The purpose of the project was to engage Canadian pre-service teachers in a professional development course designed to (re)consider the relationship between education and contemporary patriarchal masculinities as well as the role of educators in exploring and opening up what it means to be a man or boy in the modern world. This project had both educational and research objectives. In terms of professional development, we aimed to engage a group of pre-service teachers in western Alberta, Canada in a conversation to explore and develop pedagogical practices that would support the group to engage with questions of masculinities in the classroom. From a research perspective, we were driven by the research questions:
• In what ways do pre-service teachers engage in questions of gender (in)justice in relation to masculinities in their teaching?
• What obstacles to pre-service teachers face in enacting critical pedagogical practices around masculinities?
• How effective is a critical pedagogical professional development course in cultivating awareness of, willingness to, and ability to engage with questions surrounding contemporary patriarchal masculinities?

Theoretical framework

The project is built on feminist informed Critical Masculinities Studies (CMS) and critical pedagogical principles. Building on CMS work that has highlighted the plurality, complexities, and dynamism of men’s and boys relationships with masculinities (Aboim, 2016; Berggren, 2014; Bridges & Pascoe, 2014) we developed a professional development course based on Freirean principles of critical pedagogy (Freire, 2017). The course was premised in the understanding that both educators and students have the power to develop social justice consciousness in their teaching and learning. In terms of masculinities, this means navigating the tensions around contemporary masculinities in which both students and teachers are caught up.

CMS draws attention to the ways that these tensions exist in educational spaces. Educational spaces are not immune from broader trends of patriarchy, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, and, in fact, may even act to cultivate and promote them (Connell, 2024; Martino & Frank, 2006; Pascoe, 2003, 2007; Roberts & Wescott, 2024; Wescott et al., 2024; Zhao et al., 2024). Yet, in many instances, education can also be an effective site for violence prevention (Barnett & Brennan, 2009; Chakraborty et al., 2020; Flood, 2019; Keddie, 2020) straight-queer allyship (Baams & Russell, 2021; Knott-Fayle et al., 2023), reflexive self-problematization (Kehler & Martino, 2007) and healthy relationship building (Setty, 2022).

Founded on feminist and critical pedagogical principles, we designed our study with the understanding that gender injustice exists, but is not permanent, and that social justice can be facilitated through consciousness raising and critical pedagogical practices that make teaching and learning a space for collective growth and transformation rather than simply the imparting of information. Fundamentally, we premise our approach on the understanding that educators have a responsibility to help disrupt the growth in contemporary patriarchal masculinities and instantiate anti-patriarchal masculinities. To do this, teachers need to develop the competency and confidence to act as change agents. Authors have pointed to various characteristics that underpin educators who act as change agents including lifelong learning, mastery, entrepreneurship and collaboration (Van Der Heijden et al., 2015) as well as self-belief and self-efficacy (Clark & Newberry, 2019; Pendergast et al., 2011).

Our professional development course took place over seven-weeks. Six pre-service teachers took place in the weekly professional development classes. We implemented what Freire calls “problem solving approaches” (Freire, 2017, p.52). In problem solving approaches, the role of the teacher as the holder and giver of information, and the student as a passive receiver of information, is rejected for collective dialogue and a teacher-student, student-teacher dynamic. This meant that we implemented a variety of methods ranging from dialogues, to poetry writing, to collage making, to media exploration, to reflexive writing. Though the techniques varied, the aim was the same; to elicit discussion surrounding how we challenge gender injustice and the damaging aspects of contemporary masculinities in our teaching and learning. In addition to the professional develop course itself, we conducted semi-structured interviews and a focus group. Prior to the course we interviewed each participant one-on-one to explore their understandings of masculinities and the role of educators in issues of gender justice. Six-months after the course was completed, we conducted a focus group with the whole group to understand what stuck with them from the course, whether they had been able to implement any of the pedagogical practices in their teaching and learning, and what obstacles they had faced in doing so. Overall, six pre-service teachers attended the professional development course giving us six interviews and an eight-person focus group (participants plus the two researcher-teachers). Our data sources are therefore varied in nature and include ethnographic observations, interview and focus group transcripts, and artefacts produced by the group during the classes (such as mind maps, reflexive writing, poems, and collages). We draw on this diverse data in our analysis.

Our results highlight both the obstacles that pre-service teachers face in implementing critical teaching and learning around contemporary patriarchal masculinities as well as they ways that this group of educators navigated those obstacles. The main obstacles faced by the group were: (1) Lack of Agency; (2) Colleague and Institutional Apathy; (3) One’s Own Prejudices; (4) Uncertainty Over How to Put Ideas into Practice. At the same time, the pre-service teachers demonstrated the desire, willingness, and ability to navigate these obstacles. Whilst the group demonstrated that their participation in the professional development course helped them to navigate these obstacles through increasing their capacity and confidence to respond to contemporary masculinities and gender (in)justice in their teaching we also found that existing inequalities are retrenched through these practices. The group was dominated by middle-class women with only one of the six participants identifying as a cisgender man (also middle-class). As such, with this type of professional development marginalized into optional professional development courses rather than embedded throughout the teacher education curriculum, people with less socio-economic security and thus other jobs or caring responsibilities were excluded. Additionally, the lack of men in the group demonstrates the way that boys and men often leave the burden of tackling gender injustice to women and girls. As such, the way that the group navigated these obstacles to critical pedagogy retrenched existing inequalities. Our study has important implications for the creation of effective professional development and improving teacher education. We highlight that what is needed is placing critical pedagogy and social justice at the heart of teacher education programs instead of leaving it up to optional professional development courses which end up excluding some whilst others exclude themselves from them.

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