Gender transformed education: A framework for enacting the sustainable development goals

• In Event: Protesting the status quo in Girls Education: Contesting policy discourse, theoretical approaches, and methodological privilege

Proposal

Public protest plays a critical role in declaring what is not well in the world, but it is only one step in a long process of change. Real change does not stop at protests, it is action oriented, requiring sustained work on implementation and institutionalization at all levels of societal systems to truly bring about that better world.

Clearly defining what a better world looks like and framing its implementation in ways that can inform all levels of society involved in that implementation is critical to sustaining that better world, particularly when it requires change in deeply held societal beliefs and practices like gender norms.

The SDG goal for education targets “gender equality” as its overarching goal critical to achieving the right to quality education for all (UNESCO, 2015, p. 8). Enacting these goals will require a “sustained effort to change teaching and learning practices in thousands and thousands of classrooms” (implementation), “focused and sustained effort by all parts of the education system and its partners” (institutionalization) (Levin & Fullan, 2008). For example, transformed educational systems would generate policies, budgets and plans which enable all to succeed; attend to the institutional arrangements, management structures, social norms, relationship dynamics and political economy issues which shape education; and address gender-related disadvantages which deliver different outcomes for girls and boys, women and men.

Over the past several decades global organizations have used a variety of adjectives with “gender” to describe a certain type of desired approach, project, outcome, or state, such as gender sensitive, gender responsive, and, more recently, gender transformative. The terms are often used interchangeably and can be “co-opted to signify progress without a deeper understanding of their conceptual underpinnings” (Rouhani, 2019). Reviewing their historical use in international agreements and clarifying their conceptual underpinnings are the first steps in achieving gender equality in education. Drawing deeper distinctions among the terms could also lead to clearer conceptual understanding of the progression toward gender equality in education.

Drawing from our historical, definitional, and conceptual discussions and building on parallels with MacIntosh’s Interactive Phases of Curricular Revision (2019), we present the model “Interactive Phases of Education Improvement to Ensure the Rights to Education and Gender Equality.” This framework is intended to enhance communication and actions related to the progression of enacting children’s rights to gender equality in education. As education takes place in institutional and societal contexts, all of which can either support or hinder the conditions for the quality and equality of education, movement toward gender transformed education benefits when we have conceptual understanding of that progression.

Author

• Jan Westrick, Valparaiso University