Textbooks, students and teachers talk around gender: A new materialist approach to children's agency

Abstract

Theoretically anchored in Butlerian and Baradian approaches to gender performativity, this study scrutinized Athenian elementary pupils' understanding of gender-normative discourses in textbook illustrations and their teachers' capacity to identify such discourses. The findings revealed that educators were unaware of the prevalence of gendered discourses in textbooks and did not make substantive efforts to diminish their harmful effects on pupils’ perceptions of gender. Children, however, are agentic subjects who negotiate gender discourses idiosyncratically. This study argues that introducing non-sexist curricula is not sufficient for combating sexism in education; textbook revisions need to be accompanied by in-service gender-training courses for educators.