Yes / “Gender Day” is an obligatory annual learning event for all first-year undergraduate and Masters students in the Department of Peace Studies (University of Bradford, England), designed as a foundational experience for a multicultural student body to develop gender analytical skills. The curriculum uses three carefully sequenced elements. The first session, based on peer-facilitated small-group discussion of participants’ lived knowledge of gender norms, engages the “heart” - emotion and personal experience. The second, a lecture on academic concepts around sex, gender and sexuality and their inter-relationship, engages the “head”. The third, a workshop demonstrating the practical techniques of applying gender analysis to a policy or intellectual problem in politics, international relations, and peace/conflict studies, engages their “hands”. This article analyzes why and how Gender Day was devised and argues that its positive gender-mainstreaming impact on students and the Department results from the pedagogical philosophy underpinning its three, integrated elements and the opportunity offered by a heterogeneous student cohort

The purpose of this paper is to examine preschool educators conceptions on gender pedagogy. Based on preschool teachers own words, we want to get an insight into the use of gender in the curriculum in preschool classes. We also examine the conditions and setbacks of conducting a gender-sensitive educational way of working the curriculum. In order to examine our research question, we choose the method of qualitative interview, and previous research in the theory of gender pedagogy from a sociocultural perspective, in which social interaction is very important. We have interviewed five educators in preschool classes, all with similar educational backgrounds. In the results and analyses section the educators' definition of gender pedagogy is presented and how they take part in gender educational theories strategies. The result of the survey show that the importance of the educator’s own approach to and further education in, the subject matter, makes it possible to really understand the gender norms. This contributes to the crucial work in counteracting traditional gender patterns. Everyones participation is required in order to make development work possible.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how teachers work and reflects on gender education in preschools. We also want to take part of how teacher’s thoughts are reflected in the physical indoor environment and how the environment is designed by reviewing the rooms furnishing and the selected materials. We will do this by visiting a number of preschools located in Stockholm and New York. We have chosen three questions to get the answers on our purpose. How teachers reflect around gender pedagogy are, and how the thoughts are expressed in the practical work. How the teachers communicate with their co-workers about gender pedagogy. How the teachers own thoughts and reflections on gender pedagogy have been expressed in the physical indoor environment where the children stay during the day.  We have used interviews and observations as a method to gather the information that we needed to answer our questions of the thesis. We have used the sociocultural perspective, variation theory and queer theory as a ground to analyze our gathered information. As a conclusion we have found that the teachers have different ways of reflecting about gender pedagogy but they still don´t want to focus their work on it. They would rather focus their pedagogy on working with equality, which for them means more than just gender. We have reached that to find a way you work sustainable with gender pedagogy you have to have an open minded attitude towards the children, have critical standards, and an environment where children can grow and learn without focusing on gender.

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The background of our field of interest grew out of getting knowledge of an organisation called Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE). We learnt that FAWE had created schools in different African countries and that they had formulated gender responsive pedagogy. Through the methodologies of semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with teachers, students and FAWE representatives, in addition, studies of documents, we wanted to examine what the FAWE educational strategies were and how FAWE was perceived amongst teachers and students at FAWE girls‘ school. Finally, we wanted to understand how and if gender pedagogy can help strivings towards gender equality and development. The study has a qualitative and inductive approach which implies that no theoretical framework was formulated prior to the field study. However, we have formulated a theoretical framework which has served as a tool for analyzing our findings. We have turned to postcolonial feminist theory and development theory on education and gender.Our findings imply importance of understanding the uniqueness in the Rwandan society due to colonialism and genocide, especially when it comes to formulating definitions of gender. Further the Rwandan context is important to keep in mind for donor societies, when formulating demands on Rwanda. For example we will note that international influences on the Rwandan educational system are immense, but what happens if the influences are not coherent with the Rwandan context? Since girls‘ access to education has increased in Rwanda due to among others FAWE Girls‘ School, we also underline the importance for government to meet the girls‘ needs once they have graduated in order to minimise risks of brain drain. In addition we have detected a pattern of understandings amongst the students that financial support to girls is crucial to meet their definitions of gender and gender equality; the girls view financial support as a foundation in order to reach gender equality, or for girls to be able to access arenas that previously belonged to the boys.

This thesis is an auto/ethnographic venture to explore the politics of bullying inside Bangladeshi classrooms. The thesis explores bullying in the frameworks of affect, anti-oppressive and intersectional gender pedagogy. Using autoethnographic and ethnographic means, the author revisits past encounters of being bullied and collects data from four schools in Dhaka, Bangladesh, drawing connections between narratives and theories. The thesis explores how schools fix and essentialize the identities of bully and bullied in discursive readings, which result in troubling approaches to deal with bullying, such as discipline, punishment and surveillance, which further exclude and other the bully and bullied. The thesis offers an affective reading of bodies inside classrooms, and employs theories of anti-oppressive and intersectional gender pedagogy to address and bring down the binary between bully and bullied, address power relations in classrooms and revise the roles of teachers and students. By acknowledging tensions and disruptions, aiming for self-reflexivity and transgressions, it offers a reading of how to think of transformations and turn the classroom into a ‘risky,’ yet generative space, to start a dialogue about bullying.

In this thesis I aim to investigate the Swedish preschool teacher interested in change and her work, here conceptualised as gender pedagogy. I will take my departure in sexual difference theory to contrast some of the assumptions behind preschool work, gender pedagogy and gender equality. I am also reflecting upon the concepts of normalisation, freedom and change and their relevance for preschool work. To help me with this endeavour I have interviewed five preschool teachers about their work and their interest for change. The thesis is divided into three chapters mirroring the themes of the interviews. In the first chapter I reflect upon normalisation as a process inherent to preschool work, both historically and in the present, connected to notions of class, cognitive ability and sexual difference. Through the statements of my informants and theoretical discussion the concept of normalisation is nuanced and understood as a process inherent to the whole of society as well as the preschool but also as a practice that might not be possible to abolish in its entirety. In the second chapter I move my focus towards gender pedagogy. An outline of different strands of, and discussions on, gender pedagogy is given as well as a critical discussion on the aim to go beyond gender in gender pedagogy and feminist theory. As an alternative and additional approach I suggest sexual difference theory as a possible source of inspiration for gender pedagogy. In the second part of this chapter the preschool teachers express their views on, and their work with gender pedagogy. This allows for a more entangled and process oriented understanding of gender pedagogy and its different strands. I conclude this chapter by stating that gender pedagogy could be understood in terms of normalisation and even as reinforcing the masculine norm, however the process oriented understanding of change as highlighted by my informants, as well as the use of multiple strategies, theories and methods, might allow for a practice where difference instead of likeness serves as a condition for the gender pedagogical work. In the last chapter I turn to the preschool teacher as such and her history entangled with notions of femininity, motherhood and gender equality. Employing the strategy of “working through” as described by Braidotti I lay bare how the position of the preschool teacher  and her work has been represented as stereotyped woman’s work and thus connected to less worth, but simultaneously how the actual work of the preschool teachers strongly denounce this view of  woman’s work, as well as motherhood and femininity. I also show how the work of preschool teachers put into question such prominent binary pairs as mind/body, emotion/intellect, practice/theory and adult/child. I conclude that the misrepresentation of woman’s work also has material consequences in terms of working conditions for preschool teachers. To conclude the whole thesis I emphasise how the view of the female preschool teacher and the view of the child cannot be radically separated and therefore the importance of considering both adults and children in the gender pedagogy work. I also conclude that what gender equality or gender pedagogy is, is not settled ones and for all, but rather the importance to fill these concepts with a positive view of difference.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur man som pedagog kan arbeta med genuspedagogik i undervisningen med hjälp av genusneutral barnlitteratur. Forskning pekar på att barn tidigt skaffar sig en uppfattning om vad som förväntas av dem på grund av deras kön. Den svenska läroplanen Lgr 11 förespråkar att läraren ska motverka de traditionella könsmönstren samtidigt som man ska påverka och forma elevers uppfattning om kvinnligt och manligt. För att kunna göra detta krävs det att man undervisar eleverna i genuspedagogik. Barn påverkas av alla de intryck som omger dem, varför barnböcker är en bra utgångspunkt i samtalet om bland annat genus. Metoden är att initialt göra en inventering av helt genusneutrala barnböcker, för att sedan analysera ett urval av dessa, både separat och komparativt. Efter analysen genomförs en etnografisk studie med högläsning och boksamtal som resulterar i diskussioner i barngrupper kring vikten av att tillhöra ett genus. Studien visar att det blir mer komplicerat att hitta acceptans för olikheter och normbrytande ju äldre barnen är. Slutsatsen är att det bör undervisas mer i genuspedagogik, skrivas mer genusneutral barnlitteratur och att det bör forskas mer på området. / The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers can work with gender pedagogy using gender-neutral children's literature. Research indicates that children knows early what is expected of them because of their gender. The Swedish curriculum (Lgr 11) advocates that the teacher should counteract the traditional gender patterns while influencing and shaping students' perception of what is typical for men and women. In order to do this, it is necessary to teach the students in gender education. Children are affected by all the impressions that surround them, why children's books are a good starting point in the conversation about gender, among other things. The method is to initially make an inventory of completely gender-neutral children's books published in Sweden, in order to analyze a selection of these, both separately and comparatively. After the analysis, an ethnographic study is implemented, where a teacher is reading aloud and the class has a book-talk, which results in discussions about the importance of belonging to a gender. The study shows that finding acceptance for differences and go against the norms is becoming more complicated the older the children are. The conclusion is that it should be more education in gender pedagogy; more gender-neutral children's literature and that more research should be done in this area.

Denna kvalitativa studie fokuserar sex förskollärares upplevelser av deras jämställdhetsarbete i förskolan. Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i genuspedagogik som huvudsakligen behandlar vuxnas förhållningssätt till könsstereotypa normer. Vi har använt oss av semistrukturerade intervjuer med sex förskollärare från sex olika förskolor i Sverige. Resultatet består av två övergripande teman ”Pedagogiska verktyg för att motverka traditionella könsroller” och ”Förskollärarnas upplevelser av två aspekter av jämställdhet i förskolorna” vilka båda har två underkategorier. Det första temat ämnar besvara forskningsfrågan ”Vilka pedagogiska verktyg använder förskollärarna sig av för att motverka traditionella könsroller?” och det andra temat syftar att besvara forskningsfrågan ”Hur beskriver förskollärarna sitt arbete med att motverka traditionella könsroller?” Studiens resultat visar att förskollärarna beskriver att de motverkar traditionella könsroller genom att ersätta könade ord samt styra barnens lekar för att förhindra flick- och pojkgrupper. Resultatet visar även på att bemötandet av könsöverskridande barn inte lyfts i personalgrupperna samt att förskollärarna upplever att den individuella pedagogens personliga intresse för jämställdhet är ett måste för att bedriva en jämställd pedagogik i förskolan. Studiens slutsats är att jämställdhetsarbetet i förskolorna är sårbart då arbetet är förankrat i intresset och kunskapen hos enskilda pedagoger snarare än i konkreta styrdokument. / This qualitative study has focused on the experiences of six different preschool teachers with their day to day work regarding gender equality linked to the Swedish preschool curriculum. Gender pedagogy has been used in this paper which primarily focuses on adult attitudes regarding gender stereotypes. We have used semi-structured interviews with six different preschool teachers from six different preschools. The data focuses on two different sets of themes being ”Pedagogic tools to counter traditional gender roles” and ”The preschool teachers experiences of two aspects of gender equality in the preschools” with each theme having two sets of subcategories. The first theme intend to answer the research question ”What educational tools do preschool teachers use to counteract traditional gender roles?” and the second theme intend to answer the research question ”How do the preschool teachers describe their work to counteract traditional gender roles?”. The result of the study shows that the preschool teachers describe that they counteract traditional gender roles by using their language by replacing gendered words and by controlling the children’s use of games. The result also shows that the treatment of transgender children is not lifted in the staff groups and that the preschool teachers feel that the individual interest in gender equality is a must if you want to achieve effective gender equality work. The conclusion of the study is that gender equality work in the preschools is vulnerable as it is rooted in the interest and knowledge of individual teachers rather than in concrete regulatory documents.