This symposium is a response to the Network 27 special call: Investigating gender in educational practice and theory: didactics, learning and teaching.

The symposium focuses attention on gender in analyses of educational practices in didactics, learning and teaching across educational sectors, from schools to higher education. It does so in an educational context in which gender continues to be a key determinant of access, success and failure, and in a broader social climate in which, despite the notable successes of many European women political leaders, some international political figures continue to publicly denigrate woman and girls. At the same time, social movements organized to support educational, political and cultural progress on gender equality are taking off across the world, and feminist activism amongst young women seems to be having a resurgence. Education is not a separate system; it is part of the wider world and, as such, is inextricably shaped by these broader historical, social, economic and cultural forces. These forces influence education in both hidden and overt ways and find expression in gendered norms, values, attitudes, relations and practices. It therefore seems timely to refocus attention on questions such as: what is going on in educational practices in terms of gender? How can gender be approached and analyzed in relation to didactics, learning and teaching? What theories help us to explore gender and how? What are the histories and temporalities of gender in international educational contexts? In addressing these questions, the symposium builds on symposia from previous ECER conferences which have brought colleagues together to consider the issues and challenges of gender inequity in educational practices. 

The symposium has a number of aims. First, it seeks to open a constructive space to explore gender in learning and teaching in detail in relation to subject knowledge, curriculum content, and student-teacher relations in practice and policy in different international contexts. Second, in positioning gender as an analytical theme, the symposium seeks to bring together international diverse approaches and shared insights across the Anglophone tradition of learning and teaching and the European didactics traditions. Third, the symposium will provide a forum where researchers can engage with these pressing issues in order to develop effective educational interventions to support and enact greater gender equality in their teaching and research in their own institutions.

The four papers in the symposium deal with different dimensions of gender in a range of national contexts. They utilise different theoretical approaches to explore gender and articulate in different ways to broader debates about social and cultural politics. Taken together, the papers make a compelling case for reconsidering gender and in suggesting new ways of doing learning and teaching differently in order to enhance gender equality in education. Such a goal is, we think, fundamental to a more democratic society, and a goal worth striving for. We hope you can join us in this.