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

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In responding to the theme of CIES 2024, this panel engages one of the questions of Sub-theme 3 (Theories, Methodologies and Protest): How can/do we understand contestation, resistance, struggle, defiance, and compliance in education work, specifically in policy development, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies? The four presentations seek to inspire critical analysis about how work related to gender is conceptualized and engaged in education. Specifically, the presentations consider the reification and dominance of statistics and quantitative methods (paper #1); argue the value of using narrative, ethnographic, and mixed methods approaches that reveal contextual complexities (paper #2); unpack understandings of “gender” in the SDGs and propose a humanities-informed framework (paper #3); and unpack the discursive framings of how girls’ education is conceptualized in policy and therefore acted upon (paper #4). The premise of the panel is to explore dimensions of our work that have potential for transformative practice.
This work is relevant as it helps those in the field to critically consider important issues, ways of thinking about them, and possibilities for acting. It seeks to push the field forward. The presentations each engage a particular theoretical lens, conceptual ideas, or policy discourse analysis to probe more deeply the intersection of gender and education globally. The fourth CIES criteria about implications for future critique of practice, policy, or theory is exactly what the panel will be doing – engaging the audience and people in the gender/education field, and specifically girls’ education, in critiquing practice and policy through tools related to theory and methodologies.
The originality of this work is evident in the approaches of each researcher and of each paper, which moves beyond the status quo and builds on scholarly work that has been developing for decades, but is at a point of limited scope, as explained in the paper descriptions above (e.g., using only some types of data to determine policy, not fully understanding how discourse shapes thinking and action, etc.).

Sub Unit

• Gender Justice SIG

Chair

• Karen Monkman, DePaul University

Individual Presentations

• Challenging the excessive demand for generating statistics to report on girls’ education - Shirley J Miske, Miske Witt & Associates International

• “I used to wonder why girls do not study”: Narrative techniques, mixed-methods gender/education research, & tensions in Pakistani youth’ lives - Nancy Pellowski Wiger, Miske Witt & Associates International; Khuzama Rizwan Khan, GIRL RISING; Acacia Nikoi, Miske Witt and Associates International; Aditi Ashok Arur, Christ University; Kristeen Chachage, Independent Consultant; Nidhi Shukla, Girl Rising

• Gender transformed education: A framework for enacting the sustainable development goals - Jan Westrick, Valparaiso University

• When progress needs a push: Making our work in girls’ education matter more - Karen Monkman, DePaul University

Discussant

• Joan Dejaeghere, University of Minnesota