Students’ Gendered Meaning Making During a Biology Lesson About the Basic Facts of the Human Genitals

• In Event: High School Biology: Investigations in Learning and Instruction

Abstract

The study explores what happens in the encounters between presentations of “basic facts” about the human genitals and 15-year-old students during a biology lesson in a Swedish secondary school. Here meaning making is approached as relational, context- dependent and continually transacted. Accordingly the analysis is conducted through a series of close readings of situations where students interact with the teacher in opening up gaps about alternative ways of discussing gender. Drawing on theories about the inclusion and exclusion of knowledge, the paper illuminates what gendered relations remain tacit in the conversation. The study shows how the ways in which human genitals are transacted in the science classroom have importance for what kind of learning is made available to the students.

Author

• Auli Arvola Orlander, Department of Mathematics and Science Education