Department of Curriculum & Teaching
Teachers College, Columbia University
Spring 2013
Office hours: M 4:30-6, T 3-4
lesko@tc.edu
Professor Nancy Lesko
310 Zankel Building
212/678-3264
C&T 4032
Gender, Difference and Curriculum
Overview: This course offers a multifaceted examination of school curricula, policies, and
practices as gendered. We will examine gender and difference in four broad areas related to
schools: sports, sexuality/romance, media (cultural studies), and academics. Gender will not be
considered in isolation but as interwoven with and complicated by cultural, racial, class, sexual,
religious, and national identities, as well. The readings are interdisciplinary and draw from
history, sociology, social studies of science, education, women’s studies, and cultural studies.
We will primarily utilize a feminist post-structuralist perspective and discuss how such analysis
and critique differs from liberal and multicultural feminisms; we will also examine how ethnicgender-class identities and cultures are often expressed through relationships with commodities,
such as, clothes, shoes, style, music, media, and “taste.” This course starts with a general
curriculum perspective, that is, one that considers schooling experiences as a whole and asks,
What is taught and learned, intentionally and unintentionally, by different girls and boys in
schools? We will also consider how teaching experiences are gendered.
Required books:
Messner, M. A. (2002). Taking the field: Women, men and sports. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. (available as e-book on CLIO)
Pascoe, C. J. (2007). Dude, you’re a fag: Masculinity and sexuality in high school. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Richardson, S. (2012). eleMENtary school: (Hyper)masculinity in a feminized context.
Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Additional course readings are available through TC Gottesman Library e-reserves.
The books are widely available in libraries and from online booksellers.
Major assignments:
3 credit requirements:
Short writings (gender “workshops” and response papers to readings)
One integrative essay
Curriculum analysis (done in small groups)
In-class presentation
Written analysis
Total
Gender, Difference & Curriculum
Spring 2013
30 pts
40 pts
10 pts
20 pts
100 pts
1
2 credit requirements:
Short writings (gender “workshops” and response papers to readings)
One integrative essay
Total
30 pts
40 pts
70 pts
Grade scale:
Points
98 – 100
94 – 97
90 – 93
88 - 90
84 - 87
80 - 83
78 - 80
74 - 77
70 - 73
Final Grade
A+
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
C-
WEEK-TO-WEEK SCHEDULE
(subject to instructor revision)
Week 1
January 29
Course introduction: Beginning with Trans
Handout: NY Times, Generation LGBTQIA
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/fashion/generation-lgbtqia.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
Week 2
February 5
Topic: Biological differences: Myths, investments, ambivalences, questions
Mini-lecture on research on brain/learning differences
Reading due:
Fausto-Sterling, The five sexes: Why male and female are not enough
Eliott, The myth of pink and blue brains
Fausto-Sterling (2012), Chp. 6, Thinking about homosexuality
Week 3
February 12
Topic: Heterosexuality: happiness, dominance, and school-resistance
Reading due:
Pascoe, Dude, Chps 1-3 (pp 1-83) (high school)
Bettie, Chp 3, How working-class chicas get working-class lives
Film clips:
Disney’s Cinderella
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Recommended:
Charles, Complicating hetero-femininities: young women, sexualities and 'girl power' at school.
Writing due: Gender workshop writing: Valentine’s Day
Describe what “special” events/activities are part of Valentine’s Day at your school. OR describe
your own experiences with Valentine’s Day (in the past or this year). Analyze, if you can, how
gender and class and sexuality/romance/love are being constructed in these activities. How are
commodities central to Valentine’s Day? 1-2 single spaced pages. Submit your writing as a doc
or docx attachment (labeled with your name & assignment) to nancylesko@yahoo.com
Due date: Sunday Feb 17 by midnight
Week 4
February 19
Topic:
Sexuality and romance/school practices
Reading due:
Walkerdine, Sex, power & pedagogy (pre-school)
Thorne, Creating a sense of opposite sides and Lip gloss and ‘goin with’ (upper elementary and
middle school)
Pascoe, Dude, Chps 4-6 (pp 84-174)
Film clip:
Disney’s Mulan
Writing due: Gender workshop writing
Consciously go against the proper “gender script” in some situation. It might be with your
family, in your professional life, shopping, dating, or in casual conversation with friends/partner.
Write 1-2 single-spaced pages describing what you did, how others responded, and your
responses to the events at the time, and your “debrief,” or thoughts and analysis now (after the
events). Submit your writing as a doc or docx attachment (labeled with your name & assignment)
to nancylesko@yahoo.com
Due date: Sunday Feb 24 by midnight
Week 5
February 26
Topic: Sex education
Mini-lecture: history of sex education
Reading due:
Lesko, Feeling abstinent? Feeling comprehensive? Touching the affects of sexuality curricula.
Fine & McClelland, Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these
years.
Allen, ‘They Think you Shouldn’t be Having Sex Anyway’: Young People’s Suggestions for
Improving Sexuality Education Content.
 We will look at examples of sexuality curricula:
New York City Department of Education Comprehensive Health Education
Curriculum
http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/FitnessandHealth/StandardsCurriculum/ComprehensiveHealthE
d.htm
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New York City Department of Education HIV/AIDS Curriculum
http://schools.nyc.gov/Academics/FitnessandHealth/StandardsCurriculum/HIVAIDSover
view.htm
FLASH comprehensive sexuality education
http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/personal/famplan/educators/flash.aspx
Writing due: Gender workshop writing
From whom did you learn gender rules?
Week 6
March 5
Topic: Teachers and gender
Reading due:
Richardson, eleMENtary, pp.1-75 and Boys Club Rules, pp. 150-158
Mac an Ghaill, The making of men, Chp 1, Teacher ideologies, representations, and practices
Recommended:
Rofes, Transgression and the situated body: Gender, sex and the gay male teacher (??)
Film clips:
The history boys, Kindergarten cop
Week 7
March 12
Topic: Male elementary teachers
Reading due:
Richardson, eleMENtary, pp. 77-145.
Jones, Learning proper masculine pleasures.
Integrative essay assignment distributed in class.
March 19
NO CLASS  SPRING BREAK WEEK
Week 8
March 26
Topic:
Academics, equity, success, leadership
Reading due:
Read either Set #1 or Set #2 and 1 article from Set #3
Set #1
Harris, Future girl, Introduction and Chp 1, Can-do and at-risk girls
Ferri and Connor, “I was the special ed girl”: Urban working class young women of color
Set #2
Harris, Chp 3, Citizenship & the self-made girl
Sensoy & Marshall, Missionary girl power: Saving the “Third World” one girl at a time.
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Set #3 (Select 1 article)
1. Kuzmic, Textbooks, knowledge and masculinity
2. Hughes, Exploring the availability of student scientist identities within curriculum
discourse: An anti-essentialist approach to gender-inclusive science
3. Vertinsky, Gender and the physical education curriculum: The dynamics of
difference
4. Collins, Art education as a negative example of gender-enriching curriculum
5. Walkerdine, Counting girls out: Girls and mathematics, Chp 2
Recommended:
American Association of University Women. (1992). How schools shortchange girls.
Executive Summary.
Connell, Teaching the boys
Film clips:
Precious and Juno
Integrative Paper due Sunday, March 31 by midnight. Please label the document with your
name and the title of the assignment. Submit document (doc or docx) as an attachment to
nancylesko@yahoo.com
Week 9
April 2
Topic: Sports and gender and the effectiveness of Title IX 40 years later
Reading due:
Messner, Taking the field, Chps 1-3 (pp 1-90)
Film clips: TBA
Writing due: Gender workbook writing on sports due Sunday April 7 by midnight.
Week 10
April 9
Topic: Sports and gender
Reading due:
Messner, Taking the field, Chps 4-5 (pp 91-166)
Film clips:
Kids
Week 11
April 16
Topic: Single-gender schooling: Investments and questions
Reading due:
Gender, Difference & Curriculum
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Lesko, McCall & Rafalow, Why “Are single-sex schools better?” is the wrong question.
Noguera, Saving Black and Latino boys.
Recommended:
Jackson, J. “Dangerous presumptions:” How single-sex reifies false notions of sex, gender and
sexuality
Guest speaker: Stephanie McCall
Week 12
April 23
Topic: Pedagogical approaches to diversity and anti-bullying; OR, Can we make schools “safe”?
Reading due:
Barry, Sheltered children
Boostrom, 'Safe spaces': reflections on an educational metaphor
Dumont, Safe spaces
Rasmussen, Safety and subversion
Week 13
April 30
American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting
No class session
Work on curriculum evaluations (presentation and report)
Week 14
May 7
Curriculum evaluation presentations
Week 15
TBA
May 14
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GENDER “WORKBOOK” WRITINGS
These writings ask you to explore the operation and/or interruption of proper gender scripts in
your own life. The ideas and exercises are adapted from Kate Bornstein’s, My gender workbook.
Each student is required to submit two workbook writings. There are six possible gender
workbook writings across the term, so each student will select the topics s/he will write on and
adhere to those due dates. The writings should be no more than 2 single-spaced, typed pages and
submitted as doc or docx attachment to nancylesko@yahoo.com
RESPONSE PAPERS TO COURSE READINGS
Response paper: A response paper is a 1-2 page single-spaced, typed response to a reading or
readings assigned for the next class. In your response paper, you should engage closely with the
text(s) at hand (one essay, two essays, three essays, whatever you choose), offering analysis,
argument, or questioning related to its assumptions, approaches, or conclusions. For example,
you might query a readings’ assumptions about the politics of education, you might relate the
reading to other reading(s) we have done, or you might conduct a mini-analysis of something
outside of class using (a) text(s) from class. These are only examples, but these response papers
are not merely summaries of readings.
Students will write short responses to the assigned reading for any 3 class sessions. The response
papers should be emailed by midnight of the Sunday before the class in which those are required
readings. Late papers will not count as a completed assignment.
INTEGRATIVE ESSAY
The integrative essay is a short paper (5 DS typed pages) that provides an opportunity to think
further, analyze, and synthesize some of your ideas along with some of the authors we have read.
Specific questions and directions will be provided and students will have at least three weeks to
work on the essays.
Use one citation style, e.g. APA, MLA, or Chicago. Essays will be graded according to how well
you articulate an interpretation (stance or argument), the incisive and accurate use of course
readings, your ability to push issues and ideas further, and your use of concise and correct
academic writing. You may discuss the essays with other students, but you are expected to write
your papers individually.
CURRICULUM EVALUATION ASSIGNMENT
(3 credit students only)
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Bullying has become a short-hand way to refer to particular kinds of school climates and cultures
that are exclusive, threatening, and inequitable. Many students find schools uncomfortable or
even impossible places because of these dynamics and climates. Bullying is also a code word for
schools’ problems addressing LGBTQIA students and issues. Bullying may also refer to the
dominance of some forms of masculinity (e.g. Pascoe). Schools are purchasing and using antibullying curricula to address these issues. This assignment asks each student to become a
member of a team of consultants to review one anti-bullying curriculum. Each team of
consultants will do a class presentation based on their analysis and recommendations and
produce a final written report.
Optimally, each of the evaluation teams will have 3-5 members.
Each team's final written report must have the following parts:
1) Cover page
Each team should give itself a name, e.g. Dangerous Knowledge Consultants, Teaching for
Tomorrow Consultants, or Democratic Education Consultants. List all of the members of
your consulting team. List the full title of the anti-bullying curriculum that your team is
evaluating. (1 page)
2) Introduction to your team's report
In this section your team must state some of its starting assumptions and overall approach to
curriculum and teaching. What are the relevant contexts in your team’s consideration of this
anti-bullying curriculum? What are your team’s priorities for how teachers and students
should approach this topic? What reservations, questions, or limits to your own
understandings (or perspective) do you think it is important to acknowledge? (1 - 2 doublespaced typed pages)
3) Strengths of the formal (written) curriculum
The strengths can take various forms, for example, how the content is presented/organized;
the appropriateness of language and content for the age of students; attention to diversity
among students and teachers; importance of lessons’ goals; attention to values; attention to
language and vocabulary; curricular knowledge connections or lack of connections to
students’ existing knowledge, understandings, and experiences; the lessons’ foci are on
important (not trivial) knowledge and understandings; the lessons seem doable; assessments
(if included) are closely linked to the lessons and likely to be useful; students are likely to be
engaged and interested in the lessons, etc. This is not a mandatory list of criteria, but rather
numerous suggestions to begin your own group’s thinking.
4) Limitations of the formal (written) curriculum
Limitations are the omissions or inadequacies or gaps of the curriculum. Are there
unintended learnings or consequences of the curriculum? See section above on Strengths for
areas to consider. These are only suggestions. (Sections 3 & 4 together should be 3 - 4
double-spaced typed pages)
5) Concerns and questions
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What concerns or worries did your group generate about the anti-bullying curriculum? For
example, your team might have concerns or questions about: teacher preparedness; teacher
professional development opportunities; the focus of the lessons; the range and quality of
activities and/or assignments, etc. Does your team have concerns about classroom
interactions as teachers utilized the lessons and materials? Are the summative activities
good? Is there a “hidden curriculum”? Is there a “null curriculum” (things completely
omitted or made unthinkable by the curriculum)? Does the curriculum provide opportunities
for students? For which students? What concerns might parents have about the curriculum?
How might teachers anticipate and defuse parents’ concerns? Who developed the curriculum,
what social positions do they have, and what are their assumptions about teaching and
learning? (1 – 3 double-spaced typed pages)
6) Summary/Conclusion
Briefly summarize your overall assessment. If possible, suggest revisions to the curriculum
(1 double-spaced typed page)
Due dates
Class presentations of the teams’ reviews will occur on May 7. The final written reports are due
no later than Friday May 10 by midnight. Please submit one copy of the final report as a doc or
docx attachment to nancylesko@yahoo.com
Class presentations
The presentations will: 1) share approaches and ideas with classmates, 2) allow for critical
feedback, questions, and comments to be incorporated into the written report, and 3) promote a
general discussion of the issues that arise from particular curricular and pedagogical approaches
to anti-bullying.
There is no set format for the presentations. Try to include the following information in the 10minute presentation:
1. A brief overview of the perspective that your team took on curriculum.
2. A discussion of some of the major strengths and limitations that your team found in
the curriculum that you reviewed.
3. Concerns or worries that your team had about the curriculum. You may raise
questions or discuss ambivalences or ambiguities in your review.
Each curriculum consultancy team will have 10 minutes to present an overview of its report, 2
additional minutes for Q&A.
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Reserve Readings, full citations
Allen, L. (2008). ‘They Think you Shouldn’t be Having Sex Anyway’: Young People’s Suggestions for
Improving Sexuality Education Content. In Sexualities, Vol 11 (5), 573-594
American Association of University Women. (1992). How schools shortchange girls.
Washington, D.C.: The American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. Executive
Summary.
Barry, R. (2000). Sheltered children: The self-creation of a safe space by gay, lesbian & bisexual students.
In L. Weis & M. Fine, Eds., Construction sites, pp. 84-99. New York: Teachers College Press.
Bettie, J. (2003). Women without class: Girls, race, and identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
(Chp 3, How Working-class chicas get working-class lives, pp. 57-94.)
Boostrom, R. (1998). 'Safe spaces': reflections on an educational metaphor. Journal of Curriculum
Studies, 30(4), 397 - 408.
Charles, C. E. (2010). Complicating hetero-femininities: young women, sexualities and 'girl power' at
school. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23: 1, 33 — 47
Collins, G. (1995). Art education as a negative example of gender-enriching curriculum. In J. Gaskell and
J. Willinsky (Eds.), Gender in/forms curriculum: From enrichment to transformation, pp. 43-58.. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Connell, R. W. (1996). Teaching the boys: New research on masculinity and gender strategies for
schools. Teachers College Record 98(2), 206-235.
Dumont, M. P. (2011). Safe space. In Lesko, N. & Talburt, S. (Eds.), Keywords in Youth Studies (pp. 257262). New York: Routledge.
Eliot, L. (2010). The myth of pink and blue brains. Educational Leadership, pp. 32-36.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2012). Sex/gender: Biology in a social world. New York: Routledge. (Chp 6,
Thinking about homosexuality, pp. 70-98.)
Fausto-Sterling, A. (1996). The five sexes: Why male and female are not enough. In K. E. Rosenblum &
T. C. Travis (Eds.), The meaning of difference (68 – 72). New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Ferri, B. and Connor, D. (2010). “I was the special ed. girl:” Urban working-class young women of
colour. Gender and Education, 22 (1), pp. 105-121.
Fine, M. and McClelland. (2006). Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these years.
Harvard Education Review, 76 (3), pp. 297-338.
Harris, A. (2004). Future girl: Young women in the 21st century. NY & London: Routledge.
Gender, Difference & Curriculum
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Hughes, G. (2001). Exploring the availability of student science identities within curriculum discourse:
An anti-essentialist approach to gender-inclusive science. Gender and Education, 13 (3), pp. 275-290.
Jackson, J. (2010). “Dangerous presumptions:” How single-sex schooling reifies false notions of sex,
gender and sexuality. Gender and Education, 22 (2), pp. 227-238.
Jones, A. (2001). Learning proper masculine pleasures: Santa and the teacher. Paper presented at
American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Seattle, WA.
Kuzmic, J. J. (2000). Textbooks, knowledge, and masculinity: Examining patriarchy from within. In N.
Lesko, Ed. Masculinities at school, pp. 105-126. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lesko, N., McCall, S. & Rafalow, M. (under review). Why “Are single-sex schools better?” is the wrong
question.
Lesko, N. (2010). Feeling abstinent? Feeling comprehensive? Touching the affects of sexuality curricula.
Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 10(3), 281-297.
Mac an Ghail, M. (1994). Teacher ideologies, representations, and practices. In The making of men:
Masculinities, sexualities, and schooling, pp. 15 – 50. London: Open University Press.
Noguera, P. A. (2012). Saving Black and Latino boys. Kappan 93(5), 9-12.
Rasmussen, M. L. (2004). Safety and subversion: The production of sexualities and genders in school
spaces. In M. L. Rasmussen, E. Rofes & S. Talburt (Eds.), Youth and sexualities: Pleasure, subversion,
and insubordination in and out of schools (pp. 131-152). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [available as ebook]
Rofes, E. (2000). Transgression and the situated body: Gender, sex and the gay male teacher. In S.
Talburt & S. Steinberg (Eds.), Thinking queer: Sexuality, culture and education (pp 131-150). New York:
Peter Lang.
Sensoy, O. and Marshall, E. (2010). Missionary girl power: Saving the “Third World” one girl at a time.
Gender and Education, 22 (3), pp. 295-311.
Thorne, B. (1993). Creating a sense of opposite sides. In Gender play: Girls and boys in school, pp. 63 –
88. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ Press.
Thorne, B. (1993). Lip gloss and “goin’ with”: Becoming teens. In Gender play: Girls and boys in school,
pp. 135-156. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ Press.
Walkerdine, V. (1990). Sex, power & pedagogy. In Schoolgirl fictions, pp. 3-15. London: Verso.
Walkerdine, V. (1998) Counting girls out: Girls and mathematics. London: Falmer Press.
Vertinsky, P. (1995). Gender and the physical education curriculum: The dynamics of difference. In J.
Gaskell and J. Willinsky (Eds.), Gender in/forms curriculum: From enrichment to transformation, pp.
230-245. New York: Teachers College Press.
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