Speakers
Description
This paper presents the ‘Action’ developed during the final cycle of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study exploring a socio-ecological approach to gender bullying at a co-educational private day and boarding school (Doyle and O’Brien, forthcoming). We constructed a knowledgebase by mapping human (students, teachers and support staff) intra-actions with different discourses, objects, materials, spaces, and time, to understand the normativity of gender expectations and its complex array of inclusions and exclusions (Ringrose & Rawlings, 2015).
PAR is a flexible and inclusive methodology recognising participant’s agency and contribution to knowledge. A key feature is the focus on ‘Action’ as a bridge between theoretical knowledge and its application to practice (O’Brien, et al., forthcoming).
Through a series of individual workshops with students, teachers, and support staff we explored the PAR findings using the gardening analogy ‘weed’ (stop doing), ‘feed’ (develop further), and ‘seed’ (new ideas/ways of working), in relation to gender bullying at the school.
Weed: Gender inequality in the curriculum; culture of ‘male’ ‘normalised’ behaviour; spaces including locker-rooms and classrooms as bullying ‘hotspots’.
Feed: Student’s social and emotional education; equality in sports; upstander mentality; positive teacher and staff role-models; larger presence of staff supervision in ‘hotspots’.
Seed: Staff professional development; gender equality plan for curriculum; building student’s agency; the bullying reporting processes.
An ‘Action Plan’ was developed to create a more inclusive/safer school environment. This incorporated a complex array of intra-actions, not only new roles but adjustments to curriculum (including sports), spaces (locker-rooms), objects (policies), discourse (workshops) and time (assemblies).
Keywords
Gender bullying, power dynamics, Participatory Action Research (PAR), agency
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
|---|---|
| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Qualitative method study |
