Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Entry 17 - Gender

FEB 16 EDPY
 
 A few side notes about gender before the discussion begins..

1. School is a complex situation where a lot of social functions occur. We are socialized into our gender roles at school. It is also a place for the policing of gender. Students will learn who they are and who are they going to become. Taught how a girl/boy should behave.
2. Teachers need to be sensitive to gender as well as informed.
 
 Gender : A learned behavior

1. Preliminary definitions. Sex: biological dimension Gender: sociocultural dimension. Gender roles: expectations for thinking, acting, and feeling. The way we are expected to do so. Cognition behavior and affect.

2. Views on Gender Development
- Biological: the mechanism that drives the complex ways of thinking, acting, feeling. Either starts with physiology or neurology. Biology is not destiny especially for complex attitudes and behaviors. (interactionist view)
- Social Learning: child (boy) observes his teacher, dad, uncle , coach. Throughout the process he learns his gender role. From observing roles models. Social observation. (theorist Albert bandura)
-Cognitive Development Theory: is about the way a child thinks about gender, about the kind of conceptual frameworks (schema) that the child develops about gender. Schemas become more stable over time until eventually they are fixed. Cognition and developmental steps.
- Gender Schema Theory: part of a school of thought with the information processing approach. Information in, something done, information out. The brain is a computer. The way a child processes the information. Can be different, overlapping, or the same as the dominate expectation.

Issues:
1. Stereotypes: textbook definition: broad categories of expected behavior that are typically exaggerations, typically negative , and typically reductive. Want to avoid.
2. Gender bias in education: not a conscious bias, it is an unexamined bias. Ex) giving girls less time to answer a difficult math question.
3. Sexual orientation: self explanatory

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