Session Information
27 SES 08 A, Gender and Didactics: From Curricula to Classroom Practices
Symposium
Contribution
To understand the construction of sexual identities, Rebecca Rogers (2007) mentions the interest of a cross approach of the researches within social history, gender history and school contents history. In this sense, the history of home economics reveals what she means by "sex of some school knowledge". The analysis of textbooks reveals indeed a distinction of scientific and technical knowledge for young girls or boys (Lebeaume, 2014). It also reveals the features of this curriculum built from different topics of practices (nutrition, childcare, health, couture…) and not from school disciplines. For example, the textile technology or the alimentation chemistry are applied sciences, different of academic sciences in reason of their particular characters without universal purposes. About textbooks, Aurélie Brayet (2010) draws attention to the pictures and illustrations as means of an unformal education that shape social roles. In this perspective the communication aims to examine the pictures and illustrations as a vehicle for standardization of practices and gender roles. It is centred on the "applied science courses" - created by Jean Zay and defined as the transition between school and life. One main characteristic is to be a differentiated instruction for boys and girls and for rural and urban classes (programs of 1941, 1947 and 1953). In terms of methodology, these historical inquiry and comparative analysis are conducted by examining four collections of school textbooks dedicated to girls' schools and those for boys over the period 1940-1960. The data are analyzed by identifying the whole of illustrations (drawings, diagrams, pictures, photographs...) and by their characterizing (lifestyle, technical operations, gestures, artefacts, legends...). This quantitative and qualitative comparison reveals, with no real surprise, priorities of textbooks for girls for pictures that value "the joys of the family make true happiness". However, if the artefacts and mechanisms are presented in the same way for boys and girls, the distinction is made on the activities proposed. Thus, gender norms are in relationship with the territories defined by the programs. In the model of the traditional family, these territories correspond in part to "homework" assigned to women and to men. The investigation of this silent initiation continues the discussion initiated by the researches on the “gender of objects” (Anstett and Célard, 2012) and on the “engendering of things” (Chabaud-Rytcher & Gardey, 2002).
References
Anstett É. & Célard M-L. (2012) (dir.). Les objets ont-ils un genre ? Culture matérielle et production sociale des identités sexuées, Paris: Armand Colin. Brayet A. (2010). L’image et la fée du logis, former des femmes à devenir de bonnes ménagères , in Françoise Laot (dir.), L’image dans l’histoire de la formation des adultes (pp. 49-68). Paris: L’Harmattan. Chabaud-Rychter D. & Gardey D. (2002) (dir.). L’engendrement des choses, Des hommes, des femmes et des techniques. Paris: Éditions des archives contemporaines. Lebeaume J. (2014). L’enseignement ménager en France 1880-1980 Sciences et techniques au féminin. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. Rogers R. (2007). L’éducation des filles, un siècle et demi d’historiographie, Histoire de l’éducation, n° 115-116, 37-79.
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