CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES
(The History and Social Science Teacher)

CANADA'S NATIONAL SOCIAL STUDIES JOURNAL
VOLUME 36, NUMBER 3, SPRING 2002

Theme Issue: Gender and Social Studies

Return to current issue

Editorial Board | Previous Issues | Indexing Services | Manuscript Guidelines

From the Editor

Columns

Voices from the Past by Ken Osborne - Canadian Historians and National History: A 1950 Survey

Quebec Report by Jon G. Bradley - A Simmering Debate

The Iconoclast by John McMurtry - Understanding the Moral Derangement of the U.S.-led 'Free World'

Top

Articles

Theme Editor: Jennifer Tupper

Social Studies Classrooms and Curricula - Potential Sites for Inclusionary Practices
Kathy Sanford

Gender Issues Within the Discursive Spaces of Social Studies Education
Wanda Hurren

Culture, Gender, Representation and Response: High School Students Interacting with Texts
Jyoti Mangat

The Gendering of Citizenship in Social Studies Curriculum
Jennifer Tupper

Top

Features

Classroom Tips by Laura Servage, George Richardson, and Jim Parsons - Teach Your Students How To Write A Research Report

Top

Book Reviews

Wanda Hurren. 2000.Line Dancing: An Atlas of Geography Curriculum and Poetic Possibilities.
Reviewed by Linda Farr Darling.

David Harvey. 2000. Spaces of Hope.
Reviewed by Linda Farr Darling.

Graham Pike and David Selby. 1999. In the Global Classroom 1.
AND
Graham Pike and David Selby. 2000. In the Global Classroom 2.
Reviewed by Kenneth Boyd

Neil Sutherland. 2000.Children in English-Canadian Society: Reframing the Twentieth-Century Consensus.
Reviewed by David Mandzuk

J.F. Bosher. 2000.The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997.
Reviewed by Ernest LeVos

Myron Lieberman. 2000.Understanding the Teacher Union Contract: A Citizen's Handbook
Reviewed by Ron Briley

Top

Editorial Board

Editor
George Richardson - Editor

Manuscript Review Editors
Robert Fowler, University of Victoria
Alan Sears, University of New Brunswick

Columnists
Jon G. Bradley, McGill University
Penney Clark, University of British Columbia
David Kilgour, M.P., Edmonton Southeast
John McMurtry, University of Guelph
Ken Osborne, University of Manitoba (Emeritus)

Features Editors

Kathy Bradford, University of Western Ontario
   (Book Reviews)
Jim Parsons, University of Alberta
   (Classroom Teaching)

Top

Indexing Services

Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life and by the Canadian Education Association; Corpus Almanac & Canadian Sourcebook; Ulrich's lnt. Pedcs. Directory; ERIC; Canadian Education Index, Micromedia Limited; and H. W. Wilson Company.

Top

From the Editor

Gender and Social Studies

Introduction
A teacher education student in a social studies methods class maintains that if women's history were really important, it would already be in the curriculum.

A high school social studies classroom is decorated with pictures of "great" people in history. They are all men.

A colleague suggests that "doing gender" is outdated and unnecessary.

In 1976, the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada articulated that changes needed to be made in Canadian schools if education were to be more equitable. In response to the report, ministries of education throughout the country implemented guidelines in an effort to ensure that blatant inequities be reduced. For social studies, this meant removing sexist language from curriculum documents and textbooks and increasing the visibility of women in discussions of history. Once inclusive language became the norm and the number of photos depicting women increased in textbooks, educators and government officials began to focus their attention away from gender. Topics such as technology and globalization usurped gender in discussions about social studies education. The consensus amongst educators seemed to be that gender was no longer an issue in education. However, gender remains an important consideration in social studies particularly because the underlying structures of the subject have not changed despite equity guidelines. It is still organized in a linear fashion with an emphasis on activities in public spaces. There is also concern that social studies curriculum and textbooks continue to mirror a particular view of the world, one in which the experiences of only select individuals or groups are valued (Bernard-Powers, 1997). The goals, objectives and content of social studies curriculums throughout Canada remain subtlely gendered and it is this subtlety that needs to be addressed.

It is the purpose of this special theme issue of Canadian Social Studies to revisit issues of gender as they are manifest in social studies. This is especially urgent in light of the current backlash against feminism and efforts to pit the recent successes of girls in schools against the failure of boys (Arnot, David, & Weiner, 1999). It is also urgent in provinces like Alberta that are endeavouring to construct new social studies curriculums, which acknowledge diversity without mentioning gender. As part of the curriculum development process, teachers in Alberta were asked to rank order topics they would like to see included in a "new" social studies. Women's history ranked near the bottom of the list. These events speak to the continued importance of taking up issues of gender in the context of social studies specifically and education generally.

The series of articles in this issue attempt to highlight issues of gender that still very much permeate social studies classrooms and curriculum. Kathy Sanford reminds us in her article that the lens used to construct social studies curriculum must shift from a Eurocentric male view of history to one which considers other gendered views. She illustrates how social studies remains exclusionary both in the perspectives that it offers and the language that is used to articulate its goals and content. Finally, Sanford reflects upon the possible implications for students if curriculum were to be reorganized from different perspectives. Similarly, Wanda Hurren attempts to interrupt the gendering of social studies through her discussion of the discursive spaces of teacher education and the structure of social studies. Like Sanford, she illustrates how social studies content is associated with men but also how the experiences of many student teachers teaching social studies are shaped by their interactions with male faculty advisors and male cooperating teachers. Hurren closes her discussion by asking us to pay attention to the non-neutrality of how social studies is "done" as well as to the bodies that are "doing" social studies.

Issues of representation and interactions with text emerge in Jyoti Mangat's discussion surrounding students' responses to post-colonial literature. While her research took place in English classrooms, Mangat reflects upon how texts in any context are representational. She challenges teachers to shift the focus from text to reader to see how students' perspectives inform their reading of texts. This shift is particularly important in social studies classrooms, where textbooks seem shrouded in an aura of cultural authority sustained by a focus not on the reader but on the text. Finally, in my own discussion, I highlight the importance of interrogating the current conceptions of citizenship which underlie social studies education. I suggest that understandings of citizenship informing social studies curriculum are masculine constructions which do little to foster inclusivity. It is my recommendation that for students to have a richer understanding of the world, both citizenship and gender be used as categories of analysis by students and teachers as they engage with social studies curriculum.

Each of the papers in this special issue opens up spaces for talking about gender in social studies. They also remind us that issues of gender have not disappeared; that they are still very much present in curriculum and classrooms. While provincial equity guidelines function to ensure that blatant gender biases do not find their way into curriculum, it would seem that they are falling short. Social studies goals, objectives, content, and organization are all implicated in its continued imbalance, yet social studies also represents possibilities for inclusive practices. The challenge for educators is to interrupt the gendered spaces of social studies through our own thinking, teaching, and learning and to refuse to be complicit in the perpetuation of curricular inequities in social studies.

References

Arnot, M., David, M. & Weiner, G. (1999). Closing the gender gap: Postwar education and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bernard-Powers, J. (1997). Gender in social education. In E.W. Ross. (ed.), The social studies curriculum: Purposes, problems, and possibilities. (71-87). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (1976). Final report. Ottawa: Information Canada.

The Theme Editor

Top

FastCounter by bCentral

Top