Gendering Social Studies: Teachers' Intended and Enacted Curriculum and Student Diffraction

• In Event: The Moral Implications of Critically Ambitious Social Studies Instruction

Abstract

Due to intransigence of social studies curriculum-makers to broaden the scope of who and what is studied, women (especially non-white women) are still lacking representation in the curriculum (Bohan, 2017; Hahn, Bernard-Powers, Crocco, & Woyshner, 2007; Schmeichel, 2014; Schmidt, 2012; Schrader & Wotipka, 2011; Williams & Bennett, 2016; Woyshner & Schocker, 2015). However, some teachers go beyond the textbook to select alternative curriculum lenses. This study examines how two secondary teachers who report they incorporate issues of gender and/or women’s experiences into their social studies curriculum describe their reasoning and intentions, how their expressed aims are manifested within their classrooms, and student reaction to the incorporation of gender and women’s experience in the social studies curriculum.

Teachers make choices about content and pedagogical methods to use. These decisions define teachers as curricular-instructional gatekeepers (Thornton, 2005). These choices are influenced by teachers’ values and beliefs, leading them to create a complementary curriculum (Moroye, 2009). Implicitly and explicitly, teachers graft their values and beliefs onto the explicit curriculum. Thus, while studies demonstrate social studies teachers rely heavily on the textbook (Loewen, 2007; Thornton, 1991), teachers can go beyond the textbook to select alternative curriculum lenses.

Scholars have suggested heterosexuality is implicitly taught as the normative sexual relationship (Mayo, 2017; Pascoe, 2012; Pascoe & Herrera, 2018; Schmidt, 2010). This heteronormative discourse is deeply etched into the explicit, implicit, and hidden curricula. Students encounter it when they invite their mothers to “tea” and fathers to “daddy-daughter” dances, when high school students select homecoming courts with “Kings and Queens,” and when female students’ clothing is policed because male desire is inscribed upon their bodies.

Utilizing the concepts of curricular-instructional gatekeeping and complementary curriculum as well as queer theory, this study explores: 1) the intentions of teachers who choose gender and women’s experiences as a curricular lens; 2) how their intentions are enacted in their classrooms; and 3) how students respond to that curricular enactment. I use educational connoisseurship and criticism as conceived by Eisner (2017) to structure my analysis and portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2005) to present my data. Educational criticism provides an opportunity to move away from traditionally positivist and post-positivist research methods and into more creative and experiential ways of knowing. Portraiture allows the researcher a method for creating narrative structures to help make sense of the classroom environments studied. Data collected and analyzed for this study include semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and teacher and student materials.

Findings indicate participants value multiple perspectives, empathy, and parity in social studies curriculum and map these ideas onto the explicit curriculum. However, student responses tend to resist teacher intentions and enactment of challenges to normative gender roles. This diffracted curriculum interferes with teacher aims, creating a curricular space where traditional assumptions of the sex-gender binary play out in teacher-student and student-student interactions. These findings indicate a more relational discussion-based approach to social studies curriculum may be needed to encourage students to engage constructively with nonnormative social ideas in what Loutzenheiser (2010) calls a “reciprocal learning relationship.”

Author

• Andrea Watson-Canning, University of South Florida - Tampa