Intersecting Power Relations in Teachers' Experiences of Being Sexualized or Harassed by Students

Abstract

In this article we discuss ways in which teachers comment on and voice experiences of being sexualized by students, as well as actual incidents of harassment. We analyse shifting power relationships involved in these processes, focussing on gender and age relations and institutional positions. We address teachers' emotions, but also their strategies for confronting these kinds of incidents. We conclude by discussing their experience in the context of their responsibility to address sex-based harassment in which students are in focus. We build, first, on observations and teacher interviews conducted during an ethnographic study in secondary schools `Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools - with Special Reference to Gender'. The second source of data consists of teachers' letters and telephone calls to Elina Lahelma that were solicited responses to her two columns on sexual harassment at school in a teachers' trade union journal.