From an anti-oppressive and a gender perspective, the aim of this paper is to examine whether three English teachers at a comprehensive school in Stockholm make gender conscious selections when selecting novels for their English literature lessons. Through quantitative research, semi-structured interviews and e-mail interviews with these teachers I have attempted to find out if they include both male and female writers when selecting English novels for their students and also what factors affect their selections. I have analyzed the interviews and the quantitative research by using a qualitative and a quantitative content analysis. The theories that I have established my analysis upon are gender theories about the male norm in society, the feminist Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas about the woman as a second gender and the sociologist Raewyn Connell’s gender regimes. Furthermore, the Professor Kevin K. Kumashiro’s theories on anti-oppressive education have been very useful when interpreting my research. My results show that these teachers do not make gender conscious selections for their English literature lessons since they almost only choose novels written by men. They explain their choices to depend upon factors such as them wanting to individualize their literature lessons by selecting novels that their students will enjoy. They also elucidate the issue that the school only has a limited selection of novels to choose from, which narrows their choices. But I argue that since the teachers are able to purchase new novels to the school and also borrow class sets from the Public Library, they have the possibility to select novels by female writers as well. I interpret the fact that they almost only use novels written by men as a result of the male norm in society, which influences the teachers on a subconscious level. That the teachers select male writers prior to female writers results in the students achieving an inadequate education, given that they mostly learn about the male perspective upon the world, since the female angle is invisible. If these teachers would begin working from an anti-oppressive perspective and make gender conscious selections of novels for their English literature lessons, they must first be aware of how the male norm influences them.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-9336 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Tennholt Bortz, Karolina |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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