Gender and Education, 2014

Vol. 26, No. 3, 215–231, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2014.901719

Constructing men who teach: research into care and gender as

productive of the male primary teacher
Mark Pulsford*

School of Education, University of Sheffield, 388 Glossop Road, S10 2JA Sheffield, UK
(Received 9 February 2013; final version received 9 February 2014)

This paper argues that in order to begin loosening the ties that bind care and gender
in primary education, we need to re-examine the knowledge sought and found by
educational research about teachers. The focus is primarily on how we understand
men who teach. Through an examination of two scholarly texts – Ashley, M., and
J. Lee [2003. Women Teaching Boys: Caring and Working in the Primary School.
Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham] and King, J. [1998. Uncommon Caring: Learning from
Men Who Teach Young Children. New York: TCP] – I argue that we must be
mindful that our research can effectively produce and reiterate common-sense
understandings of men that binds them to the hegemonic masculine ideal. It is
argued that mixed-method qualitative research that untangles the layers of
context influencing the lives of men who teach is important. The paper also
suggests that the study of male teachers’ emotions, as at once individual and
social, and private and public, can disrupt the rational–emotional binary that
cements care to gender and reveal new configurations of the gender order.
Keywords: male teachers; primary teachers; gender; masculinities; identities; care;
emotions; life history; mixed-methods research

Introduction
This paper begins with, and wants to hold on to throughout, the assertion of Goodson:
‘the kind of research knowledge we generate about teachers and for teachers is crucial
in order to understand and define what sort of professionals teachers are and might
become’ (2000, 13). Goodson is here specifically arguing against teachers being
framed as technicians, ‘deliverers of prescriptions written by others’ (14), instead
seeking to ‘sponsor the teacher’s voice’ as a counter-cultural stand against the
‘power/knowledge … held by politicians and administrators’ (17). Educational
research constructs and can legitimate visions of the teacher, and as such needs to be
the object of investigation and critique itself; we need to continually consider the foun-
dations that research inquiries and conclusions are based on, since these processes are
both framed by and come to re-generate dominant discourses in academia and everyday
life. I will argue here, via an examination of two scholarly works about teachers, care
and gender, that such re-consideration can lead to a revision of ideas and alternative
possibilities for future research.
A foundation of teachers’ professional identities, as well as their contemporary
working conditions, is gender (Dillabough 2005). As such it is a feature of teachers’

*Email: mjpulsford1@sheffield.ac.uk

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

216 M. Pulsford

lives and work that needs to be considered in research with them. But problematising
the knowledge we seek about gender (as so about teachers) is vital: how is knowledge
about teachers’ (gendered) identities and working lives produced and interpreted? It is
useful here to consider that there are contradictory knowledges about masculinities, and
gender more generally, produced and propagated by science, in ‘common sense’, and in
a kind of intuitive, individual ‘knowing’ (Connell 2005, 4). This contestation over the
systems of knowledge around gender reflects conflicting discourses in (as well as
within) academia and ‘everyday life’. This is because gender itself is bound within
specific political and historical contexts (Connell 2005, 4) and hence – following the
line of argument above about the definitional power of research – we could say that
the way we research men and masculinities will reflect the way we currently see,
and delineate the possibilities enabled for us to see, men and masculinities.
The need that this expresses, to be critical of what and how we know, will be taken
up as a central point of consideration throughout this paper: my main aim is to continue
questioning the types of knowledge we produce, and seek, regarding men who teach. In
doing this I will endeavour to illustrate that what may appear unproblematic in our
understandings of men and male teachers, and the issues related to them, can tend to
reflect ‘masculinist social epistemologies’ and as such ‘bear the ideological convictions
of the socially dominant’ (Francis 2010, 479); in effectively reiterating common-sense
understandings of men, the gender order remains intact. It is my argument that in order
to loosen the ties that bind care and (female) gender in primary education – an historical
and political construction underscored by notions of the inferior, unintelligent, woman
‘naturally’ suited to child-rearing (Steedman 1985) – we need to re-examine the knowl-
edge sought and found about teachers. The focus in this paper will be on men who teach
since I believe that if we can begin to see men in alternative ways, it may open new
ways for women to be represented too.

Analysing research on men, care and teaching

To begin to fulfil my aims for this paper I will examine two scholarly texts – one based
on research in England and the other on research in the USA – written over 10 years
ago. These books have been selected for their unique focus on care, primary teaching
and men and masculinities – there are few book-length scholarly texts that cover this
area. They are also frequently cited in academic works and thus continue to be pertinent
in the debate about men, care and teaching. However, throughout the paper I will also
make reference to other relevant research – from within and outside of England and the
USA – in order to construct my critique and place the findings from the two focus books
in broader context. Also – importantly – I will do this to illustrate how some more
recent research with men addresses several of the issues I draw out; the initial concen-
tration on these two influential books provides the basis for a consideration of the ways
we research the lives and experiences of men.
This paper will suggest that the two focus texts tend to reproduce a normative
understanding of men, despite their intentions to foreground alternative conceptualis-
ations. My consideration of this issue will lay the groundwork for and then lead into
a wider theoretical and methodological discussion about how we might research men
as embodied people living their everyday/every night lives (Smith 1992), as well as
as subjects delineated by more abstract gendered discourses. I approach this analysis
from a broadly socio-materialist perspective, one that encourages us to see the
complex and networked entanglements of meaning and the material (people,
 Gender and Education 217

discourses, objects, spaces and artefacts) and which – most pertinently here – thinks
hard about how ‘our research methods tend to enact as well as to describe the thing
being researched, without always recognising the implication of their own interference’
(Fenwick and Edwards 2010, 145).
Ashley and Lee’s (2003) Women Teaching Boys: Caring and Working in the
Primary Classroom and King’s (1998) Uncommon Caring: Learning from Men Who
Teach Young Children both revolve around gender and care in primary and early
years education, and both seek to debunk prevalent claims about male teachers in
these settings. For example, Ashley and Lee build a case ‘against the conception of
primary teaching as mothering’, and hence seek to break down what they see as the
prime factor underlying the ‘more male role models’ discourse. King’s work too
focuses on gender roles in primary education, asking ‘What happens when teachers
who are male teach in domains that are thought to be female?’ (1998, 26). He suggests
that men who teach are ‘at risk’ when they care: either they risk being seen as ‘unna-
tural’ and feminine, at risk of accusations of sexualising the act of care, or at risk
because we disrupt the ‘economy that traps female teachers in an early education sweat-
shop’ (King 1998, 138). King is frustrated by the ‘circular’ debates he has with his par-
ticipants though, around how discourses of gender are tied with both care and sexuality
and implicated in the organisation and understanding of teaching (29). Ashley and Lee
seek to address such problems by transcending the gendered discourses of care in teach-
ing by introducing a model of the ‘androgynous’ teacher. King’s frustration and Ashley
and Lee’s solution are examined in more depth below.
Despite Ashley and Lee’s Women Teaching Boys being the more recent publication,
I begin with it as it opens the terrain (of research into gender, care and teacher profes-
sionalism) for exploration throughout the rest of the paper. Furthermore, King’s
Uncommon Caring is presented second as it provides a useful contrasting argument
to Ashley and Lee’s conclusions, which then leads us into a lengthier methodological
discussion.

Women teaching boys

Ashley and Lee argue that for teachers ‘the most significant daily act of caring about
children probably concerns the management of their relationships’ (31). This manage-
rial and strategic role, aimed at the collective rather than to individual children’s needs,
is thought of as caring about, rather than a more ‘motherly’ caring for (Tronto 1993).
This caring about, Ashley and Lee argue, has no equivalent in parenting and hence dis-
courses of motherly care are inappropriately applied to teaching and teachers. So, for
example, rather than just comforting a child who has been bullied (caring for), a pro-
fessional caring teacher would (or should) note the need to address such issues at the
curriculum level, since such professionals have a responsibility ‘for promoting the
spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of all children’ (31). Both male and
female teachers can thus demonstrate behaviours that might be ‘conceptualised as
both feminine and masculine’ (71), and hence, they describe this type of teacher as
‘androgynous’, one that avoids masculine or feminine ‘pathologies’ (74) or extremes
of gendered behaviour.
In arguing this, the authors utilise a social constructionist theoretical framework in
that they ‘do not subscribe to the view that women are inherently more capable of or
suited to caring for children in school’, and likewise that men are not naturally better
at ‘rational, focused, cognitive subject delivery’ (21). In suggesting that such popular
218 M. Pulsford

discourses, which reflect power relations in society, complicate such a ‘straightforward

outlook on gender equality’ (Tronto 1993, 21) and that men and women are able to
demonstrate behaviours that are both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, they could be said
to be adopting a post-structuralist stance (Burman 2005; Francis 2010).

Relegating teachers’ voices: methodological questions

Whilst information is sparse regarding Ashley and Lee’s methodological deliberations,
the majority of their data come from around 50 boys aged between 8 and 11 from 8
primary schools in the South West of England. Observations of the boys in lessons
and interviews conducted in their homes were used. A second part of their research
is with teachers. Given that their book advocates adopting an ‘androgynous, caring,
professional teacher’ model (32), it might be expected that a great deal of in-depth inter-
viewing and teacher observation took place as a basis for their research. In fact, two
female teachers’ opinions are presented, with whom the researchers conducted ‘on-
going professional conversations … over three visits to school’ (116). Information
about these participants’ professional background is provided, yet we are told little
about other factors which may influence their opinions (such as their biographical
experiences, ethnic or social class background, their out-of-school lives and so on).
It is not that a small teacher sample is, in itself, a problem. The main concern, meth-
odologically and theoretically, is that Ashley and Lee argue for a generalised pro-
fessional framework with limited views from actual teaching professionals. The
relative scarcity of analysis of teachers’ experiences and perceptions seems to me to
be problematic when seeking to outline a model of professionalism. Yet even with a
large sample of teachers taken from diverse backgrounds and school contexts, it
would still be difficult to argue for a comprehensive understanding of (let alone a pre-
scription for) the ways teachers approach their professional lives; schools and teachers
are dealing everyday with the ‘contested realities of the meaning of professionalism’
(Day et al. 2000, 1). However, it is in engaging with teachers’ complicated and
messy lives (Goodson and Sikes 2001), not just their professional achievements and
opinions, that we might get closer to understanding what being a professional means
to ‘real’ teachers. I argue that rich life history data from teachers should be used in
order to explore and dissect models of professionalism – yet not to classify and
codify – as without such it is extremely difficult not to slip into normative prescription
(more on this later in the paper).
There are theoretical issues that also need to be engaged with in Ashley and Lee’s
work which, I suggest, also emanate from the thinness of the teacher voices in their
research.

The masculinisation of caring: rational, professional teachers

The model of teacherhood proposed in Women Teaching Boys calls for ‘androgynous’,
professional modes of behaviour which are noticeably ‘masculine’. These behaviours
include being able to ‘switch readily between serious and light hearted with good
control’; ‘knows strategies to develop independence in children’; ‘able to manage
relationships in school as part of collegium’ (74) and so on. This model, proposing
that teachers navigate a pathway between the ‘pathologies’ of ‘extreme and unhealthy’
(75) feminine or masculine ways of being, effectively rationalises teaching (and caring)
practices, supporting the ideal of knowledge, competence, control and management of
 Gender and Education 219

oneself and those we teach. It is therefore coded as masculine, even if it does avoid
extreme ‘pathological’ gender behaviours. Ashley and Lee’s model thus resonates
with a (gendered) notion of the neo-liberal professional founded in European political
philosophy, which Dillabough (1999) was amongst the first to explore. Contemporary
models of professionalism are constructed on Kantian and Cartesian philosophies of the
rational, instrumental individual in which men ‘stand as legitimate representatives of
the public sphere’ (Dillabough 1999, 377). Therefore, women, as traditional occupiers
of the private sphere, are ‘constructed symbolically as that which stands in opposition to
rationality’ (Dillabough 1999, 377), where women must separate the subjective, rela-
tional and social attachments from the ‘self’ if they are to achieve public status on a
par with men. Legitimate knowledge and professionalism stem from reason and from
within a detached ‘self’, and women are unable to readily access such knowledge
due to their lack of reason (Bolton 2005). Hence, knowledge of a social, relational
and subjective manner is simultaneously attached to women and disparaged, whilst
men are barred from and forced to reject knowing in this way. Modern, professional
identity is a way of cleaving the genders into binary positions and placing traits associ-
ated with masculinity as hierarchically superior (Dillabough 1999).
In developing a ‘managerial’ model of how teachers do, and should, care, Ashley
and Lee have created a vision of the professional teacher which serves to elevate qual-
ities coded as male, such as control, rationality and strategic knowledge, to a superior
plain. I suggest that this works counter to their intention to argue that more men should
be encouraged into primary teaching because ‘caring about’ can be ‘androgynous’.
Since if, in this model, caring about means management and control (of oneself and
one’s class), and as those are associated with maleness, then don’t we actually need
more male primary teachers ‘doing’ their (hegemonic) male selves in schools? And
doesn’t this mean women should be more like their male counterparts, and if not
then aren’t they letting the profession down?
Ashley and Lee do begin to engage with these issues, noting that their androgynous
teacher might represent a ‘slight shift to the masculine’ (2003, 30). Yet whilst they
rightly see the operation of gender as ‘difficult to ignore’ in the process of professiona-
lisation they are advocating (26), their search to avoid this is where we encounter pro-
blems. By aiming to redefine care by foregrounding ‘caring about’ ahead of ‘caring
for’, Ashley and Lee’s argument results in an elevation of pedagogical principles and
behaviours which are indeed associated with professionalism and ‘high status’ but
that are also, as even the authors note (22), inextricably tied with maleness. But teachers
are not able to transcend their gendered identities (see the following discussion of
King’s book). Thus, their managerial and professional ethic of care gives strength to
hegemonic discursive regimes to maintain gender inequality.
This is because the type of caring that women are associated with (caring for) is con-
signed to unprofessionalism, an act that effectively bars women teachers’ authentic
access to the so-called ‘high status’ caring, because they are women. Meanwhile, for
men, primary schools would perhaps be seen as amenable places since they would
be able to utilise this professional caring discourse un-problematically, as it tallies
with expectations of men. Yet these expectations are enabled by normative discourses;
men would be more firmly defined in relation to hegemonic masculine traits of reason,
control and knowledge. Therefore, this research can be said to reproduce common
understandings of men, despite the suggestion that it ‘challenges much of the accepted
wisdom about boys and men’ (Ashley and Lee 2003, sleeve notes). Given too that no
men were interviewed as part of their research, this seems an especially bold claim.
220 M. Pulsford

Ashley and Lee also state that primary teaching is a profession ‘divided between
those [teachers] … who are content with the status quo, and those who would seek,
either for themselves or for primary teaching as a whole, enhanced professional
status’ (26). The authors thus frame professionalism (effectively, in this view, mascu-
line ‘rationality’ over feminine ‘irrationality’) as a choice for the individual to make. In
this neo-liberal construction, responsibility for one’s social position rests on one’s own
shoulders; discourses of gender and care that define and encase men and women, as
further cemented by constructions of professionalism, are their individual problems
to deal with (see, for example, Rich 2001 and Warin 2013 for analyses of the link
between gender, professionalism and neo-liberal ideologies). Furthermore, (rational)
choice and individualism underpin the gender dichotomy whereby a masculinised
view of the world (as detachable from the self) is supported as obvious and
unproblematic.
Choosing which gender discourses to adopt follows a logic of gender as multiple
and fluid (Butler 1990) and of discourse as a resource to use in our makings of our
selves. But this does not account for one’s embodied gender, the sex we are born
with and the reality that ‘individuals … experience gender as integral to their sense
of social identity’ (Francis 2002, 44). As a man, I cannot choose to ‘do’ caring (cf.
O’Connor 2008) in a caring for, ‘feminine’, way in a classroom without social and insti-
tutional pressures questioning, controlling and modifying my acts (Sargent 2001; Haase
2008; Francis 2008; Mills, Haase, and Charlton 2008). Hence utilising the logic of post-
structuralist theory, as inflected by discourses of the individual and choice-making neo-
liberal citizen by Ashley and Lee, cannot account for how I negotiate these issues in my
‘real’ life. My ‘selfhood is routinely entangled with identities that are definitively
embodied … ; embodiment is not optional’ (Jenkins 2008, 72–73). The gender identity
work we do is inextricably part of the contextual and interactional setting (the discur-
sive environment), yet it is also anchored to the materiality of our social, embodied and
empirical selves.
Ashley and Lee’s book risks reinforcing notions of men and women as different
and unequal, doing so through a theoretical focus that does not account for the actu-
alities of lives lived by ‘real acting individuals in particular settings’ (Seidman 2013,
210). There are some fundamental questions that I take from my reading of their
book: in what ways can we avoid glossing how ‘real’ social actors comprehend them-
selves and their worlds? How can we avoid reifying and neutralising social scientific
knowledge and discourse, using them as categories to innocuously classify the social
world? In what ways do we deal with the capacity of social research to produce rea-
lities (Law 2004)? I will engage with these questions in the latter sections of the
paper, providing examples of research into the lives of men that has sought to
address such issues.

Uncommon caring
King’s work on Uncommon Caring (1998) began because the question Why are there
so few men in elementary teaching? resurfaced ‘over and over’ for him, first as an
elementary teacher and later as a teacher mentor (26) during his subsequent roles as
college teacher and professor in the USA. He characterises his professional and per-
sonal journey, including his ‘coming out as gay’, as one involving ‘layers of identity
formation and conflict’ (King 1998, 26), a thread that runs through his analysis of
the discussions he has with his male participants.
 Gender and Education 221

King’s research included nine ‘active participants’, including King himself whose
‘role shifted from researcher to participant’ (28). These men were all Kindergarten to
Grade 3 (K-3) teachers in Florida ranging in age and teaching experience. He inter-
viewed the men up to four times, invited them to ‘write something about their teaching
lives’ (some of which feature as chapters in the book), and later conducted focus groups
with the men, discussing common themes from the interviews and writings (28–29).
King notes that ‘as the study progressed, the interactions among participants narrowed
the focus of our work to an examination of gender roles in primary education’ (26). This
focus is at the centre of my analysis of his work: what sort of data do we generate, and
what conclusions can we reach, when we specifically hone in on the issue of gender
with participants? To what extent does asking participants to view their experiences
through the lens of gender lead to a reification of gender discourses and the binding
of (in this case) men to masculine ways of being? Before developing these thoughts
further it is worth examining King’s key conclusions since they provide a useful
research-based comparison to Ashley and Lee’s (2003) argument.
Uncommon Caring (1998) examines the ‘culturally constructed factors such as atti-
tudes towards caring, gender-coded behaviour, and sexual orientations’ (3) as issues
relevant in addressing gender roles in primary education. King argues that care is
axiomatic in elementary teaching (138), and that both men and women can do so effec-
tively; biological sex has little to do with one’s capability here (139). Yet ‘socially con-
structed gender roles and their effective deployment are teaching’ (King 1998, 139),
meaning that a caring act cannot be straightforwardly completed as if ‘teacher’ and
‘the one caring’ are ungendered entities, since gender is inseparable from the teacher
self and hence any caring act. This contrasts with Ashley and Lee’s (2003) argument
– founded on similar anti-essentialist principles – which sees ‘androgyny’ as a viable
way of enacting a ‘professional’ caring role. Without reference to detailed research
with teachers, their conclusions fall short, and studies such as King’s illuminate the dif-
ficulties (perhaps especially for men due to the obviousness of their difference) in
avoiding reference to gender: ‘men who teach in the primary grades are frequently
unable to leave gender signification out of the caring equation’ (1998, 75; see also
Sargent 2001; Vogt 2002; Bolton 2005). This is a beneficial insight. Nevertheless, it
is important to examine King’s conclusions in terms of his methodology: what did
his male teachers tell him, and could that be a function of the way he asked?

Cross-gendered behaviour: manhood acts and inequality

King found that ‘men allowed themselves the opportunity to perform caring teaching
acts without the stigma of feminine devaluing. But these same behaviours were cri-
tiqued by the men in the study when they were done by female teachers’ (1998, 85).
The men denied that their work was female in itself – the apparently feminine acts
were ‘evaluated vis-à-vis their productivity with children’ (106) – yet when women
undertook such work the men ‘systematically devalued what they perceived as
“women’s stuff”’ (85). This dichotomy revealed for King that care and gender are
both ‘ambiguous and contingent’ (106).
The men King interviewed talked about – and justified – their ‘cross-gendered
behaviour’ in ways that could be said to be in keeping with hegemonic masculinity,
although ‘[t]he teachers reacted differently to balancing what it means to be male
while doing female work in a female place’ (88). Different reactions they may be,
but King’s male participants’ comments are certainly in keeping with prevalent
222 M. Pulsford

discourses of manliness: they act in ‘defiance’ of gender rules, resisting, for example,
the mantle of disciplinarian; they see teaching as a ‘competition’ between colleagues,
use a ‘logical, functional rationale’ and describe ‘a logical array of decisions’ about
action (90); they take risks and do not ‘bow to authority’; one respondent stated that
‘men want to deal in reality, not deal with the psychological’ (92); they say they
take responsibility, are autonomous and individualistic; and they see ‘talk about
relationships’ as unproductive, in contrast to ‘goal-directed talk’ (97). Thus, King
found that when men talked about their work in terms of gender they sought to describe
caring actions in utilitarian, rational, concrete ways and exemplified hegemonic mascu-
line attitudes such as competition, individualism, defiance, risk taking and
responsibility.
What is it possible to conclude from this? King notes that the men ‘systematically
devalued women’s teaching and nonteaching behaviours to establish themselves as
different, and women as other’ (105). These men who teach are, it seems, constantly
engaged in struggling to find and define their own male identities, and do so by deni-
grating their female colleagues. It could be seen as necessary for them to do this since it
establishes their non-female nature which is in question as a primary teacher. I wonder
if these men utilise a hegemonic masculinity in order to legitimate their right to devalue
their female colleagues. It is not that they find it desirable to denigrate the women they
work with; rather, because they need a basis on which to reject their own ‘female’ ways
of being, it is necessary to do so – a kind of complete rejection so as not to leave room
for question. To justify doing this they manoeuvre themselves into a position within the
established gender order from which it appears acceptable for them to pass judgement:
that of the hegemonic male. As discussed above, masculine-coded traits have come to
correspond with the (gender-neutralised) professional, public self, and this lends further
weight of justification to those able to adopt those (not really neutral) behaviours and
attitudes. This line of argument reflects the type of work that Schrock and Schwalbe
(2009) call for, examining how men’s practices create and reproduce gender inequality
or, more precisely, the dominance of males. And whilst this is an important locus of
research, we ought to step back and ask about how we generate such data. Thinking
closely about King’s work can help here.

Masculinities under threat: research processes and ‘truth’

There is much research suggesting that social actors perform their gender identities uti-
lising the available resources, and that men can be seen to display an hegemonic ideal
especially when that identity is felt to be less than secure (see, for example, Bennett
2007; Seidler 2007; Francis 2008; Mills, Haase, and Charlton 2008; Robinson, Hall,
and Hockey 2011). But to what extent are such performances produced by the research
interactions? I do not mean to say that King’s (or anyone’s) participants were not acting
genuinely, but I do want to question how research goes about revealing (producing) this
type of insight. Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2001) note that when men are interviewed
(and I think this could be extended to other experiences as a ‘research participant’,
such as during observation, too), it is an opportunity for those men to ‘signify mascu-
linity inasmuch as men can portray themselves as powerful, in control, autonomous and
rational’ (91). It also, however, represents a threat itself to men’s masculinity since it
‘asks questions that put these elements of manly self-portrayal into doubt, and does
not simply affirm a man’s masculinity displays’ (2001, 91; see also Pini 2005 for an
Australian perspective). This threat could represent a further spur to perform an
 Gender and Education 223

accepted or expected masculinity. Research with men who teach in (numerically)

female-dominated environments about their ‘threatened’ gender may inevitably draw
out such performances of manliness.
Uncommon Caring’s explicit focus on gender roles is also, I would argue, at the heart
of King’s ‘circular’ discussions with his participants and the ‘frustration’ this led to at a
lack of ‘resolution’ (29). I suggest that this circularity of discussion reveals a disconnect
between these men’s experiences and definitions of their own gendered selves within the
‘complex environment of social negotiation’ (Hall, Hockey, and Robinson 2007, 543),
and the discourses available to talk about generalised gender expectations. How possible
is it to marry one’s specific, complex gender experiences (which intersect with class, eth-
nicity, biography and material context) with abstracted, objectified discourses of gender
that encourage clear-cut expectations? If discourses are frameworks for understanding
truth that are imbued with power relations and hence seek definitive control, is it ever
workable to ask people to interpret their less-than-straightforward lives in terms of
those discourses (Haase 2008)? Could it be said, therefore, that normative gender under-
standings are imminently liable to be reproduced in (and by) social science research?
A key question here is: to what extent does ‘the institutionally sanctioned research
process … act to legitimize particular gendered practices’ (Davison 2007, 387)? Citing
Martino, who advocates a critical Foucauldian gender analysis, Davison (2007, 387)
cautions us to be aware that the ‘confessional process’ of research invites subjects to
‘discover’ and tell the ‘truths’ of their gender, a process which serves to validate estab-
lished ‘truths’ since truth is bound to power, and hence are hegemonic, normative
understandings. Asking men about their gender, and the way gender is implicated in
their work, can lead to understandings of those men in terms which establish their gen-
dered identities ever-more firmly in the hegemonic mould. This is given further breadth
by Seidler’s (2007) argument that the rational/emotional split in Western theoretical fra-
meworks leads to emotions being seen as subjective and personal and therefore not
legitimate sources of knowledge. This ‘works to silence an exploration of diverse cul-
tures of masculinity’ as there is a disconnect between men’s ‘own diverse masculine
experiences’ and the processes and forms of language permitted by academic under-
standing that are taken as credible (Seidler 2007, 11). Hence academic understandings
of men mirror everyday discourses of manliness, where both allow us to adopt a ‘theor-
etical position in relation to masculinities without having to explore [our] own [or
others’] emotional lives and experiences’ (Seidler 2007, 18). Researchers working
with men who teach must therefore be cautious about how gender discourses and prac-
tices are constructed and represented within the established (and the establishment’s)
research processes, since it seems imminently possible to reinforce the firm boundaries
of gendered behaviours (in teaching and beyond) in seeking to question and disrupt
those very boundaries. It leads me to ask whether tackling entrenched gender and
care discourses in an explicit and ‘head-on’ manner can do anything other than
reinforce those hegemonic discourses and close off alternative avenues of exploration.

Looking ahead: a summary and some future directions

I have argued that King’s Uncommon Caring reveals the difficulties associated with
researching gender in education, specifically that normative understandings of gender
may be replicated in performative research interactions if we effectively ask our partici-
pants to play back gender expectations to us. Following my analysis of Ashley and
Lee’s Women Teaching Boys I advocated greater focus on the material, embodied,
224 M. Pulsford

nature of social actors as examined through their lives and in their own voices, since we
can reify hegemonic discourses about teachers and gender if we fail to do so. What
methodological paths might there be amongst the normative tendencies that have
been examined? A summary of my argument and some associated directions for
future research are presented below.

Methodological avenues
I have made a case that we ought to, constantly and critically, consider how we generate
data about gender from/with social actors. The core and ever-present issue to address is
how we engage with people’s ‘truths’ when their (and our) ‘truths’ are embedded in
power relations. Coupled with that are the difficulties arising as we conceptualise gender
(and identities more widely) as performed in varying and contingent ways. A way of
approaching research that encompasses rather than ignores these troublesome issues is, I
suggest, to seek narrow and deep sets of data which focus on the subjective, material, embo-
died and complex experiences of social life. This is about expanding the understanding of
‘male teachers’ lived masculinities developed over a life time’ to enhance the much larger
research literature on male teachers’ masculinities in the workplace (Jupp 2013, 416). This
endeavour to see the complexity of lives and the layers of meaning attached to any research
foci by any one participant, through grounding our inquiries in the sense or order imposed
(or not) by them, is vital. Embracing and aiming to re-present the complexity and possible
contradictions of a life is a way of addressing the difficulty we come across when partici-
pants’ ‘truths’ reflect that which is imposed by hegemonic definitions of ‘normal’ (as in
men ‘doing’ rationality or competitiveness), and also hopes to mitigate against academic
discourses imposing those definitions or creating research situations where they are inevi-
tably elicited from participants.
This perspective has roots in Dorothy Smith’s writing about ‘standpoint feminism’
(Smith 1992). For research to begin from a categorical point of view (i.e. participants
seen in terms of their gender, or indeed in relation to an issue associated with that category,
such as ‘care’) is to begin in discourse that pre-defines that category. Beginning one’s
inquiry there is to assist the operation that claims ‘a piece of the actual for the relations
of ruling, of which that discourse … is part’ and thereby reproducing a normative vision
of the world (1992, 90). Smith strives for a sociological method of inquiry that begins
with the ‘real-life’ participant and works up to social relations, rather than vice versa:

Inquiry starts with the knower who is actually located; she is active; she is at work; she is
connected with particular other people in various ways; she thinks, laughs, desires,
sorrows, sings, curses, loves just here; she reads here; she watches television. Activities,
feelings, experiences, hook her into extended social relations linking her activities to those
of other people and in ways beyond her knowing. Whereas a standpoint beginning in text-
mediated discourse begins with the concepts or schema of that discourse and turns
towards the actual to find its object, the standpoint of women never leaves the actual.
The knowing subject is always located in a particular spatial and temporal site, a particular
configuration of the everyday/everynight world. Inquiry is directed towards exploring and
explicating what she does not know – the social relations and organisation pervading her
world but invisible in it. (1992, 91)

Life histories and genealogies of context

Thus we begin to see how it is possible to research men (Smith sees this approach as
applicable to ‘anyone’s experience’; 1992, 90) without reifying and reinforcing
 Gender and Education 225

discourses about men. It also opens up a route to connect the personal and the social
without bypassing or belittling actual lived lives; real male research participants’ bio-
graphical experiences, emotions and activities need to be taken as the fundamental
basis of an analysis into social relations, a first step in a critical examination of the con-
ditions upon which those exist and are maintained. It is here that life history narrative
approaches become pertinent since they can weave together ‘the wholeness of lives’
(Cole 2009, 573, citing Bateson), exploring people’s varied experiences and interpret-
ations as located within, and generative of, social–cultural–historical practices. They
can highlight the contradictory, evolving and improvised nature of lives (Cole 2009,
573), and through this ‘messiness’ explore how material-discursive assemblages con-
figure and make viable certain becomings for, in this case, men.
A raft of research can be cited to exemplify life history and narrative research
approaches with men. There is, for example, the work by Mills, Haase, and Charlton
(2008), Newman (2010), Foster and Newman (2005) and Smedley (2007) that
explore the challenges, in relation to gender, of learning to become a primary school
teacher. These authors explore intersecting themes including identity, difference, sexu-
ality and social class through narrative research that is ‘grounded in the study of the
particular’ (Kohler Riessman 2008, cited in Newman 2010, 51). Other research has
used similar approaches to examine the complex, contingent, fluid and performed
nature of masculinity. Here, for example, the work of Francis (2008), Martino
(2008) and Warin (2006) is relevant as they seek a fine-grained understanding of ‘mas-
culinities as historically specific and evolving configurations of practice’ (Martino
2008, 577). Warin (2006) notes that the identity of one nursery teacher, ‘Ian’, is charac-
terised by a ‘dissonance’ between competing aspects of masculinity, and she examines
this through attempting ‘to capture the nitty gritty, lived experience, of the process by
which hegemonic masculinity operates and achieves ascendancy’ (528) . That such
detailed, in-depth research using narratives of experience can provide understandings
of dominance, subversion and resistance informs Jupp’s (2013) work with the ‘lived
counternarratives’ of white male teachers in US inner-city schools. By being open to
hearing and re-presenting stories that ‘counter “official” and “hegemonic” narratives
of everyday life’ (Peters and Lankshear 1996, cited in Jupp 2013, 413), such alternative
versions may enter into discourses about men who teach, and might also be employed
in the (re)shaping of other male teachers’ stories.
This brings us to Goodson’s call for researchers to develop ‘genealogies of context’
using life history methods (2000). The aim here is to work with and for the teacher
through the development of insight based on their experiences and the researcher’s
goal to pursue ‘glimpses of structure’. This is a collaborative enterprise since ‘each
sees the world through a different prism of practice and thought’ (20), allowing both
to more fully engage with, and fill in for the other, the wider and/or more specific
context. This provides a method for Smith’s (1992) vision of grounding research
about ‘invisible’ social relations and organisation in the actualities of (an) everyday/
every night life, and echoes C. Wright-Mills’ call for sociologists to turn, for the indi-
vidual, personal troubles into social issues (Jenkins 2008; Seidman 2013). Thus, it is
possible to see a theoretical, methodological and morally responsible mode of social
inquiry which is based in the material lives of participants, seeks knowledges from
the as-lived-in world and endeavours to work with and for those people, and others,
by critiquing the opaque assemblages of ideas and things entwined in the interpretations
they share with us. This has the enablement of social transformation as its goal, to be
226 M. Pulsford

achieved via critical awareness of these productive and pervasive social–cultural–

material forces.
A number of the texts cited previously provide examples of this type of research
with men; however, it is also worth mentioning a few more specifically life history nar-
rative cases. First, Sikes and Piper’s (2010) work with male teachers who have been
accused of sexual misconduct with pupils re-presents the men’s accounts from alle-
gation through to acquittal. These stories are emotional, complex, troublesome; the
stuff of real, lived lives. It is by connecting these narratives to the assemblage of dis-
courses, policies and practices – and creating genealogies of context – that this research
makes clear that enabling counter-discourses about men who teach is a vital, although
difficult, endeavour. Challenging normative narratives is also evident in Wedgewood’s
(2005) life history case study of a male primary education teacher in Australia, which
interrogates the capacity of that man to both reproduce and resist dominant notions of
masculinity. Life history is seen by Wedgewood (2005, 190) as important in teasing out
the intersecting influences of family, school, media and sexual relations in this process
in order to contextualise the man’s practices and beliefs. Finally, Lynn (2006) presents
a ‘portrait’ of a black male teacher in South Central Los Angeles, which addresses the
under-representation of these men’s voices in educational research. In particular, in
terms of genealogies of context, Lynn’s life history research untangles how race and
racism in the law and society intertwines with lived experience; the portrait illustrates
‘the struggles of an intellectual who continuously danced a strange dance between two
worlds: a world that was governed by a code of the streets and another that was led by
his love affair with school’ (2006, 226). The complex temporal and spatial nature of
identity, and how this funds competing or dissonant masculinities, is evident in this
research.

Qualitative mixed methods for multi-faceted men and masculinities

The research presented above, and Smith’s (1992) assertion that the actual knowing
subject ‘is always located in a particular spatial and temporal site’, brings forward
the other difficulty noted – that our performances of our selves are contingent and
varied (although we are, perhaps more precisely, located in particular and multiple
spatial and temporal sites). This brings me to argue again that complexity and depth
needs to be looked for, and the work of Meth and McClymont (2009) in South
Africa is of particular relevance here. In taking both the contingency of masculinities
and the potential subordination of the ‘ordinary man’ on the basis of ‘class and
race’, to which I think we could add sexuality and maybe career choice (teaching
young children?), they argue that a ‘[qualitative] mixed-methods approach offers a
variety of methodological spaces … which … provides different ways for disclosure
to take place’ (2009, 910). They suggest that the multi-faceted nature of masculinity
can be captured and present their research that used ‘a focus group, a one-on-one inter-
view, a written diary, solicited photographs, an evaluation interview, drawing, and a life
history interview’ over an extended period of time (911). Such methodological variety
‘accommodates the expression of seemingly contradictory masculinities’ (915) as well
as allowing for opportunities to glean greater explanation about issues touched upon in
any one of the methods. Indeed, since differing knowledges are produced depending on
the contingencies of the interaction in which it occurs, Meth and McClymont state that
each method offered ‘a particular space for knowledge production to take place’ (2009,
915). In the context of teaching, gender and care, it is worth asking what knowledges
 Gender and Education 227

would be produced if we asked men who teach to articulate care in relation to their work
in a variety of different ways, in different spaces and at different times. What does ‘care’
look and feel like in the context of a teaching week? How do personal life and biogra-
phical experiences seep into their perspectives on care in the classroom in different and
perhaps unexpected ways? To me it seems likely that this would generate a greatly
nuanced picture of how male teachers intend to and are able to enact ‘care’ within
the material-discursive boundaries of their lives. It would therefore lay the foundation
for a nuanced critique of gender and care.

Emotional labour: a conclusion

I have sought to make a case that understanding care and gender in teaching would
benefit from using mixed-method qualitative approaches over time to develop life his-
tories and form ‘genealogies of context’ with teachers. I have argued that this would
provide depth and texture to teachers’ voices and counter research which resides at
the level of abstracted discourse and utilises masculinised, academic theory which
clouds out the actualities of lived lives. I also suggest that these approaches can go
some way to avoid the normative tendencies of research with men that create the con-
ditions to elicit hegemonic masculinity performances which are relayed in research, and
which tie men to ‘common-sense’ understandings of themselves. In further developing
the theoretical and methodological bases of these suggestions, I want to end by
suggesting that the study of teacher’s emotions, and in particular their ‘emotional
labour’ (the work we do to uphold the emotional rules we are subject to; Hochschild
1983), represents an important direction of research, especially with men.
Emotions are the everyday for people – feelings of love, commitment, dedication,
joy, pride, embarrassment, shame, guilt and so on, orientate, motivate and debilitate us
in our lives. Emotions are implicit in our sense of ourselves and drive our courses of
moral action (Day and Chi-Kin Lee 2011). Emotions, most pertinently for us here,
are at the heart of teaching and teaching is an emotional practice (Hargreaves 1998).
But this is not to say that emotions are ‘real’, or rather that our interpretation of our
emotions are socially neutral; emotions are both individual (embodied) as well as
sites of social definition (Zembylas 2011). Yet whilst emotions are both individual
and social, they are also neither; emotions sit in that liminal space between, and this
forces us to challenge the accepted division between individual and social, private
and public (Zembylas 2011). This reciprocity between the individual and the social res-
onates with Jenkins’ (2008) conception of our social identities formed in the ‘internal–
external dialectic’ between the behaviour of others towards us and one’s own actions/
thoughts; the social and individual in the ongoing process of identification are one and
the same thing. This allows us, therefore, to conceptualise our embodied (living,
feeling), material selves as the site at which social practices and power can be exam-
ined; emotions are ‘not peripheral by-products of events, but rather they are constitutive
forces for (trans)forming individuals, social interactions and power relations’ (Zemby-
las 2011, 33).
The study of emotions also draws us towards aspects of academic research and
theory discussed in this paper, to do with their ‘masculinised’ (rational, detached and
objective) nature. As Noddings asserts, ‘not only has reason been declared the
source of moral knowledge and agency, it has also been identified as the human
capacity that deserves respect and moral treatment … Emotion has, for the most part,
been dismissed as unreliable’ (2011, 152). Emotional ways of knowing tend to be
228 M. Pulsford

relegated and denigrated, and as such are closed off as ways of understanding the lives
of real social actors; this is the particular perspective of Seidler (2007) regarding men,
who he sees as being enabled to avoid their feelings by such discourses. Thus, it is
argued that research in academia constructs rather than reflects social realities; it has a
hand in producing men, and anchoring them to ‘masculine’ (rational, detached) ways
of being. I suggest that seeking their emotional responses to their work and lives can
go some way towards countering this, and undercutting the rational–emotional binary
implicit in gender and care discourses.
This point is also made by Hanlon (2012) in his work on masculinities and care in
Ireland, which provides a good example of how research can focus on the emotional
aspects of everyday life and in doing so explore the social and political contingencies
present – in this case the ‘failed neo-liberal project in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland’ (214).
His work uses men’s narratives to describe how care is bound to feelings of inferiority,
anxiety and fear, yet shows that it can be transformative of masculinities too – hence
Hanlon’s research is able to offer alternative representations of men, and ponder new
trajectories for masculinity and care.
Although not focusing on men, research into the emotions associated with and
negotiated around care in teaching has recently been examined (see, for example,
Isenbarger and Zembylas 2006; Oplatka 2007; O’Connor 2008; Taggart 2011;
Mackenzie 2012). This is an important yet under-researched area for research (Isenbar-
ger and Zembylas 2006), and perhaps especially so in terms of men who teach: What
are men’s experiences of the emotional labour demanded in caring relationships with
their pupils? This and related questions have pertinence in summarising my argument
since I want to suggest that loosening the ties that bind discourses of gender and care
cannot be effected if we remain at a level of abstraction to examine it: pervasive, hege-
monic discourses constrain wider expectations of gender and care, but how do those
tally with teachers’ actual lived, felt experience of the issues? If we are unable to see
the emotions implicated in men’s working and personal lives, could we ever see
them as caring in ‘non-masculine’ ways?
Using a variety of collaborative methods to collect contextualised data over time
about male teacher’s ‘embodied emotionality’ can reveal ways in which established
truths about masculinity and men can be undone (Hall, Hockey, and Robinson 2007,
545); seeking to comprehend the emotional aspects of male teacher’s caring can take
us past the stereotypes of men who teach. This has consequences beyond shifting the
load off of those men who encounter pressure to conform to the ‘imagined male
teacher’ ideal (Mills, Haase, and Charlton 2008); such normalising models of men
also come to influence how boys, girls and female colleagues are understood and under-
stand themselves in relation to men. Disrupting this may reveal, and encourage others to
imagine, how the gender order can be reconfigured. Furthermore, such research can
trouble ‘hegemonic masculinist constructions’ of professionalism in education
(Osgood 2010, 131) through acknowledging and understanding the lived experiences
of doing emotional labour; by ‘considering autobiographical subjectivities it is possible
to dismantle and reconceptualise the notion of professionalism’ (Osgood 2010, 131).
I suggest that understanding male teachers’ emotional labour in relation to care of
their pupils is an important future direction for research in teaching. The centrality of
emotion in lives and their liminal status between the individual and the social means
we can open a new space to explore men, teaching and care that avoids dualistic con-
ceptions of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’. This means we may come closer to understanding
men who teach as subjects formed and re-formed within the discourses encircling them,
 Gender and Education 229

as well as understanding them as grounded and embodied people living everyday lives,
maintaining real-life relationships and using everyday resources in apparently unre-
markable places to do work that requires emotionally charged decisions. We might
find emotion work being done by men who teach that helps us reconceive what care
means in teaching and for men. What genealogies of context can be built about male
teachers’ caring acts?

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