This document discusses a session on gender and widening participation in education. The session will look at gender roles and stereotypes in education, and how attitudes are changing. It will also discuss widening participation in further and higher education. The session aims to identify gender issues and stereotypes in compulsory education, and consider how extending compulsory education to age 19 could impact higher education.

1. Gender and Widening
Participation – Session 1
Linda Cooper
linda.cooper@anglia.ac.uk

2. Today’s Session
∗ Looking specifically at gendered roles in education
∗ Stereotyping and changing attitudes
∗ Widening participation (WP) – Further Education (FE)
and Higher Education (HE) sectors
∗ Consider the move towards raising the age of
compulsory education and the effect on HE

3. Learning Outcomes – 1st Session
∗ Students will be able to:
∗ Compose a list of inequalities and stereotypes in
compulsory education and demonstrate the sources
of such inequality
∗ Identify gendered issues in the 14-19 Education and
Skills Implementation Plan

4. Workplace stereotypes - girls

5. Workplace stereotypes - boys

6. Gender Stereotyping pre HE
∗ Boys’ lack of achievement in schools (Ingram, 2009)
∗ Girls’ and boys’ behaviour – social expectation and
teacher authority (Shilela, 2002)
∗ How families instill stereotyping through their values
and beliefs (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977)

7. Compulsory education
∗ Post-It Task:
∗ Compose a list of gender stereotypes in boys and girls
and demonstrate the sources of the inequality

8. Looking at 14-19 Plan
∗ See handout - 3 references to gender
∗ Page 13, 1.5
∗ Page 71, 4.25
∗ Page 75, 4.35

9. Extending compulsory education
in England to age 19
∗ Task:
∗ Look at the handout and consider the three points
raised from items in the 14-19 Plan

10. Re-cap
∗ Identify that from birth, the home is a site for the
reproduction of stereotypes
∗ Social and peer groups often cement these
stereotypes through childhood (Reay, 1998)
∗ By the age of 14, these ideas are often ‘entrenched’
(DfES, 2005: 75)
∗ Educational success then encroaches on
further/higher education options

11. References 1
∗ Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, J-C., 1977. Reproduction in
education, society and culture. London: Sage.
∗ Department for Education and Skills, 2005 [Online] .
14-19 Education and Skills Implementation Plan.
Available at:
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/
_arc_Postcompulsory/Page1/UOB%202037%202005
[Accessed: 07.10.12].
∗ Gorard, S., et al., 1999. Reappraising the apparent
underachievement at school. Gender and Education.
Vol 11, No 4, p441-454.

12. References 2
∗ Ingram, N., 2009. Working class boys, educational
success and the misrecognition of working class
culture. British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol
30, No 4, p421-434.
∗ Reay, D., 1998. Class work: mother’s involvement in
their children’s primary schooling. London: UCL Press.
∗ Shilela, A., 2002. Dialogue with difference: teaching
for equality in primary schools. In: Moyles, J., and
Robinson, G., (Eds). Beginning teaching, beginning
learning (2nd ed). Buckingham: Open University Press.