The purpose of this study was to analyze preservice teachers' talk about gender issues in education through a poststructural feminist theoretical framework. Eighteen Master of Arts in Teaching students volunteered to participate in a seminar. During the seminar the participants wrote about and discussed gender issues in teaching. Data collected from the seminar included transcripts of audio-taped conversations as well as response journals and autobiographical sketches written by the participants. Four themes, gender talk, teacher talk, confessional talk, and resistance talk, were explored in the data. The theme gender talk included the participants' observations of and discussions about the differences between females and males. Teacher talk included discussions of what it means to be a teacher and how gender, race, and class impact the teacher's role and the educational experience of children. The data illustrated the multiple and competing discourses these preservice teachers employed when discussing gender issues. The themes confessional talk and resistance talk focused on how the participants talked about gender. These themes raised questions about teacher education practices. They served to illustrate the power relationships inherent in teacher education and how these relations of power act to authorize some discourses and suppress others. Modifications of teacher education practices were recommended by the researcher. These recommendations included helping preservice teachers deconstruct the discourses of education and the role of the teacher as well as suggesting that preservice teachers could benefit from alternate and varied educational sites in which to explore issues of teaching. / Graduation date: 1998
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/33898 |
| Date | 11 May 1998 |
| Creators | Cammack, J. Camille |
| Contributors | Higgins, Karen |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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