Browsing by Author "Van der Walt, Pieter Malan"

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    Teaching gender concepts to boys in high school : male teachers’ perspectives
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Van der Walt, Pieter Malan; Perold, Mariechen Deidre; Feenstra, Carla; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Educational Psychology.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Life Orientation (LO) is a compulsory subject in primary and secondary South African schools as contained in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) curriculum document. The LO curriculum requires inter alia the teaching of gender and gender concepts. These concepts are important for successful development during adolescence, a stage where adolescents are tasked with resolving a conflict of identity versus role confusion. Gender identity forms an integral component of self-understanding, as well as how one understands others. Gender holds lifelong implications in the personal, social, family, home, and school contexts. Social constructionists argue that gender identity is shaped by many cultural and social influences, including the school environment. These various influences produce society-specific gender norms. This study explored how male LO teachers in the Senior and FET phases conceive, interpret, and enact their roles as educators of high school boys, particularly in facilitating the learning of gender and gender concepts as referred to in the CAPS curriculum. The study explored how these male teachers understand gender, and how these understandings influenced the ways in which they engaged with and modelled gender in their classes. The study was qualitative in nature and was guided by a basic interpretive design situated within an interpretivist research paradigm. As a limited research study, six LO teachers (male) voluntarily completed a self-administered questionnaire consisting of basic demographic data as well as open-ended questions. Semi-structured individual interviews of 45-60 minutes followed the questionnaires to explore emergent topics in depth. Themes were generated via a systematic process of thematic analysis, which consisted of coding answers to the open-ended questions and interview transcripts. These codes were subsequently arranged into patterns and subthemes that finally formed overarching themes. Some of the major findings of this study include that male teachers grappled with the nature of gender, alternating between views of gender as fixed, fluid and performative, and viewing gender as a life path and signifier of character. Teachers advocated for greater time to be allocated in the school schedule for deeper, longer-term and more comprehensive engagement with gender and gender concepts. Other significant findings included that teachers incorporate personal life experiences and embody personal values during the teaching of gender, with heterosexual-identified teachers evincing greater comfort with referencing their personal, intimate life than gay-identified teachers. Teachers indicated a general discomfort with claiming a role modelling function to boys, possibly due to the construction of LO as a nurturing subject associated with female teachers. Despite this reluctance, many participants indicated a clear need to support their boy learners, including those whom they perceived to be facing sexual and gender identity questions. Teachers also voiced significant barriers to teaching gender concepts, including barriers in the school environment, from parents and due to the diminished status of Life Orientation in the school system.