Browsing by Author "Kangas, Tuovi"

Finnish school is generally considered equal. The National Core Curriculum for Basic Education recognizes the importance of gender equality and gender awareness as well. However, an average teacher may not be able to recognize all the gendered practices and structures at school or can’t tell how gender equality is promoted there. There’s a contradiction between the grassroots and official statements, equality being only specious in practise. The objective of the thesis is to map how gender is constructed in school and how gender awareness can be increased there. The thesis is a literature review, the bibliography mainly consisting of feminist research in education. According to the literature, school maintains and reproduces binary and differentiated gender system in everyday life at school. The pupils are set different expectations as well as spoken to and assessed in different ways depending on their gender. Usually gender diversity is ignored in this binary classification. The need for gender awareness is acknowledged in the literature and equality has been promoted through various enterprises. However, individual projects can not increase equality in school permanently. The most important step towards a genuinely equal school is to increase teachers’ gender awareness, which can be achieved by curriculum, teacher education and legislation. Teachers should be given space and time to discuss about educational values attached to gender. Gender-aware education can be advocated on many levels: class interaction, teaching methods, guidance counselling, teaching materials and examples used in lessons.