This study is a part of the project Language matters: language use, power and gender in teacher education. The aim is to explore how the formation of gender in different parts of teacher education include, exclude and/or open up for a diversity concerning “doing gender”. The focus is on breakings against traditional gender norms; against common expectations of how things usually are or should be. The questions in the study are related to language use from a gender perspective. How is language used when talking to or about girls/boys, women/men at the campus education respectively the school practise education: What new ways to be girl/woman and boy/man are to be seen? How are “breaks” against traditional gender norms expressed among the students and how are they expressed in the groups of children that the students meet during their school practise education? Walkerdine (1990) designates these breaks “cracks in the wall”. To understand what is happening in this kind of processes it is needed to visualize “the wall”, the norm. What kind of positions (Walkerdine 1989, Davies 1989, 2003) are possible to enter and still be regarded as “normal” girls/women and boys/men? In the process of gender formation language is crucial. Expectations of gender correct behavior and qualities are constructed in acts of language, verbal and non verbal, and is the base for the individuals conception of the world. I hereby refer to Mead (1976) and his analyses of acts that are built on gestures, both vocal and non vocal. Tools that are used to understand the formation of gender are derived from concepts within the “doing gender” approach.”Doing gender” is to act in any situation in a way that will be seen as either consistent with one´s gender or as breaking against the norm. Doing gender is something we continuously are involved in without reflecting (West & Zimmerman 1991). By complex patterns of acceptance and resistence children take to their gender (Bjerrum Nielsen & Davies 1997).

In a qualitative study with a pedagogic ethnographic approach (Qvarsell 1994, Odelfors 1996), data has been collected by tape recorder and video camera at teacher education within profiles directed towards preschool and younger pupils.The investigation has been carried out at both the theoretical and the practical parts of the education. Sequenses have been selected, transcribed and analysed. The analyses are done in a very detailed way, a kind of micro analyses and both verbal and non verbal expressions are taken into account.

In the analyses of data from the preschools, as well as from the university seminars, traditional ways of expressing gender are found, but also expressions that reflect a diversity of doing gender. A variety of positions that adults and children take appear; for instance female teacher students as well as small girls taking quite active positions and boys taking passive. The different norms and ways of breakings against them that are expressed by adults and children, will be discussed in the presentation. Talking in detail about the different ways both children and adults do gender is one way to contribute to the construction of possible gender positions. The results point at a need for an increased knowledge of gender construction and new demands of gender counsciousness in teacher education. .