In this paper, we engage withthe productive culture of teaching in Czech (art) education. Since 1989, when our society officially became democratic, the educational curriculum and culture has been permanently transformed.  Moree (2020) describes the current Czech school culture as transitional, because it still contains the signs and ideals of the old socialist and at the same time the new democratic culture. The task of the current Czech didactics theory is to make teachers more easily understand the current curriculum and use more liberal postmodern didactic approaches standardized in the Western world. Our paper is an attempt to create a helpful analytical tool based on the metaphor of gender differentiation of teaching approaches deeply rooted in our culture as dominant fiction (Silverman, 1996). However, with the help of specific postmodern theories, we give the metaphors new meanings helping teachers with a transition to more open ways of teaching.

The didactics of art education is our main research domain. The theoretical framework of our thinking is formed by many post-structural approaches that appreciate openness and uncertainty. These approaches include issues of gender, culture, visual and psychoanalytic studies, all of which undermine established cultural values and force people to establish their own attitude towards these values or to create new one’s. These theoretical perspectives cast doubt on fixed human identity and analyse the processes of identity construction. The human subject and its identity is, from a post-structural perspective, the result of discursive practices (Foucault, 1972). The human as a subject is rather an ideal or social norm constructing us through discursive practices. The terms of subjectivity imply this opening up of the subject to the process of becoming a subject or also revealing its other hidden layers of non-identity (Fink, 1995). Another framework of our research is the educational process theory. We study and develop the educational constructivism theory (Reusser, 2006), which is important to us in its radical (individual) and postmodern social form. Teaching/learning is seen as a socio-cultural process of creating (linguistic) meanings, as a process where the socio-cultural environment plays an essential role (Atkinson, 2018).  The term visual literacy is essential for art education (Fulková, 2009, 2019ꓼ Raney, 1999ꓼ Wagner & Schönau, 2016).  This term has functional character and resonates with the UNESCO definition of a functionally literate person who can be involved in all activities where literacy is required for effective functioning in his/her group and community while also enabling him/her to continue reading, writing, and counting for their own sake and their community. Visual literacy is defined by a set of skills required for free dealing with visual images.

Our paper is based on previous quantitative research (Svatošová, 2017) reflecting the topic of gender stereotypes in assigned creative tasks in art education. This research proved that gender issues are often present in teaching, but not always explicitly in the topic of tasks.

Thus, our main goal is to describe the implicit invisible gender cultural approaches of the teaching/ learning process.

Our basic research questions are as follows:

What tactics teachers practice in teaching in order to create a productive educational culture and fulfill educational goals?

What problems do they reflect in their teaching practice and how do they solve them?

In this follow-up study, we use qualitative methods of interpretive analysis (qualitative analysis/coding participants' responses) and discourse analysis to reveal power-related dynamism of social/educational practices (10 deep interviews with art teachers of general schools, 2016-17). Interview entries were: art teaching practice, theme of gender, general teacher's understanding of the educational goals and teachers´ ability to reflect art education referring to articulation of social problems, prejudices and stereotypes). 150 pages of interview transcripts were analysed using MAXQDA software and organized into conceptual maps leading to a final assembly of structural gender teaching tactic components.

Transcript analysis has provided a description of feminine and masculine tactics in teaching. Only a few teachers can effectively combine these approaches to create a productive educational culture in their teaching. The result of our research is a model of gender-balanced teaching, which can serve teachers as an effective tool for analysing the process of their own teaching, which can help them to improve their educational results. Gender analysis of their practice can positively influence their own conception of the curriculum, the way of assigning tasks, the dynamics of the whole educational process and the overall quality of a productive educational culture.

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