82 constructionism in this study presents more generative conceptualisations, particularly of girls and boys within the school as active agents who construct their methods for drawing in with the world through social connections.
McNay (2000, p. 125) similarly “conceptualises gender identities as multiple and fluid, a lived set of embodied potentialities”. This fluidity could be a source of agency with the potential to enhance the movement of schools towards becoming gender equitable schooling environments.
Hence Cameron (2004) affirms that there are different methods for doing womanhood and masculinity or girlhood and childhood, assorted masculinities and femininities, bent by every other measurement of somebody's social personality. Harro (2000) calls these dimensions the Cycle of Socialization. In the section that follows I discuss Butler‟s theory of performativity and illustrate the possibilities of breaking the cycle.
83 them for all what we know as they might have been also uncritically drawing from their backgrounds. According to Harro (2000, p. 45), the Cycle of Socialization can be seen as
“pervasive (coming from all sides and sources), consistent (patterned and predictable), circular (self-supporting), self-perpetuating (interdependent), and invisible (unconscious and unnamed)”.
In this study, I decided to use Harro‟s Cycle of Socialization to explain the ways in which girls and boys are socialised into the social world.
Figure 2: The Cycle of Socialization (Harro, 2000, p. 45)
84 Harro (2000) alludes to the fact that every individual is born without guilt, blame, biases or prejudice. People are socialised by people close to them like parents, friends, teachers and other people whom “we love and trust” (ibid., p. 45). In other words, people around us help to shape our expectations, values, norms, behavioural roles and it is from them that we eventually also learn stereotypes and prejudice. We cannot blame them for all what we know as they might have been also uncritically drawing from their backgrounds. As a result, consciously and unconsciously our socialisation is continuously being reinforced by the learning that Jansen (2001, p. 271) refers to as the “social curriculum, i.e. messages from religious institutions and services, schools, legal systems, the business community, the broadcasting and printed media, adult conversation, friends, direct observation, sport groups, social customs and practices, language, etc.”
Socialisation theory does not deny the socially developed classifications allocated to girls and boys in our general public and the partnered gender inequality that emerges from this categorisation. However, it challenges the underestimated implications appended to these socially built substances as though they were actuality, static and inescapable. This social approach to children concentrates on understanding children‟s experiences as subjects in the world, rather than their abilities to make meaning about the world around them. In this perspective, I was forced to even consider whether and how gender inequality in the schools might be productive. However, this study was grounded on the belief that gender inequality compromises the quality of life experiences for both girls and boys, and therefore, it aims to find ways in which girls and boys exercise agency to navigate gender experiences.
85 In order to understand how gender operates in learning environments, for instance in schools, we also need to examine ways in which stakeholders (e.g. teachers, parents, girls and boys) as construct meaning of their general surroundings in connection to gender issues (Harro, 2000).
According to the Socialisation theory, gender relations in learning environments could be understood through analysis of the social relations and values that teachers, parents and children ascribe to gender (being a girl or boy) as mentioned earlier. To me, this implied, keeping in mind the end goal to see how parents, teachers and children construct gender, analysis must concentrate on the social domains within which participants are situated. Within these realms there are systems of beliefs and relationships that constitute inequitable gender relations and categories that girls and boys rely on in order to understand themselves and others. As such, this study investigated children‟s experiences of gender inequality in the school environment. It explores how gender discourses and practices affect children‟s geographies.
Inside the subjected position of gender there are few types of hegemonic show up as hegemonic masculinities (Connell, 1995). In this study I contend that discussing multi-gendered characters and hegemonic masculinity in a school is insufficient if we do not identify with what is occurring in schools. This connection is of essential significance as we expect that schools to mirror the hegemonic masculinities working at the level of general society. Accordingly, from the perspective of this study which concentrates on setting up sexual orientation talks and practices that influence children‟s geographies, I think that it is important to say only a couple variables.
The fact that the school is a special site for the construction of femininities and masculinity is emphasized by several studies. The main contradiction that school girls are confronted with is
86 the expectation that they should be both feminine and successful at the same time (Renold, 2000). On the other hand, boys should be both masculine and be powerful.
Confronted with the contradictory demand on them between femininity and success, most school girls fall back on the system of feminisation of scholarly achievement, while a few boys resort to hegemonic masculinity; if they choose otherwise they will be victims of emotional exclusion (Renold, 2000). The official culture of the school puts on a show to be gender unbiased however is in certainty portrayed by the omnipresence of gender. The school is the social institution that reinforces and challenges gender inequality through an unfair social order and through gender inequality. Morojele (2011a) follows the association between these practices and proceeding with tyrant states of mind which, thus, keep up the abusive instructive and gender arrange that has a unequal gender imbalance. Gender relations join with gender practices to empower unequal social relations among and amongst girls and boys. This implies gender relations are formed by gender discourses in schools, and a methods by which gender meaning and situating are constituted. Therefore, this means performing or acting a particular role and once the act is finished one reverts back to social reality that perceives and constructs children.
This study aims to establish the gendered spaces and places within the schooling contexts. Our gendered habitus is thus produced through the embodied accretion and effects of gendered dispositions as I have mentioned earlier. A gendered habitus is expressed through durable ways of being, doing or performing gender (Butler, 2005), standing, speaking, walking, clothing, stylisation of the body, and in so doing of feeling and thinking (Reay, 1995). Morojele (2011) finds that boys occupy larger spaces in schools, for example, on football grounds, in the school
87 yard and even in desks. Consequently, this accords power to them while on the other hand girls occupy small places and they end up spending their break times often inside the classroom.
Therefore, the gender differences in roles between girls and boys are socially constructed. Hence, the children have disguised the conviction that girls and boys are not the same; their societal desires have an impact by the way they explore their gender experiences. The fish-in-water metaphor reflects how individuals are connected to their social surroundings. With discourse being the primary means to construct the historically constituted gendered social relations, the likelihood is that our basic familiarity with gender disparities gets to be lessened or compromised. This overlaps with “Foucault‟s notion of the docile body, which depicts the social regimes that make human bodies submissive and controllable, and how this is contrived to affect the prospects of gender usefulness which in turn results in gender discipline” (Schwan &
Shapiro, 2011, p. 35). Gender discipline in this sense refers to the performance of gender through unquestioning conformity to dominant discourses of gender that reinforce gender inequalities.
These notions reflect how people are attached to gender discourses and practices within learning environments, to the point where they do not question the inequitable gender relations.
The taken for-granted discourses that promote inequitable gendered learning environments is, in part, a culmination of what Foucault (1986) refers to as the seductive operations of power, which attempts to eradicate its presence under the pretext of normalcy, thus positioning what is trivial and what is not worth protesting (Schwan & Shapiro, 2011; Young & Barrett, 2001). In this study I critique the taken for granted discourses and insisted that we ought to listen to girls‟ and boys‟ voices even if what they have to say may not accord with normative understanding of childhood. I advise that girls‟ and boys‟ voices have something valuable to add to the debates
88 about their lives. I therefore, call for more researchers to insist the significance of listening to them, even maybe where their perspectives challenge scholarly wisdom and adults. I advocate a view of children as independent knowing subjects whose voices are of paramount importance to bring into debate. I also want to put it clear that by advocating children‟s voices I do not mean that we should not listen to others who shape children‟s future like policy makers, teachers and parents. However, I advise that it is critical to regard childhood and children‟s encounters and expand on the current courses in which children effectively see and draw in with the world. The new social science of children studies as further examined underneath gives knowledge into a viewpoint that sees children‟s dynamic individuals who are able to make implications about the structures and methods around them.