Pedagogy as Gendered Practice: Hidden Curriculum of Gender in One U.S. High School Classrooms

• In Event: Racial and Gender Politics of Schooling

Abstract

This paper examines how gender is constituted through instructional practices, an area often overlooked in educational research. Drawing on performativity theory, queer theory, and discourse analysis, I analyzed classroom interactions, fieldnotes, and interviews from an ethnographic case study in a U.S. high school. Focusing on three teachers, the study explores how their pedagogies performed gendered subjectivities and reinforced normative gender discourses. Each teacher enacted a distinct version of heteronormativity through masculinist, sexualizing, or controlling pedagogies. Together, their practices reified dominant notions of gender and masculinity across classroom spaces. The paper calls for greater attention to the gendered nature of pedagogy and advocates for the use of queer and feminist approaches to disrupt normative gender ideologies in schools.

Author

• Kongji Qin, New York University