Genders and sexualities: exploring the conceptual limits of contemporary educational research

Abstract

Over the past three decades educational research has provided an exciting and dynamic theoretical engagement with gender and sexuality. While acknowledging this contribution, this article is a conceptually-led exploration of a number of theoretical and methodological tensions contained within this research. More specifically, it argues that current research is limiting the possibilities of new knowledge by insisting on particular epistemological, methodological and theoretical positions. It argues that, in the spirit of Bachelard (2002), the research community needs to pursue epistemological breaks in order to recalibrate their theoretical and methodological positions. More specifically, this article suggests that a current dependence on sexuality identity categories, the positioning of the body as central to methodology and a reliance on particular theories of gender restrict the possibilities for new knowledge and understanding in the field.

Complicating hetero‐femininities: young women, sexualities and ‘girl power’ at school

“…In order to explore this, it is necessary to split sexuality from sexual identity. As Haywood (2008) suggests, part of the queer's project needs to be about splitting the links between sexual practices, or performances with sexual desire, and identity. Both Haywood (2008) and Oswin (2008) argue, in recent articles, for the importance of queer studies avoiding the (re)inscription of identities such as 'homo' and 'hetero' sexual.…”

“…As Haywood (2008) suggests, part of the queer's project needs to be about splitting the links between sexual practices, or performances with sexual desire, and identity. Both Haywood (2008) and Oswin (2008) argue, in recent articles, for the importance of queer studies avoiding the (re)inscription of identities such as 'homo' and 'hetero' sexual. Oswin argues that 'a queer approach can be deployed to understand much more than the lives of "queers"', and she advocates a move 'beyond a sexual politics of recognition ' (2008, 90).…”

Student–parent attitudes toward Filipino migrant teachers in Indonesia

“…In the words of Anthias (2012: 128-9), categories in the real world already feed from each other and are "...contesting and splintering off in the forms they take (linked to the broader landscapes of power including political and economic practices and interests that are not reducible to the working of the categories themselves) but within time and space specifications." In the educational arena, it is widely acknowledged that, as a latent by-product of emerging adulthood, gendered relations are in a state of flux at both the structural and agential levels (Davies, 1993;Haywood, 2008;Mirza, 2009). As a result, categories such as 'Chinese' or 'Indonesian Chinese' are conceptualized as processes of becoming, characterized by fluidity, oppositions and alliances between particular narrative positions, wherein both students and teachers are located across different points in time.…”

State containment and closure of gendered possibilities among a millennial generation: On not knowing Muslim young men

“…Instead, the young men could only gain epistemic legitimacy through their designation as Muslim. This reductionism is striking, given that schools routinely depend upon an elision of the categories of pupil/ child in order to deliver an effective pedagogy (Haywood, 2008). We have seen in highly populated Muslim schools in Birmingham, sex and relationship education being commended by the national regulatory office, Ofsted, for its promotion of 'British values' (Mac an Ghaill & Haywood, 2021).…”