This paper provides a theoretical discussion about the links between the concepts of ‘epistemic gender positioning’ and ‘practical epistemology’ as analytical tools to investigate gender in didactics. It relies on two research excerpts which examine how two experienced female teachers interact with girls and boys during a volleyball lesson (Amade-Escot, 2003: grade 8^th grade, 13-14 years old:) and a football lesson (Costes, 2003: grade 6^th, 11-12 years old) in two French middle schools.

The qualitative analysis of two episodes highlights how participants’ practical epistemologies is marked by different gendered form of positioning along transactions that have implications in terms of the dynamics of the didactic contract and the differentiated and gendered learning trajectories resulting from it. Relying on the findings of the two episodes, we discuss within the theoretical framework of joint action in didactics how the concept of ‘epistemic gender positioning’ - as a dimension of both teacher’s and student’s practical epistemologies - allows to better understand how gender order is enacted in physical education classes through day to day curriculum experiences.

Insights on the research framework:

To capture in detail the gendered curriculum in motion in classroom settings, the approach draws on the idea that the knowledge taught and learned and all meaning making associated are co-produced by teacher and students in culturally situated institutions. The analysis takes into account simultaneously the teacher, the students and the particular situatedness of knowledge content as interrelated instances. Teachers’ and students’ practices are theoretically seen as didactical joint action. But it does not mean that participants share the same goals or the same agendas; on the contrary many transactions take place in the course of didactical joint actions that express the functioning of the didactic contract. Actually, for Schubauer-Leoni (1996) the didactic contract - like any communication contract - presupposes a system of reciprocal and contextualized recognition about what is at stake in the transaction (in the two research excerpts: the volleyball and football knowledge intended to be learned). At the heart of this system of reciprocal recognition, which exclude neither uncertainty nor misunderstanding, practical epistemologies (Wickman, 2004) shape the way the teacher and each student define the situation and commits her/himself to the ongoing process of didactical transactions (Amade-Escot, 2019b).

Here comes the notion of ‘differential didactic contract’: the meaning that each student attributes to the situation in which she/he is involved may differ; symmetrically the teacher may interact differently with each student. These transactional relations are at the heart of the differential dynamics of the didactic contract, which is ‘… not implicitly negotiated with all the students of the classroom but with some groups of students which have diverse standings in the classroom. These standings are related to diverse hierarchies of excellence and are partially attributable to students' social origins’ (Schubauer-Leoni, 1996, p. 160, our translation). By expanding this definition, we have considered that gender plays an important role in the functioning of the differential didactic contract (Verscheure et Amade-Escot, 2007). Drawing on these theoretical strands, we argue that classroom transactions should be described in detail to better understand the differential process that is at the core of gender inequalities in teaching and learning. In this purpose, the concept of ‘epistemic gender positioning’ helps in interpreting the observed transactions.

The presentation of the two research excerpts relies on classroom video analysis, and on teacher and students' interviews collected during two units of physical education in two middle schools. The theoretical discussion is based on the analysis of these empirical data, which illustrate how gendered learning is enacted through ordinary didactical transactions in classroom settings.

Relying on the presentation of the two research excerpts and their analyses within the theoretical framework of joint action in didactics, the discussion will focus on the links between epistemic gender positioning and teacher and student practical epistemologies. Using the analytical concept of ‘epistemic gender positioning’ allows identifying: 1) what pertains to the realm of teacher’s practical epistemology in terms of what she/he recognizes or privileges as a state of knowledge among students in relation to the construction of the referenced knowledge; and 2) what pertains to students’ practical epistemologies in terms of how they act in the immediate learning environment in which they are embedded by positioning and repositioning themselves in relation with the content at stake (Amade-Escot, 2019a; Verscheure, 2020; Verscheure, Amade-Escot & Vinson, 2020 ; Verscheure & Debars, 2019) The conclusion will highlight how the concept of epistemic gender positioning opens relevant ways in Didactics to understand how the cultural, institutional, social and gendered backgrounds weigh on the teaching and learning processes and the extent to which they contribute to the fabrication of gendered inequalities. It will plead also for the deepening of the theoretical articulations between ‘epistemic gender positioning’, ‘practical epistemology’, and ‘differential didactic contract’ through empirical gender studies in the various subject didactics.

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