Schooling Masculinities in Teacher Education: Disruptive Practices, Transformative

Pedagogies in Gender and Education

March-May 2023
The University of Calgary
Werklund School of Education/ SOTL Foundation

Instructors: Dr. Michael Kehler, michael.kehler@ucalgary.ca;

Dr. Gabriel Knott-Fayle, gabriel.knottfayle@ucalgary.ca.
Course times:Wednesdays, 5.00-7.00 (Note: the first week runs on Thursday 23rd March,
thereafter sessions run on Wednesdays)
Classroom: EDT 717

Calendar Description
This introductory Professional Development Conversation (PDC) is designed pre-service
teachers interested in the complex issues intersecting teaching, gender, and schooling. It is
voluntary, not a WSE requirement. The PDC focus will be on critical insights in gender equity
and social justice with a primary focus on masculinities. The overarching aim of the PDC is to
engage with critical frameworks for understanding gender, particularly masculinities, in the
context of schooling and to develop transformative pedagogical approaches and practices to
schooled and schooling masculinities.
This is a particularly timely topic with mainstream media reports, to schools, universities and
education more generally, calling for more attention to "the boys." Though largely cloaked by
concerns for performance, achievement, and gender equity, at the heart of the debate is a set of
deep-seated and long-held understandings and assumptions about gender but specifically
masculinity and schooling. This PDC provides a lens for examining masculinities in the context
of schools and educational institutions. We will examine policies, practices, and popular
discourse to probe masculinities from various points of intersection, namely, the raced, classed
and gendered lives of boys and young men.
These PDC sessions are optional and participants will have the chance to co-produce the areas of
focus, discussion topics, and course materials. In that spirit, participants will be encouraged to
come ready to engage, with their own questions, and with a willingness to challenge and be
challenged in a safe, respectful and critically informed way.

Aims, Goals, Objectives, Outcomes

Participants in this PDC will:
 Examine relevant historical and contemporary policies that inform the construction and
understanding of gender, particularly masculinity, in educational settings.
  Interrogate existing teaching practices around gender inclusion and masculinity
construction.
 Develop critically informed, transformative pedagogical practices with regards to
masculinities.
 Investigate how, where, when and why specific masculinities are constructed in
educational settings.
 Examine men’s and boys’ masculinities using an intersectional lens including racialized,
classed, and sexualized masculinities.
 Analyze the array of masculinities visible in media and popular discourse and determine
their relationship to schooling masculinities.
PDC Texts/ Materials
A series of readings, texts, and materials will be made available. Participants will be provided
with access to an online library of materials that will be co-produced by instructors and
participants throughout the PDC.
There are no assignments, however participants are required to engage with the discussions,
topics, and tasks in the sessions to the best of their abilities.
Weekly Topics
This is a preliminary template for weekly topics, Week 1 will include an invitation to discuss and
revise topics and schedules.
1. Setting the stage, defining the landscape: What are the questions?
2. Schools, Curriculum, Policy, Practice.
3. How and where are masculinities (un)valued in schools?
4. Image(ing) masculinities: The manosphere, dick pics, and alternatives on social media.
5. Intersectional masculinities: Racialized and classed masculinities.
6. Re-writing masculinities: Mental health and well-being.
7. Taking action.
8. Optional week.

Weekly Schedule
Date Topic Questions, activities and discussions
Mar. 8 Info Session All about the PDC.
Break
Mar. 23 Setting the stage, Introduction to course; fast write reasons for taking part;
(Note: defining the what do you hope to take from it?
this class landscape: What
is on a are the questions? Search for and read newspaper articles and discuss the ways
Thurs) that boys (in) education are talked about.

Discussion and revision of course schedule.

Mar. 29 Schools, Questions: What policies exist? What does they say? What is
Curriculum, Policy, absent from those policies? How do they present the
Practice problems/ solutions? How do they present “the boys”?

Search for curriculum documents in your subject or area –

what do they say in reference to above questions?
Apr. 5 How and where are Questions: Where are boys and masculinities visible/
masculinities valued? How are masculinities institutionalized? What is
(un)valued in being done to counter conventional valuations of boys’
schools? masculinities? What can be done? How are possibilities
opened-up or shut down for expressions of masculinity?

Discuss the (counter-) narratives of masculinity in your

different subjects/ age groups.
Apr. 12 Image(ing) Questions: How does social media impact the schooling of
masculinities: The masculinities? What are the impacts of the manosphere and
manosphere, dick misogyny? What’s the relationship between social media
pics, and and body image/ grooming? To what extent does social
alternatives on media provide alternative ways of doing masculinity?
social media.
Look for men’s make-up tutorials on TikTok.
Apr. 19 Intersectional Questions: How are masculinities racialized and classed in
masculinities: different contexts? Where are Black/Asian/ White/
Racialized and Indigenous masculinities most visible in educational
classed contexts? Where are they more highly valued? How are
masculinities. masculinities classed? How do schools entrench or disrupt
these narratives of masculinities? What other
intersectionalities are important?

How are the TikTok-ers we looked at in previous week

racialized/ classed?
Apr. 26 Re-writing Questions: How can masculinities be re-written? Where
masculinities: can/are they being re-written? How do conventional notions
Allyship, mental of masculinity prevent re-writing it? How can men and boys
health and well- be(come) allies?
being.
How are men’s masculinities presented differently in
‘Coniferous Fathers’ Michael Kleber-Diggs and ‘If’ Rudyard
Kipling?
May 3 Taking action How can we put what we’ve learned into practice?
May 10 Optional Week TBD