teacher norms or moral questions.

Schools are predominantly and actively heteronormative spaces, within this a teacher is an awkward combination of asexual, heterosexuality (Llewellyn, 2022, 2023). As such, historically LGB teachers have struggled with their identity formation particularly around the discordance of private and professional identities (Connell 2015; Neary 2013). However, with recent movements towards LGBT inclusion in aspects of English education policy and practice, recent research has suggested that there are more spaces for LGB teachers, to inhabit an LGB identity within their schools (Llewellyn, 2022, 2023; Brett 2024), although this position is not equally available across schools.

Within this body of research, there is a growing awareness of differences within the LGBT categories (for example Brett, 2024), and some awareness of intersectional identities, however, there is very little acknowledgement of a teachers’ social class and how this may impact decision-making processes, knowledge formation, and identity negotiation. This is important, as teaching in the UK is largely a middle-class profession, both in terms of who constitutes the profession and how the profession is produced. This is prominent within official discourses, where recent governments have sought to ‘make up the middle classes’ with various strategies including, the promotion of a “standard English” (Cushing, 2021). These approaches are in accordance with previous governments, such as New Labour (1997-2008) who worked to re-socialize working-class parents within narratives of middle-class norms (Gewirtz, 2000). However, crucially these strategies are constructed through the appearance of “classlessness” (Reay, 1998), or around ‘appropriate’ aspirations of levelling up. As such, there is largely an invisibility to a teacher’s social class, within schools, educational policy and within public rhetoric.

Arguably, this is a vital discussion at this current time, as some level of equality, diversity and inclusion is expected in English schools. Although, how this is enacted will take on specific forms and practices in each location. Therefore, the impact on ‘working class’ LGBT teachers is potentially precarious.These discussions are also relevant more globally as LGBT people are in a precarious position, where increased rights and laws, sit alongside a rise in populism and ‘anti-woke’ rhetoric.

Specifically, schools are institutions designed to encourage conformity and normalisation (Walshaw 2007). In addition, the English education systems operates under the lens of neoliberalism, hence there is an expectation of the autonomous entrepreneurial individual (Rose, 1999). As such, LGBT inclusion is often actioned by individuals, rather than an organised school response (Llewellyn, 2023).

In relation to sexuality, whilst there is a movement towards treating all people as human beings, neoliberalism’s take on sexuality has been described by Duggan (2003) as “homonormative” and Puar (2017) as “homonational”, where there is a contracted version of liberation for LGBT people. As such, arguably state power encourages a very specific appropriate kind of sexuality, that is presented as a normal, family and a loving relationship. In a societal sense, this can be seen through the premise of equal rights, or the framing of equal love.

Moreover, power operates within locations (Yuval-Davis, 2006), and is a strategy within systems. Where there is power there is also resistance, and individuals have a constrained agency. However, resistance – such as creating a LGB teacher identity within a heteronormative space - does not eradicate norms, but instead creates new sets of norms (Jakobsen, 1998). Furthermore, structures facilitate a ‘network of norms’ (Jakobsen, 1998), which constitutes normativities.

If schools, on the whole, are no longer overtly homophobic, and some levels of LGBT inclusion are supported, the question becomes what are the new normativities that are created, with regards to LGBT, EDI and the professional LGB teacher? And are these supportive of everyone?

Teaching is by nature an emotional-burden endeavor for which emotion regulation is of crucial importance for teachers' effective teaching and well-being. Teachers' burnout and turnover rate have been an global issue. The present study aims to explore whether teacher gender impacts how they regulate emotions and related outcomes with the intersect impact from teaching grade level and culture/region norms.

Two research questions were addressed:

1. What are the relationships between teacher gender, their emotion regulation strategies, teaching efficacy and well-being?

2. Are the relationships between teachers’ emotion regulation strategies and related outcomes moderated by (1) teaching grade level, or (2) culture/region?

By answering these questions, three related emotion regulation theories were utilized to form the key conceptual skeleton of this study:

(1) Gross's process model of emotion regulation refers to that emotions are generated and regulated through situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change/reappraisal, and response modulation processes.

(2) Emotional labor theory: three emotional labor strategies have been discussed widely, namely, deep acting, surface acting and expression of naturally felt emotions.

(3) Grandey proposed that emotional labor as emotion regulation by focusing on two broad strategies: antecedent- and response-focused strategies.

Baesd on that, this study classified teachers' emotion regulation into antecedent-focused strategy (e.g., deep acting and reappraisal) and response-focused strategy (e.g., surface acting and suppression). The related outcomes included teaching efficacy and well-being (e.g., job satisfaction and burn out).

Globally, female participation in academia has witnessed a great increase. At both European and country level, women published a similar number of publications at early stages of their career as male counterparts between 2015 and 2019 (She Figures 2021,2021). Yet, evidence across countries reveals that women are still underrepresented in academic leadership positions, and the phenomenon of “pipeline leakage” (Sonnert&Holton,1996) exists in the career development of female researchers.

One way to better increase representation of women in both tenured and administrative academic positions is to focus on the career development pattern of female scientists who have established themselves in positions of academic leadership. By exploring their career development regularity, it will provide reference for the relevant institutions to develop policies that better meet the career development needs of female academics and support their career development.

Guided by Bernardi’s conceptualization of the life course cube (2019), the purpose of this mixed study is to trace the career development experiences of female academicians in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, aiming to understand how they have pursued their professional careers. Specifically, this study will attempt to answer the following research questions: What are the common factors that contribute to the career development of Chinese female academicians?

The theory of the life course cube stems from the paradigm of life course research. Elder defined the life course as "the life path manifested through age differentiation over the course of a person's life"(Elder,1994), and it focuses on the development and changes of individuals throughout their entire life course, which aligns with the analysis of the career development experiences of female academicians in this study, especially the opportunities and challenges they face at different stages of their career development.

Particularly, the life course cube identifies a system of complex interdependencies. At the most basic level are three ‘first-order" interdependencies related to time, domains, and levels. These represent the core axes of the cube: (1) The time-related interdependence of the life course between the history of a life course, current life circumstances, and the future life course. (2) The interdependence between life domains, meaning that individuals’ goals, resources, and behaviors in one domain (such as work, family, education, or leisure) are interrelated with other domains. (3) The multilevel interdependence of the life course, which connects individual action and behavior over the life course (‘individual-action levels’) with the life courses of other people, social networks, and the ‘external’ societal opportunity structure (‘supra-individual levels’) and the ‘internal’ dispositions and psycho-physiological functioning (‘inner-individual levels’) (Bernardi et al.,2019).

Building on life course theory and by reviewing existing research on factors related to the career development of female researchers, this study explores the factors and their dynamic relationships that contribute to the career advancement of Chinese female academicians at three levels: supra-individual levels, individual action level, and inner-individual levels. (1) Supra-individual levels variables include the female researchers' social relationship (family relationship, mentorship relationship and collaborative relationship), organizational culture (gender equality policies, compensation systems and flexible arrangements, etc.), and the broader socio-cultural context (economic conditions, political environment and cultural customs, etc.). (2) Individual-action levels variables include educational background (institutions), mobility experiences (domestic and international mobility) and research ability (publications and patents). (3) Inner-individual levels factors refer to personal traits, including talent, interests, and willpower, etc.

The contribution follows on from two problem perspectives mentioned centrally in the Network 33 call, namely “genders and their intersections” and the role of “biases in the form, content, access and opportunities of education”. The approach is historiographical, focusing on the phase in which educational science was established as a university discipline at the beginning of the 20th century in Germany. The focus is on the question of what findings existed at that time - even beyond educational science - regarding the meaning of sex and gender, but also other categories of difference, and what influence these have had on educational theory formation, but also on disciplinary practices of inclusion and exclusion. The work of the educational scientist and sociologist Mathilde Vaerting (1884-1977) and its (contemporary) (non-)reception will be discussed as an example.

Appointed to the University of Jena in 1923, Mathilde Vaerting was the first female professor of educational science at a German university. Her career was marked by marginalization and disavowal and ended when the National Socialists came to power. Even after the Second World War, she was unable to find a place in academia (Kraul 1999, 1987; Wobbe 1994, 1991). Her example, i.e. the openly aggressive and sometimes sexist hostility that permeated objective scientific criticism in the context of her (failed) habilitation project and as a professor in Jena (Plate 1930), represent the vehemence of the defense. The extent to which her biography and career confirmed her theory on sex and power is an irony of fate. This is one of the reasons why her name is hardly known in educational science today.

However, there is the assumption (which needs to be examined further) that her repression also has something to do with her scientific theses (Berner/Hofbauer 1923). Her focus was on analyzes of power and domination as well as the resulting conditions of oppression. In this context, at the beginning of the 1920s she had already pointed out in a paradigmatic way the importance of gender (later also of origin, race, etc.) as factor(s) in processes of inclusion and exclusion, findings that she judged to bo particularly relevant to the fields of educational science and praxis and scientific research in general (Berner 2024a forthcoming). Her social constructivist approach, with which she fundamentally questioned traditional assumptions and explanatory models of sex differences, can be viewed as quite unique in the academic context of her time, which was dominated by the so called “Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik”. In particular, the methodological consequences that she drew from this with regard to empirical psychological and educational research can be read as an attack against established educational research and theory development (ibid.).

Vaerting's criticism was not only directed at pedagogy, but also at the new empirical-differential psychology and the developments in aptitude testing (Vaerting 1923, 1931). She accused them of reproducing the preconceptions concerning gender differences (e.g. with regard to intellectual strengths and weaknesses, personality traits, preferences and inclinations). She also criticized contemporary (child) psychology of suggesting the inferiority of the young generations compared to the old (Vaerting 1928). This would result in oppression of the adolescents by the adults, which manifests itself in extensive incapacitation and the denial of property and participation rights. Analogous to the gender bias in sex psychology, Vaerting speaks of a “major source of error” in previous youth psychology, because it believes it can "identify peculiarities that are specific to adolescence as such. But this is a mistake. [...] The psychology of youth today is not the psychology of youth as such, but the psychology of youth as it is characteristic of its current power situation" (Vaerting, 1929, p. 240).

Schools exert pressure to conform with heterosexual and heteronormative understandings of gender by reinforcing and sustaining categories of gender identity that marginalise students who do not fit into the heterosexual matrix (Allard, 2004; Cushman, 2012; Kjaran, 2017; Pascoe, 2007; Sveinbjörnsdóttir et al., 2010; Woolley, 2017). Schools as regulative institutions thus contribute to the construction of gender and sexuality, often limiting the practices and performances of gender and/or sexuality available to subjects. By performing gender and/or sexuality outside of the intelligible norms, subjects risk becoming unintelligible to the codes of their social system, which then can reduce their expectations of living a liveable life (Butler, 2004). As Butler (1990) has argued, intelligibility is connected to the concept of liveability, which is assigned to those who adopt dominant gender norms and pursue life within the frame of the heterosexual matrix. Excluding the possibility of different sexualities and gender performativities and upholding heteronormative institutional values can lay the foundation for homophobic attitudes and marginalises students who do not align with the gender script.

Schools as highly gendered institutions where the ideology of gender as a binary category is strong and persistent (Bragg et al. 2018), reflect and recreate the gender binary in societies (Jones et al., 2020). Most schools practice binary gender segregation reflected in official documents, gendered school uniforms, and gender-segregated facilities such as toilets and changing rooms (Davies et al., 2019). Students are divided into gendered study groups, spaces are gender divided and various school practices (Kjaran, 2017; Mayeza, 2015; Menzies & Santoro, 2017; Paechter 2007). Non-binary students tend to become invisible beings as they are non-existent in the binary institutions. At the same time, they are visible due to their un-categorisability (Paechter et al., 2021). The binary understanding of gender has been persistent but is being resisted with reference to multiple gender performativities, sexual orientations, gender expressions, and more.

While Nordic countries have been recognized as progressive in promoting legislation and welfare to improve LGBTQI+ rights, there has been some regression with increasing hate speech, prejudice and violence in the school environment.

In Iceland increased discussion about the wellbeing of LGBTQI+ students followed findings of a national survey conducted among teenagers, based on GLSEN national school climate survey. Findings suggested that queer youth’s well-being was significantly worse than their non-queer peers (Samtökin 78, 2020). In the spring of 2022, news about trans and non-binary teenagers being cruelly bullied appeared on national television. The teenagers spoke to reporters about their insecurities and how difficult it is to be different in the compulsory school environment (Ragnarsdóttir, 2022). The survey and the experience of teenagers repeatedly under attacks surely calls for schools to be responsible for questioning and troubling the understanding of gender as binary and interfering in prejudice discourses when they appear in schools. Research has shown that a gender binary environment at school results in anxiety among non-binary students, affecting their school attendance and quality of life (Jones et al., 2019). Students should be aided in standing against or questioning the understanding of gender as binary in school regimes, giving them discursive space and insurance to contribute to and transform their environments for the better for all students. In addition, compulsory schools should provide students with gender and sexuality education and thus comply with their duties according to the Icelandic Gender Equality Act.

In this paper I ask how teachers experience their school environment regarding the safety and well-being of LGBTQI+ students and how the school environment, school practices and social relations can promote or add to their well-ness and safety.

Children in primary schools in Ireland are often placed in within-class ‘ability’ groups (Sloan et al., 2021), despite well-documented issues with this as a pedagogical approach (Francis et al., 2016). Recent studies have considered the longitudinal impact of ability grouping in UK samples at both primary (e.g., Boliver & Capsada-Munsech, 2021; Papachristou et al., 2022) and secondary levels (e.g., Francis et al., 2020; Hodgen et al., 2023), however similar evidence within the Irish context is lacking. Research with Irish primary school children through in-depth qualitative case studies has documented how ability grouping shaped children’s interactions and peer networks (McGillicuddy, 2021), with children in high ability groups attaining a higher social status. Longitudinal studies within the UK have shown that children placed in lower ability groups at age 7 years are less likely than their peers in high ability groups to enjoy maths at age 7 or 11 years, after controlling for maths ability at age 7, sex and social class (Bolvier & Capsada-Munsech, 2021). Other longitudinal studies, again, set within the UK context, have suggested a causal link between ability grouping and academic self-concept (Campbell, 2021) and emotional and behavioural problems (Papachristou et al., 2022), factors which are also associated with poorer academic outcomes. Taken together, these findings suggests that ability grouping practices may perpetuate social inequalities in education through an impact on a range of outcomes associated with school success. Building on the existing research conducted primarily outside of the Irish context, the current analysis seeks to explore, for the first time, longitudinal associations between ability grouping in reading and maths in an Irish primary school sample. Further, given the mixed empirical findings of evidence of gender differences in misallocation to ability groups (Muijs & Dunne, 2010; Connolly et al., 2019) and gender differences in relation to school engagement, academic self-concept and subject liking, we explored whether gender as a potential moderator in relationships between ability grouping and outcomes.

Networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

This research focuses on gender inequities in language achievement in the field of school effectiveness and improvement. The main objective of this research is to analyze school effectiveness with a gender perspective in a context of bilingual education in order to identify if the highly effective middle schools manage to reduce the gender gap in both official languages. At the same time, the most equitable middle schools are examined based on the discourse of the professionals who work in these schools.

The research questions that the research project aims to address are the following: Is school effectiveness linked to gender equity? Are the effective middle schools more equitable than non-effective schools in terms of gender? Do highly effective schools manage to reduce the gender gap in both languages?

The Basque Autonomous Community (B.A.C.) is located in Spain. It has been a bilingual community since 1982 (Law 10/1982) with two official languages, Spanish and the Basque, in a diglossia situation; 14.13% of the population speak Basque at home, and 10.22% use both Euskara and Spanish at home (Eustat, 2016). The education system is bilingual with three linguistic teaching models (Decree 138/1983) in which 77.88% of the Basque students are enrolled in model D, which is taught entirely in Basque with Spanish as a subject (Basque Government, 2019a). However, only 18.6% of the secondary students acquire advanced knowledge, 65.9% acquire intermediate knowledge and 15.5% the initial one (ISEI-IVEI, 2023), far from what the law requires, that is, B2 level at the end of secondary schools.

In recent years, inequalities in educational performance, based on the sex of the student, continue to be the subject of interest in educational research, trying to identify to what extent schools affect the educational performance of girls and boys (Van Hek et al., 2016). Most of the research on school effectiveness and improvement has measured school effectiveness based on the average results of all students (Nachbauer & Kyriakides, 2020). However, it is essential to emphasize the need to address the dimension of equity, studying the differential effects on the effectiveness of schools according to ethnicity, gender, economic level, and social class (Gray et al., 2004; Kyriakides et al ., 2019). The existing gender studies at school indicate some inconsistencies. Some found that there are no differential effects in schools concerning gender (Kyriakides et al., 2019; Strand, 2016), so effective schools managed to be effective for boys and girls. Others found a significant but modest variation in the gender effect across schools (Thomas et al., 1997).

A review of international studies that analyze differences between boys and girls in linguistic competence shows that, in general, girls obtain better results than boys, for example, in terms of reading competence (Reilly et al., 2019; VanHek et al., 2018). Kollmayer et al. (2018) and Retelsdorf et al. (2015) found that teacher gender stereotypes related to reading can benefit girls and negatively affect boys' reading competence perception.

However, few studies have focused on the analysis of the gender gap in minority language proficiency (Olmedo et al. 2020) and less from the perspective of school effectiveness and improvement (Intxausti et al. 2023). Studies in the B.A.C. indicate that the linguistic competence of Basque obtained by girls in Elementary Education is higher than that of boys (Gobierno Vasco et al., 2019) as well as with respect to motivation and attitude (Artola et al., 2017).

Given the specific bilingual situation of the B.A.C., this study fills an existing gap in terms of the effectiveness of Middle schools related to the results obtained in linguistic competence and its intersection with issues of gender disparity.

This paper uses new administrative records to assess the role of general ability in explaining gender gaps in teacher-assigned grades across ten “university-preferred” STEM and non-STEM subject areas. The evidence comes from England, where A-level students apply to university using teacher predictions rather than exam results. We find that, conditional on exam grades, boys receive less favourable predictions from their teachers. However, this differential grading is substantially reduced when accounting for gender differences in general ability. In STEM, the gap is rather reversed, with a grade penalty identified against girls with similar general ability and achieved grades at A-level. Our findings provide evidence that teachers are not neutral to students’ attributes captured in our measure of general ability, underscoring the serious implications of relying on predicted grades for university applications instead of exam results.

Research documents significant differences in the representation of women in various STEM fields (Cheryan, Ziegler, Montoya & Jiang, 2017; Faber et al. 2020). Women are well-represented in fields such as medicine and biology, while extraordinarily few women pursue mathematics and technology-intensive programs, such as computer science and engineering programs (Bøe, Henriksen, Lyons & Schreiner, 2011; Faber et al., 2020; McNally, 2020).

Research indicates that teachers often rely on stereotypes in assessing students, particularly in STEM. Notably, pervasive stereotypes perpetuate the notion that girls lack interest in mathematics, while boys excel in science and technology (Riegle-Crumb & Humphries, 2012; Steffens & Jelenec, 2011). The far-reaching consequences of such stereotypes are evident in teachers' expectations (Muntoni & Retelsdorf, 2018), interactions with students (Lavy, 2008), and students' achievements, confidence, and educational choices (Carlana, 2019; Retelsdorf, Schwarts and Asbrock, 2015).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pre-service teachers' gender stereotypical beliefs and whether these beliefs result in bias in the recommendation of technological study tracks for elementary school students. The study also explores the causal mechanisms behind gender stereotypes and biases, considering the influence of teachers' background characteristics.

We focus on pre-service teachers rather than practicing teachers for three reasons. Firstly, pre-service teachers are more accessible than experienced educators, providing an opportunity to ensure higher data quality, such as achieving a higher response rate. Secondly, research indicates that pre-service teachers also hold stereotypical beliefs about students, and these beliefs exist even before they begin on their teaching careers (Holder & Kessels, 2017). Thirdly, pre-service teachers serve as crucial norm-setters for new generations of children and adolescents. Examining gender stereotypes among pre-service teachers creates an opportunity to integrate the knowledge generated by the project into elements of teacher education.

“Less of everything else, more of what sex is!”, Hilda stated frankly in an interview discussing their past sexuality education unit. Although the interview also revealed students to find teaching interesting, something was clearly missing. They expected more and different from what they had experienced in school sexuality education. This study is part of a four year long research project exploring Swedish school-based sexuality education in five secondary schools. In this paper we focus on teaching in one of the participating schools where teachers decided to address the 15 year old students’ questions about what sex might be. The aim of the study is to explore how the teaching of sex might be enacted in Swedish secondary sexuality education.

Today, emphasis is placed in various documents about sexuality education, on the need to balance between risk and healthy perspectives (SKOLFS 2021:9, The Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2018). Knowledge about condom use and dental dam can lead to a healthy perspective is perhaps given, but if a healthy perspective only becomes an unspoken possibility, the area can instead remain in the risk perspective about possible diseases. The Swedish Schools Inspectorates survey (2018) shows that schools tend to leave out the healthy perspective in sexuality education. Research pinpoints the need of sexuality education that addresses also subject areas such as physical pleasure and lust (McGreeney & Kehily 2016; Helbekkmo et al 2021) and sensuality (Allen 2020). Louisa Allen (2020) claims that instead of what we call the healthy perspective, sexuality education is characterised by a mechanical and instrumental view of the content, with a focus on risks. The tone in the media and partly also in curriculum is that if schools cannot provide alternatives, students’ source to learn how to have sex will be with the help of pornography online, which is regarded as a dangerous way. Accordingly, the risk perspective is once again overwhelming. Meanwhile there is a pronounced demand in Sweden to involve students’ views in teaching (Swedish National Agency for Education 2022). International research has also concluded that young people’s realities and challenges need to be met in sexuality education (Cense 2018). Nevertheless, Katheleen Quinlivan (2018) who has worked a long time in focus groups with students means that the possibility of sex education to become otherwise is pedagogically challenging. Teaching at schools is filled with expectations.

According to Sharon Todd (2016) school is enmeshed in the language of learning. She means that learning is a concept connected to “efficiency, behaviour and management”, insinuating that things we are to learn are already defined and with a specific purpose (2016 p. 621). Todd (2016, p. 622) further argues for a shift towards seeing education as engagement with uncertainty rather than “as a vehicle for skills management and training” in giving answers defined elsewhere than in educational situations. In Todd’s (2016, p. 623) account uncertainty is seen “as a valuable feature” for students’ unpredictable experiences of becoming, and not only becoming in the flesh but also in the unknown becoming of the future. Hence, learning is not about acquiring particular skills, but rather “a response to uncertainty is to face uncertainty meaningfully”.

Sexuality education is known by different names, including healthy lifestyle education, family life education, and relationship education. In the Republic of Armenia, the "Healthy Lifestyle" (HL) program is the only curricular program at public schools that covers reproductive health and gender-related topics.

This paper critically investigates how classroom participants in Armenia discuss gender-related topics during sexuality education lessons, and how this knowledge is constructed. As the socio-cultural context with regard to gender (i.e., societal and familial gender roles) common to the mainstream population in Armenia is in conflict with the definition of gender-related concepts such as gender equality portrayed in the HL curriculum, the focus is on the construction of gendered knowledge considering this incongruity.

Despite Armenia’s progressive stance on gender equality laws, evidenced by the enactment of the law on Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in 2013 and the development of gender mainstreaming frameworks for specific periods to address gender equality goals, the country’s deeply rooted patriarchal political system poses stark contrasts. Different studies and international reports highlight the persistent challenges of gender inequality and gender-based violence within the country (Khachatryan et al. 2015; Ziemer 2020).

Among a few sex education programs piloted in Armenian schools, the HL program has been distinguished with a nationwide mandatory status since 2008. As of 2023, it is taught to pupils from the 8th to 11th grade, covering topics such as reproductive health, family formation, gender inequality, unintended pregnancy, and gender-based violence. Apart from a few reports, the literature on the examination of the implementation of the HL program, particularly the pedagogical challenges and curricular topics has largely been neglected by academic analysis. This work addresses the academic gap by exploring how this gender-related knowledge is constructed. In doing so, it aims to offer insights into potential improvements for gender-related sexuality education in Armenia and beyond.

Gender is not merely a social institution; it is, along with categories such as race, ethnicity, and class, a central aspect of daily social interactions and power relations (Lorber, 1994). For instance, masculinities and femininities are not static attributes but vary from place to place and are continuously constructed and reconstructed through interactions (West and Zimmerman, 1987; Connell, 1991). This work’s conceptualization of gender-related terminology relies on the sociological categorization of ’sex,’ ’sex category,’ and ’gender’ as applied by West and Zimmerman in “Doing Gender” (1987). Doing gender is one explanation of how people construct and do gender. It is rooted in ethnomethodology and social constructionist traditions and is central to understanding the nuances of gender construction.

Gender, as a part of the social order and division, permeates all societal institutions and influences the construction of knowledge. Given that schools are identified as the primary setting for imparting sexual health information (Seiler-Ramadas et al., 2020), it becomes essential for pedagogues to receive adequate training to become aware of gender issues and to apply this knowledge in their teaching practices. However, teachers worldwide have reported receiving inadequate training for delivering sexuality education effectively (Eisenberg et al., 2010).

To answer the main research questions posed in the study of what knowledge is produced in the classroom and how is the knowledge of gender constructed in the classroom a qualitative study was conducted, described in more detail in the next section on methodology.

The present paper aims to explore the potential benefits of implementing feminist pedagogy in a refugee education setting in Greece through a feminist, intersectional approach. More specifically, it seeks to explore how feminist pedagogy can be of use in a forced migration education context, in which trauma is often a major concern, as students have usually experienced or are continuing to experience traumatic situations due to displacement. I argue that feminist pedagogy, a liberatory pedagogy grounded in feminist thought and theory (Bostow et al., 2015; Crabtree et al., 2009; Weiler, 1991), aligns with many of the aims of refugee education and education in times of crises, such as that of helping teachers deal with trauma in the classroom, and of assisting students to develop resilience and overcome trauma.

The presentation draws on the author’s doctoral study, which examined the obstacles and opportunities of implementing a feminist pedagogy approach in the refugee education context, as well as its reception by teachers and students. The study focuses on the Greek border-island of Leros, where data collection took place at a school for children of refugee background.

The research project arose from the need to explore a more culturally and linguistically sensitive pedagogy for teaching students of refugee background, one which would take into account the vital factors of gender, ethnicity, religion, and their intersection in the classroom. The main over-arching question which I sought out to investigate was the following: Is the ground ready for a feminist pedagogy approach in refugee education in the Greek context? Drawing from this, three subsidiary questions arose:

• Firstly, what are the obstacles in implementing feminist pedagogy in the Greek refugee education context?
• Secondly, what are the opportunities for such an approach?
• And thirdly, how do teachers and students perceive of these obstacles and opportunities?

This presentation will focus on one of the opportunities for feminist pedagogy to be of benefit in a refugee education setting, that of its potential to help teachers and students deal with trauma and develop resilience. I suggest that feminist pedagogy’s attentiveness to the emotions and lived experiences of students (Boler, 1999; Bostow et al., 2015; Fisher, 1987; Hooks, 2003; Paechter, 1998), its focus on teaching as a practice of love, care, and connection (Hooks, 2003; McArthur & Lane, 2019; Morley, 1998), as well as its deconstruction of traditional power dynamics in the classroom (Morley, 1998), are all factors which complement the aim of refugee education to help students heal from trauma, foster resilience, and generate hope.

According to the Gender Equality Index (2023), European countries will increase the demand for individuals educated in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Despite progress in gender equality, women are still underrepresented in this field across Europe, including Croatia. The gender gap is particularly apparent in the area of information and communication technology education at university level, where there are almost four times more male than female graduates (Eurostat, 2023). In Croatia, 29 % female students and 71% male students study in Engineering field (Croatian Bureau of Statistics, 2023). Since the study fields differ in terms of prestige and economic rewards, this gender differentiation in higher education limits women's opportunities in the labour markets and contributes to the reproduction of gender inequalities. The increased demand for STEM-educated individuals led to the need of encouraging girls to pursue a career and education in this field. This is a problem which has been addressed by policy makers and explored by researchers. Studies point out that there are many factors relevant for explaining why girls and boys differ in their choices of secondary schools and university study fields. They range from studies that explore intersectional structural, cultural and gender effects on girls' and boys' secondary school choices and achievements, gendered support of families, and the institutional structure of secondary and higher education (Reimer and Polack, 2010; Barone, 2011; Reay, 1998). For our research it is important to mention psychological studies that point to motivational variables as significant factors that influence the gendered educational choices and students’ experiences. Of particular importance are studies based on Eccles at al.'s expectancy-value theory (1983; 2020), which emphasizes the effects of motivation situated in the social and cultural context of students, enabling thus a more comprehensive explanation of why girls less likely than boys choose STEM subjects and fields. Croatian studies also confirm gender divide by field of study at both secondary and higher education levels (Baranović, 2011; Jugović, 2015; Košutić et al., 2015). Recent studies focused on exploring the effects of the sociocultural and economic context complemented by Eccles at al.'s expectancy-value theory have highlighted the relevance of examining the role of motivation for the educational choices and achievements of girls in a gender atypical field of study, such as STEM education. (Jugović, 2015; Jugović and Baranović, 2023). Drawing on Eccles at al.'s situated expectancy-value theory (2020), this paper aims at exploring gender differences in study experiences and in motivation of students to study at the faculty in the STEM field. Besides students’ study motivation, we analysed the burnout of the students in relation to students’ gender. Burnout is becoming a prominent topic in the academic context, with serious consequences for students’ mental health and academic achievement (e.g. Madigan & Curran, 2021; Naderi et al., 2021). To understand student burnout symptoms, gender is a key factor, with female students feeling more exhausted than their male peers (Fiorilli et al., 2022). However, there is a scarce evidence on understanding the factors explaining gender differences in burnout experience, especially from motivational perspective. In the framework of job demands and resources theory (Bakker et al., 2023), intrinsic motivation is recognized as a protective factor against burnout (Sabagh et al., 2018). Taking together theoretical framework of situated expectancy value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020) and job demands and resources theory (Bakker et al., 2023), we had two objectives in the study. The first objective was to examine gender differences in different aspects of student motivation for studying in the traditionally male study field. The second objective was to test whether intrinsic motivation for studying explains gender differences in experiencing exhaustion.

The transformative challenges that European societies face through the ongoing energy and digital transition create a substantial demand for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professionals (Anger et al., 2022). This general shortage is accompanied by a persistent underrepresentation of women in domains like engineering and computer science (Cimpian et al., 2020). Research grounded in the Expectancy Value Theory (Eccles et al., 1983) has repeatedly highlighted the impact of students’ interest and their domain-specific utility value perception (e.g., Ozulku & Kloser, 2023), the latter of which can be catalysed by videos of STEM professionals (e.g., Pietri et al., 2021).

Additionally, Goal Congruity Theory asserts that personal goals must align with the perception of STEM characteristics to develop interest (Diekman et al., 2011). Goal Congruity Theory builds on Bakan’s (1966) distinction between Agency (e.g., dominance and status) and Communion (e.g., caring and cooperation) as fundamental dimensions of human personality. Even if STEM domains are mostly based on communal ideals (e.g., helping society) they are usually linked to and perceived as having agentic characteristics (e.g., working alone). Furthermore, STEM domains are often perceived as preventing the achievement of communal goals, leading people with strong communal goals to lose STEM interest (Diekman et al., 2011). At the same time, research has demonstrated gender differences favouring women compared to men in communal and men in agentic goals (Diekman et al., 2011; Su et al., 2009; Tellhed et al., 2018). Although these results have not been consistently replicated (e.g., Tellhed et al., 2018) it seems plausible that women, develop greater interest in STEM domains when communal (versus agentic) characteristics are emphasised. Analogously, men’s interest should be higher through agentic (versus communal) STEM descriptions.

Several experimental studies investigating the influences of STEM framings on students’ attitudes support these predictions. For example, Neuhaus and Borowski (2018) demonstrated that girls were more interested in a coding course when a framing highlighted communal goals, while boys were more interested when the course framing stressed agentic aspects. Diekman et al. (2011) found that a written collaborative (versus an independent) scenario of a typical workday in STEM resulted in a higher positivity toward science careers among women and those with strong communal goals, while both conditions did not affect men’s attitudes.

In two preregistered studies (Author & Author, 2023a; Author & Author, 2023b) we aimed to examine the effect of image videos and their framings. Guided by the need to differentiate between STEM domains precisely (McGuire, 2022), we selected two different engineering domains. As a seemingly more communal-connoted domain, we chose Biomedical Engineering (Study 1) which develops technologies that promote human health and healing. As a seemingly more agentic-connoted domain, we chose Geodesy (Study 2) which focuses on technologies that can be used to get accurate spatial data about the earth.

Our first goal was to examine the videos’ effects on participants’ interest in the domains and the utility values ascribed to them. Our second goal was to investigate the effect of communal or agentic text framings on interest and utility value. We expected that female students’ interest and utility value would be increased when the domain was described as affording communal (versus agentic or no specific/neutral) characteristics. For male students, we predicted that the agentic (versus a communal or neutral) framing would heighten interest and utility value.

The present paper presents an evaluation study accompanying an innovative means to pique primary school pupils’ interest and familiarity with future technologies. Before describing the project itself, a short digression into the scientific foundation of the project shall be undertaken.

Different explanations have been discussed what the background to differences in STEM interests in boys and girls are. Cheryan and colleagues (2017) have among other factors argued that fewer exposure of girls in younger years towards computers and technology partially explains the frequently observed gender differences in STEM interests. Also van Meter-Adams and colleagues (2014) could show how important contacts with STEM fields are in order to develop interests, and here especially extracurricular activities play a pivotal role (see Behrendt and Franklin, 2014, for a review on the importance of field trips and Stringer et al., 2020, for the effect on STEM identity and motivation). Similarly, Poor and Vasconcelos (2023) recently showed how important field trips can be to pique elementary school pupils’ interest in STEM fields, which in turn is quintessential for the likelihood that they will pursue a STEM career later on (Unfried et al., 2015).

In order to address the problem that elementary school pupils in rural areas are often excluded from STEM related field trips to museums or universities due to the location of their school the missimo project (https://missimo.at/) was conceptualised and brought to life by the Kaiserschild Foundation (https://www.kaiserschild-stiftung.at/) in Austria. The foundation’s mission is the promotion of STEM competences and interests especially in children and young adults with a special focus of increasing girls interest and self-confidence STEAM. The centrepiece of the missimo project is a mobile 2 storey tall truck which encompasses workspaces where primary school pupils can work on six different future technologies (artificial intelligence, bionics, robotics, sensor technology, coding and augmented reality). The missimo truck itself can be booked without additional costs for the school by primary school teachers in rural areas (an elaborate system was created to determine how far schools are distanced from bigger cities where universities, museums or other institutions provide potential access to extracurricular STEM activities). However, as de Witt and Storksdieck (2018) point out, the ‘field trip’ (i.e. visiting the missimo truck) alone is not sufficient for long-term impact. Therefore, the visit is embedded in three online sessions for teachers (one before visiting the truck, two afterwards) where teachers are made acquainted with the technologies and learn how to conduct so-called missions in class with their students and the materials which they receive in the truck and can be taken home by the pupils.

The accompanying evaluation of the missimo project started in February 2024 and will provide a first intermediate evaluation report in summer 2024, during pupils’ and teachers’ summer break. As the truck can be visited by two school classes each day, several hundred pupils and their teachers should have provided data by summer 2024. A central aspect of the evaluation is the question in how far the activities in the truck as well as the materials provided for teachers also enable students and teachers with lower previous STEM interest and self-perceived competences (i.e. often female pupils and teachers) to have a positive STEM experience and, therefore, pique their interest in technology, which will continue to gain importance in the future, not only in Austria but worldwide.

Information communication technologies (ICT) stands out as one of the rapidly developing and highly paid fields. In response to the increasing demand and interest in ICT education, in recent years, Kazakhstan has substantially increased the allocation of educational grants to this sector. This increase is marked by a fourfold rise, from 2469 grants in the 2020-2021 academic year to 10 103 grants in 2022-2023 (Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Kazakhstan, 2023). However, a pronounced gender gap persists in ICT education in Kazakhstan, consistent with a global pattern emphasized by UNESCO in 2017. According to UNESCO (2017), the representation of women in STEM education, particularly in ICT, remains notably low, with only three percent of women and girls worldwide opting for STEM-related fields of study. This trend is reflected in Kazakhstan, where, based on the data from the Bureau of National Statistics for the 2022-2023 academic year, only a quarter of students enrolled in undergraduate IT programs were females (13 298 out of 49 938 students). Women’s participation in STEM education and employment not only faces low levels, but also experiences a notably high attrition rate, often described as a “leaky pipeline”. Notably, in STEM fields, women tend to "leak out" more than men, creating a sex-based filter that unintentionally contributes to the observed gender imbalance (Blickenstaf, 2005). The imbalance results from a cumulative effect of multiple factors rather than a conscious decision to exclude women from the STEM pipeline (Blickenstaf, 2005).

A lot of international research looking at women in IT focuses on female students’ enrollment in computing majors and investigates primary, secondary and high school initiatives and experiences that might influence gender differences in school students' decision-making to pursue a major in IT (Beck et al., 2023; Diethelm et al., 2020; Zdawczyk & Varma, 2023). Interestingly, the further girls are in their school years, the lower self-efficacy in STEM they have (Yu & Jen, 2021). Yet, research addressing the issue of women’s low representation in IT studying the population at higher education started to emerge just recently (Holanda & Silva, 2022). Recent research involving university students in computing majors reported gender differences in distributing roles during group work (Jimenez et al., 2021), the presence of discourses linking masculinity and software development (Tassabehji, 2021) and computer science (Ottemo et al., 2021), and positive influence of informal mentoring and sense of belonging to the program on women’s persistence in computer science majors (Davis, 2022).

The underrepresentation of women in IT fields is deemed crucial due to its impact on the effective use of talent, as well as the importance of diversity in maintaining economic competitiveness. Although experiences during school predict female students’ persistence in computer science majors in college (Weston et al., 2019), a closer investigation of young women’s experiences in IT majors in tertiary education might contribute to providing more insight into understanding how women progress through the pipeline. This study aims to explore undergraduate women’s perspectives on the challenges they face and success strategies they use in pursuing their academic degree in IT, and what they see as important factors to successfully navigate through the pipeline.

The proposed Research questions are:

1. What factors do undergraduate women see as important for their success in IT majors?

2. What are the challenges that undergraduate women in the IT field face when pursuing their academic degrees?

3. What are their success strategies?

This workshop aligns with the research within the Gender and Education Network as part of the European Educational Research Association. More specifically it responds to the call; ‘Tackling crises and generating hope: including transforming intersectional gender relations through education’. The workshop is designed to ignite hope in those whose work considers the intersectionality between gender, disability and education. The aims of the workshop are two-fold; for attendees of the conference to practically explore the suitability for Arts-based methodology for educational research and to consider their positionality in relation to gender and school experience. The methods of this workshop are similar to those that I intend to use during my PhD and builds on those I used during my Masters and Bachelors projects. My research uses Arts-Based methodology to encourage Autistic women and girls to reflect on their school experiences.

My project is an important contribution to the field of educational research as it provides an alternative method of sharing and understanding lived experiences of Autistic women and girls. My PhD research works on the recommendations of my Undergraduate Dissertation (Clarke, 2020). The recommendations suggested that the women and girls with special educational needs, such as Autism, may experience school differently to their peers. This could be a result of masking (Happé, 2019, p.13). Masking is a term used to describe the act of consciously, or unconsciously, suppressing Autistic ways of being to socially conform to expected stereotypes within society (ibid). One of such stereotypes is the presentation of being a woman or girl. My previous research findings suggest that women and girls within the school environment are often described as passive and ‘silent’ (Hartman, 2006, p.82). This is reflected within current literature. My PhD research uses Arts-based methodology to explore the embodied nature of Autistic women and girls lived experiences of school. Similarly, the workshop that I will host at the European Conference of Educational Research will encourage attendees to reflect on their embodied experiences of school. More specifically, they will create Arts-based pieces to reflect their understanding of gender identity and consider how this may have influenced their school experience.

An Arts-Based methods workshop is both apt and pivotal to include within both my PhD research and at the ECER. Within my own research it provides an alternative method of sharing and gathering data from traditional, and often verbal techniques, such as interviews. This is important to consider when working with Autistic people given that additional communication needs are a key component of the Autistic lived experience (van Kessel and colleagues, 2019). By including this practical workshop as part of the ECER, I will introduce attendees to recognise the value of Arts-based methods for educational research. This includes the respectful nature of Arts-based research for appreciating the embodied nature of experiences. This is particularly important when working with disabled or other marginalised groups to explore their experiences of school. For example, women, girls and marginalised genders.

Consequently, this workshop introduces an innovative methodological approach to working with Autistic people and exploring gendered experiences of school. It supports the growing body of research within Europe regarding the need for further contribution from Autistic people, particularly within ‘central and eastern Europe’ (Rolska and their colleagues, 2018). It responds to the Gender and Equality Strategy in an effort to provide academics with creative and alternative skills to ‘prevent and combat gender stereotypes and sexism’ (Council of Europe; Gender and Equality Commission, 2022, p.4) particularly within schools and educational research.

We believe that adopting this vision implies a paradigm shift in education in the era of uncertainty, considering the constantly evolving world in which we find ourselves. Therefore, it represents a transformation towards a more hopeful model for the future.

Feminist Pedagogy Paradigm

Feminist pedagogy proposes a model that integrates society as a whole and everyone within it. It starts with the body, gender identity, and delves into economic, social, and political aspects. It is grounded in principles that view the world as an interaction between living and non-living entities, seeking to harmonize life in all its dimensions from a critical and constructive standpoint. Additionally, it aims to challenge preconceived ideas and view the world differently, placing itself in it in a completely different way to disidentify with what we have identified with.

It opposes the hierarchical structuring of values from greater to lesser importance and from higher to lower value. Values associated with masculinity, such as ambition, power, success, conquest, and utility, are placed above values centered on relationships, experiences, desires, considered feminine. The latter, however, represent an essential source of cohesion for life and a higher degree of sustainability, such as the value of care (Donoso and Velasco, 2013).

Implications of Feminist Pedagogy

Therefore, applying feminist pedagogy implies a change in teaching-learning processes, in conceptual content about gender relations, in knowledge not subject to sexist distortion, in gender-unbiased teaching methodologies, in identifying cultural elements that tend to domination, in didactic strategies for change, and in the deconstruction of gender-crossed identities (Donoso-Vázquez, Montané, and Pessoa de Carvalho, 2014).

Sometimes, mistakenly, this pedagogy can be understood only as a way to address gender-related issues. However, feminist pedagogy has demonstrated its ability to adapt to a constantly evolving reality, and any topic can be analyzed from this perspective by assuming a changing, diverse, heterogeneous, and constantly transforming reality: inclusive education, democracy, citizenship construction, cyber violence, diverse sexualities, pornography, current student pessimism, prevailing demotivation, nihilism, apathy.

Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education

Feminist pedagogy in higher education aims to develop a critical perspective towards discrimination in students, helping them extract the gender-power cultural worldview and adopt an active/participatory position with responsibility for social changes (Gay and Kirkland, 2003; McLeod, 2000). In this sense, the basic principles of this pedagogy challenge normative university pedagogical practice (Wieler 2010), as they value experiential knowledge and reflectivity. The commitment to treating students as active agents and the role of the faculty as learners in the classroom destabilize the power dynamics between faculty and students (Gore 1992). It also seeks to address teaching as a form of activism, with the intention that students not only learn about the world but also desire to transform it for the common good (Jenny Louise-Lawrence, 2014).

In the contemporary landscape, the intersection of crises in the second half of life for women poses a significant obstacle to societal well-being and progress. This presentation aims to explore the transformative potential of education in addressing the multifaceted challenges faced by women during this critical phase, while simultaneously fostering hope and reshaping intersectional gender relations.
The presentation will delve into the unique challenges that women encounter in the second half of life, considering factors such as societal expectations, economic disparities, and health-related concerns. By examining the crisis through an intersectional lens, the discussion will highlight the distinct experiences of women from diverse backgrounds, emphasizing the importance of inclusive and tailored educational interventions.
The presentation aims to illustrate the fundamental presumptions and initial findings from the author's most recent biographical inquiry-based research project. The speech will also highlight the vital connection between education and hope, as well as examine how education can help women deal with the crisis of their latter years. Education has the ability to provide women a feeling of agency, purpose, and hope for the future in addition to providing them with useful knowledge and skills. By embracing education as a tool for empowerment and transformation, we can pave the way towards a future where women navigate the challenges of the second half of life with resilience, hope, and renewed possibilities for societal progress.
Research Questions:
• How do educational interventions contribute to empowering women during the crisis of the second half of life? What kind of interventions are the most fruitful?
• What role does education play in fostering hope and resilience among women facing challenges in the second half of life?
• How can education be tailored to address the intersectionality of gender relations and the unique challenges experienced by women in the second half of life?
• To what extent does transformative learning, as conceptualized by Mezirow, manifest in the educational experiences of women navigating the crisis of the second half of life?
Objectives:
• To evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions in enhancing the empowerment of women during the crisis of the second half of life.
• To explore the mechanisms through which education contributes to fostering hope and resilience among women facing challenges in the second half of life.
• To identify educational strategies that specifically address the intersectionality of gender relations for women in the second half of life.
• To examine the transformative learning experiences of women in the context of education during the crisis of the second half of life, drawing on Mezirow's theory as a guiding framework.
The research will be anchored in Jack Mezirow's Theory of Transformative Learning, emphasizing the cognitive and emotional processes that lead to a shift in perspective and, ultimately, transformative change. The research will encourage participants to critically reflect on their experiences, assumptions, and societal expectations during the crisis of the second half of life. The project is also focused on identifying disorienting dilemmas, challenging participants to reevaluate their beliefs and attitudes toward gender roles and the challenges associated with the second half of life. The study will focus on the empowerment of women through education, emphasizing the role of transformative learning in equipping them with the tools and agency to navigate the challenges of the second half of life. By applying Mezirow's Theory of Transformative Learning, the research aims to deepen our understanding of how education can empower women, foster hope, and transform intersectional gender relations during the crisis of the second half of life.

The three papers in this symposium illustrate the value of Margaret Archer's theoretical contribution for their studies of Higher education in Europe and internationally. We demonstrate how Archer has provided a conceptual framework that can be used to generate critical analyses of intersecting gender inequalities that are specific to the existing social and cultural context and the forms of intersectional inequalities studied. The papers focus on genders and disability in UK Higher Education, genders and sexualities in Croatia and international humanities and social science academics who start work in the UK, with some movement to working in Europe and internationally.

Archer died in 2023. She is renowned in the field of critical realism. She is the author, editor and contributor to numerous books in the field of critical realism (see Centre for Social Ontology, 2024, for a full list) Some of her works were translated into Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Her theoretical concepts are widely used by critical realist scholars but also in education, business and management, health, sociology, psychology, environmental studies and more (e.g. Alderson, 2021; Case, 2012; Thorpe, 2019). She is perhaps best known for her theorization of agency and for the concept of morphogenesis which is what our papers focus on (see especially, Archer, 2007, 2012, 2014). In this, she built upon and was in discussion with the critical realist work of her colleagues (e.g. Bhaskar 1990; Sayer, 2010).

In three empirical and theoretical studies, Archer described how enacting agency was becoming compulsory as each generation’s educational, employment, home, social and cultural contexts were becoming more unique and there was not an appropriate blue-print for life to be passed on from natal contexts (Archer, 2012). She proposed that life projects (people's plans around their central concerns) and the process of decision-making (through reflexivity) were becoming more central to shaping individual lives and generating transforming social and cultural structures. Although as a dialectical process, it is important to note that agency and decision-making take place in the context of current social and cultural conditions, which does shape and facilitate different types of decision-making. Archer categorised different forms of reflexivity that underpin peoples’ decisions regarding when and how to enact different forms of agency (Archer, 2003)). Some forms of reflexivity and decision-making reproduce society and individual lives in similar forms over time (morphostasis) others transform lives compared to previous generations and play a role in changing culture and society (morphogenesis).

In developing her articulation of the concept of morphogenesis, Archer (1982, 2014) distinguished her thinking from other theoreticians concerned with increasing individualisation in societies. She took issue with Antony Giddens (1986) notion of structuration, and, post-structuralist and post-modern conceptualisations of individualisation that were associated with a breaking down of social structure (e.g. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). She also believed that Bourdieu’s (e.g., 1998) notion of habitus was only suitable for describing reproduction (Archer, 2012). Therefore, she developed concepts that could capture how phenomena, culture and social structures emerged from materially diverse and structurally differentiated dialectical processes of mutation and change, that included individuals' agencies.

The intersectional identities and structural processes of transformation and stasis, we find in decision-making in higher education contexts are conceptualised as emergent from the complex set of causal mechanisms and relationships embedded in the different contexts of higher education we have studied.

This paper uses Margaret Archer’s theory of social morphogenesis/morphostasis which explains the temporal interaction between and within structure, culture and agency that brings about the transformation or reproduction of society (Archer, 1995). This theory is utilized to explain the changing function of the social model of disability. The claim is that the social model, which began as an ‘oppositional device’ (Beckett and Campbell, 2015) for the emancipation of disabled people, has been repurposed in higher education as a policy tool for reinforcing a neoliberal system. The “British social model” of disability (Shakespeare 2014, p.1) was developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s by the disability rights movement (DRM). Disability activists from the DRM challenged the cultural emergent properties of the past which saw disability as a medicalised individual problem or “personal tragedy” (Oliver and Barnes, 2012, p.20), and reconceptualised disability as the social construction of an oppressive society. Originating as a causal relationship at the socio-cultural level (Archer, 1995), the social model framework eventually “took on a life of its own” (Oliver, 2013) becoming a component within the Cultural System (Archer, 1995) with causal powers that bolstered the disability rights movement, underpinned national and international disability rights legislation and was a force for change in the UK (Hunt, 2019). Over time, the social model became commonly recognised as having limitations (Shakespeare, 2004; Oliver, 2013) and a wider human rights model of disability was endorsed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2022). Despite its recognised limitations, higher education institutions in the UK currently allege that they are taking a social model approach, both in policy and in their aspirations (Office for Students (OfS), 2020; Williams et al., 2019). However, the research underpinning this paper suggests that the extent that policies based on the social model can be effective in universities is constrained by structural, agential and cultural factors inherent in a marketised higher education sector. This paper uses Margaret Archer’s (1995) theory to highlight and explain the mechanisms over time that led to the appropriation of the social model for neoliberal purposes. It also considers to what extent policies based on the social model, a component of the current cultural system, are interacting with agents to reproduce ongoing constraints on disabled staff and students that are empirically evidenced by wide-ranging, persistent and embedded barriers in higher education.

Archer, M., 1995. Realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press. Beckett, A.E., Campbell, T., 2015. The social model of disability as an oppositional device. Disability and Society, 30(2), pp. 270-284. Hunt, J., 2019. No Limits. The Disabled People’s Movement - A radical history. Great Britain: TBR Imprint. Office for Students, 2020. Effective Practice Advice [Online]. s.l.:Office for Students. Available from: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/promoting-equal-opportunities/effective-practice/disabled-students/advice/ [Accessed 24 January 2024]. Oliver, M., Barnes, C., 2012. The New Politics of Disablement. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Oliver, M., 2013. The social model of disability: thirty years on. Disability and Society, 28(7), pp. 1024-1027. Shakespeare, T., 2004. The Social Model of Disability [Online]. s.l:Academia.edu. Available from: http://www.academia.edu/5144537/The_social_model_of_disability [Accessed 25 January 2024]. Shakespeare, T., 2014. Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited. 2nd ed. Oxford: Routledge. United Nations, 2022. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD)[Online]. New York: United Nations. Available from: https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html [Accessed 25 January 2024]. Williams, M., Pollard, E., Takala, H., Houghton, A., 2019. Review of Support for Disabled Students in Higher Education in England. Report to the Office for Students by the Institute for Employment Studies and Researching Equity, Access and Participation. [Online]. Brighton: IES and REAP. Available from: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/a8152716-870b-47f2-8045-fc30e8e599e5/review-of-support-for-disabled-students-in-higher-education-in-england.pdf [Accessed 25 January 2024].

Following the European strategic documents on gender and sexuality rights (European Commisson, 2023), Croatia has taken measures to improve the rights of LGBTQ+ persons, e.g. the right to a life partnership, adoption of children, etc. (NN 98/19). Despite progress at the legal level, Croatian society is still permeated with traditional and patriarchal values, especially when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, who have been confronted with sterotypes, prejudices and various forms of discrimination (Pikić and Jugović, 2006; Puzić et al. 2020; Štambuk, 2022), even in the area of higher education, which is the subject of our research. The research was conducted in 2019 with 2 focus groups consisting of 11 LGBTQ+ students from two universities (the oldest and largest and the new and small) as part of a large project. In order to understand LGBTQ+ students as active human agents, whose properties and powers emerge from their relations and interactions with their environment, while also maintaining relative agential autonomy from their social context, we draw on Archer's social realist theory (1995, 2003) and its elaboration and application in educational research (Case, 2015; Clegg, 2016; Williams, 2012). The research is focused on the morphogenesis of students agency conditioned by the structural and cultural characteristics of students natal and university contexts. The aim of the research is to interrogate the ways in which universities offer enablements and constraints for the exercising students agency. Students internal conversation or deliberations on which university to enter and how to act within structural and cultural conditions of the university context show that LGBTQ+ students chose liberal and tolerant universities where they feel more accepted and free, with diverse contents and opportunities that allow them a more fulfilling and successful study experience and social life as LGBTQ+ persons, compared to their natal environment. Although the universities offer students more agential opportunities, the conditions for the morphogenesis of LGBTQ+ students' agency are still constrained. The universities need to enlarge their efforts to facilitate and support the development of full individual potential and free expression of gender and sexuality identities of LGBTQ+ students, if higher education is to be a place of equal opportunities for all individuals regardless of their gender and sexuality or any other characteristic that involves inequality.

1. Archer, S. Margaret (1995) Realist social theory: The morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. Archer, S. Margaret (2003) Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3. European Commission (2023) Progress report on the implementation of the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025. Publications Office of the European Union. 4. Jannifer M. Case (2015) A social realist perspective on student learning in higher education: the morphogenesis of agency. Higher Education Research & Development. Volume 34, Issue 5. 5. Law on Life Partnership of Persons of the Same Sex. NN 98/19. 6. Pikić, Aleksandra and Ivana Jugović (2006) Violence against lesbians, gays and bisexuals in Croatia: research report. Zagreb: Biblioteka Kontra, Knjiga 2. 7. Puzić, Saša; N. Baketa; B. Baranović; M. Gregurović; T. Matković; M. Mornar; I. Odak and J. Šabić (2020) On Underrepresented and Vulnerable Groups of Students: Contributions to the Enhancement of the Social Dimension of Higher Education in Croatia. Zagreb: Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. 8. Štambuk, Marina (2022) Let's support inclusive education - building a safe future" Zagreb/Rijeka: The Lesbian Organization Rijeka "LORI" and Rainbow Family. 9. Williams, Kevin (2012) Rethinking ‘Learning’ in Higher Education. Journal of Critical Realism. Volume 11, Issue 3.

We illustrate how Archer's (2003, 2007, 2012) notion of morphogenesis and critical realist ideas around agency, culture and structure, frame a biographical and longitudinal study of academics’ careers. This positions the research as addressing the wider issues of universities’ roles in generating (in)justices across society (Alderson, 2021). We studied 14 academics in social sciences and humanities, through a life-grid methodology and a series of four biographical interviews with each participant, over eleven years. This focus is on the biographical data from seven academics who were born outside the UK and who were from Eastern, Northern and Western Europe, North America and Asia and who had a range of intersecting gender identities. We sought to understand the impact of the 2010 new funding regime for UK undergraduate degrees on universities’ capacity for generating greater justice. In increasingly internationalised and globalised societies, where geographically mobile students are more numerous, it is important to consider the way the system does (not) empower international staff to facilitate a process through which current international injustices, for example, regarding unequal national participation and success in knowledge production, can be addressed (Kim, 2017). Our research is based on the notion that to address such injustices a diverse social science and humanities academic workforce is needed. These disciplines are at the foreground of tackling injustices and inequalities but to address global and national problems diverse staff need to participate in the creation of knowledge, development of teaching and in administrating and leading universities (Ahmed, 2021; Bhopal, 2016; Blackmore, 2022; Dolmage, 2018; Lipton, 2020; McLean et al, 2019; Walker, 2010). In the UK, where this study is set, a growing international workforce provides opportunities for generating justice through their work (e.g. Eslava, 2020 on teaching). However, as we show there are contradictions between the international (and sometimes national) call for greater collaboration across institutions and countries and the institutionally and nationally competitive agendas associated with league tables and these targets associated with the neo-liberal funding models (Kim, 2017). Studying the decisions and actions of academics reveals whether universities are moving towards or away from social justice (Galaz-Fontes et al, 2016). The Archer-informed analysis provides a lens and a language which draws out the process as enacted by the academics and also facilitates articulation of the way that the different levels of the university and society can produce emergent environments, relationships and artefacts that overall hinder efforts towards global justice.

Alderson, Priscilla. (2021) Health, Illness and Neoliberalism: An Example of Critical Realism as a Research Resource. Journal of critical realism 20.5: 542-556. Ahmed, Sara, (2021) Complaint!, Durham, USA: Duke University Press Bhopal, Kalwant. (2016) The Experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic Academics: A Comparative Study of the Unequal Academy. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, Routledge Research in Higher Education. Blackmore, Jill. (2022) Governing Knowledge in the Entrepreneurial University: A Feminist Account of Structural, Cultural and Political Epistemic Injustice. Critical Studies in Education 63.5: 622-639. Print. Eslava, Luis. (2020) The Teaching of (Another) International Law: Critical Realism and the Question of Agency and Structure. Law Teacher 54.3 (2020): 368-385. Galaz-Fontes, J.F., Arimoto, A., Teichler, U., Brennan, J. (2016). Biographies and Careers Throughout Academic Life: Introductory Comments Biographies and Careers Throughout Academic Life: Introductory Comments. In: Biographies and Careers throughout Academic Life. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27493-5_1 Kim, Terri. (2017) Academic Mobility, Transnational Identity Capital, and Stratification under Conditions of Academic Capitalism. Higher education 73.6 (2017): 981-997.. Lipton, Briony. (2020) Academic Women in Neoliberal Times. Cham: Springer International Publishing: Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education.