Abstract
Equality work is often conducted as education and teaching, and both are an intrinsic part of equality work. In this article, we focus on equality work and challenging heteronormativity by contextualising our focus both on the educational system as a whole but especially on teacher education. The promotion of equality in teacher education began in Finland in the 1980s with nationwide experimental projects, and Finnish universities undertook active efforts to promote equality in the 1990s as a result of the strengthening of women’s studies and discussions on gender equality. We show what kind of persistent problems promoting equality and challenging heteronormativity in education in Finland faces, but we also indicate how it is possible to promote equality and challenge heteronormativity by focusing on teacher education. This article is based on student teachers’ essays (N = 51) written as a part of their study in a course on social justice. The essays were analysed based on a discursive reading of the data.
Introduction
This article focuses on Finland, a Nordic country that is often considered to be a model country concerning equality and education. We argue that these perspectives should be acknowledged worldwide, especially in a situation where ‘Nordic models of equality and education’ have been exported all over the world (Niemi, Toom and Kallioniemi, 2016). In Finland, the promotion of equality has been strongly linked to the welfare state (Brunila, 2009; Ikävalko, 2016; Holli, 2003; Raevaara, 2005). In addition, Finland has consistently presented itself with pride as a model of gender equality, and gender equality has been presented as an export product.
By ‘equality work’ we mean in this article activities such as teaching, training, guidance and research that have involved the promotion of equality related to gender, sexuality and other differences. A great amount of equality work has been carried out since the 1970s, involving co-operation with schools, universities, vocational training, teachers, students, and researchers, ministries of education, officials and also with various other organisations (e.g. Brunila, 2009; Holli, 2003; Ikävalko, 2016; Raevaara, 2005; Ylöstalo, 2013). In other words, there has been a long history of equality work in education, including teacher education.
In this article, we focus both on the educational system as a whole but especially on teacher education where the promotion of equality has been carried out. The promotion of equality related to gender in teacher education began in Finland in the 1980s with nationwide experimental projects, and Finnish universities undertook active efforts to promote equality in the 1990s as a result of the strengthening of women’s studies and discussions on gender equality. However, issues concerning sexuality and challenging heteronormativity have been rarer and difficult to promote (e.g. Brunila, Heikkinen and Hynninen, 2005). Traditionally, teachers have been characterised as model citizens of enlightened thinking, moral order and ethical values (e.g. Ball, 1990; Hakala, 2007; Weber and Mitchell, 1995). In Finland, admission to teacher education has been rather controlled, e.g. up until the 1980s candidates were expected to provide certification from a doctor proving they have good health. Before that, teacher candidates were even expected to provide certification from a member of the clergy stating that they were morally upright. Teachers were expected to personify Christian chastity, conscientiousness and integrity both at work and elsewhere in life. A persistent theme has been the idea of normal bodily behaviour and a lack of sexuality (Hakala, 2007; Rinne, 1986; Vuorikoski and Räisänen, 2010; see also Simola, 1995), although it has often been argued that school is a highly hierarchical, gendered and sexualised place (e.g. Davies, 1994; Gordon, Holland and Lahelma, 2000; Hakala, 2007; Lehtonen, 2006; Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Sunnari, Kangasvuo, Heikkinen, et al., 2003; Tainio, 2001).
We aim to demonstrate what kind of persistent problems promoting equality and sexual diversity in Finland has faced, and we also wish to show how it could be possible to challenge hierarchical gender order and heteronormativity by showing an example from teacher education.
The cartography of the two separate worlds of equality and education
We first show what kind of persistent problems bringing together policies of equality and (higher) education have faced. In 2009, a report was produced on gender equality in higher education including teacher education for the first Equality programme of the Finnish government. This programme acknowledged the objectives for university and science policy included in the recent government programmes and the Government Action Plans for Gender Equality, as well as the measures resulting from them in regard to higher education, teacher education, science and research policy, and women’s studies. The study covered the years 1995–2008. It evaluated the impacts of the measures on gender equality and put forward proposals for guidelines for promoting gender equality in higher education (universities and polytechnics) and science policy, including teacher education (Brunila, 2009).
The central results of the report were that the government programmes and the Government Action Plans for Gender Equality have incorporated ambitious objectives for the promotion of gender equality in higher education. The objectives during the period of review included dismantling segregation, reinforcing gender sensitivity in teacher education, promoting women’s research careers, and establishing the status of gender studies (previously women’s studies). Accordingly, the importance of mainstreaming the gender perspective into all education and into relevant policy areas was underlined (Brunila, 2010).
However, the most interesting result of the report (2009) was that the gender equality policy and the objectives and plans regarding educational policy have been perceived as two totally separate spheres. University and science policy documents including teacher education have not, as a rule, taken into account the objectives and actions related to gender equality in the government programmes and the Government Action Plans for Gender Equality. Public administration has committed itself to mainstreaming the gender perspective, but this obligation has not applied to education. Based on the results of the study, university and science policy has included relatively few concrete measures that enable the integration of gender equality into all actions regarding higher education and science.
According to the report (2009) equality work and teaching and research that take account of equality issues have however been carried out for a long time in the sphere of university education and science, but they have not been taken into account in the developing university and science policy structures and practices to promote equality. Equality work in the context of teacher education has been carried out for decades. This has been done by through short-term publicly funded equality projects (see also Brunila, 2009, 2010; Hansen, 2016; Ikävalko, 2016; Ylöstalo, 2013).
It is also worth noting that in the education policy the issues of heteronormative gender and gender diversity have been systematically excluded (see also Brunila and Ikävalko, 2012). This was also part of the directions Brunila got when she was given the task of conducting the gender equality report. She was advised not to use ideas or concepts that suggested heteronormativity in her report. This exclusion in general has had certain implications for who are and who are not affected by gender equality. In general, in the education policy documents the parts that refer to gender usually connect it to the hierarchical and oppositional gender order, or to the idea that there are only two types of people in the world, girls and boys or women and men.
The persistent alliance of heteronormativity, marketisation and projectisation
Officially, the whole educational system in Finland has played a key role in promoting equality, but in spite of several attempts in the form of equality projects, teacher education has been an especially difficult field to explore (e.g. Brunila et al., 2011; Ikävalko, 2016; Sunnari, 1997;). In the following we will grasp three interrelated power relations that have according to previous research both individually and jointly shaped the ideas of equality in education, including teacher education.
Heteronormativity
What is rather typical in Finland is that in order to become funded and legitimised, equality work in education has called for heteronormativity (e.g. Brunila, 2009, 2010; Brunila, Heikkinen and Hynninen, 2005; Ikävalko, 2016), a harmony of the two opposite genders, and the idea that both women and men are needed to advance equality (Kantola et al., 2012). The emphasis on social justice and co-operation – instead of gendered inequalities and conflict of interests – has in many cases removed a gender perspective from the equality discourse in education. This has had consequences for gender equality policy, so that equality has been discussed in a gender-neutral way in educational institutions (Brunila and Edström, 2013; Ikävalko, 2013). In many cases, it has been more socially acceptable to discuss other forms of inequalities, especially inequality related to ethnicity/race or social class.
By heteronormativity we mean a persistent conception that all human beings are either female or male as well as heterosexual (e.g. Butler, 1990). Heteronormativity carries the idea of a hierarchical gender order. It means a code of behaviour that expects women to behave in a less valued ‘feminine’ manner, and men in a more valued ‘masculine’ manner (for more detail, see Lehtonen, 2010). In education, expressions of gender and heterosexual interest have been clarified as biologically based on the human body. Heteronormativity has worked by excluding other possibilities, or other possibilities have not been adequately considered. The matrix has been normative by presenting an idea that everybody is heterosexual. Discursively speaking, heteronormativity has widely shaped educational policies and practices and as several researchers have shown, it has worked by limiting everyone’s ability to act (Brunila, 2009; Lehtonen, 2010; Robinson and Ferfolja, 2008;). In schools, girls and boys have been expected to have certain kinds of qualifications, interests and behaviour that are different from each other. According to previous research, in schools heteronormativity is a daily practice, maintained by including sets of interactions and norms that are so self-determined they are hardly recognised (Lehtonen, 2004, 2006).
In the largest study so far of equality work in education in Finland, the results showed the persistent perception of the genders as two inherently different entities resulting in comparisons and juxtapositions. This has appeared to be the strongest obstacle to equality in education. As Finnish educationalists Kristiina Brunila, Mervi Heikkinen and Pirkko Hynninen argue: What we think gender means affects what we set as objectives and the way we pursue the objectives. … Indeed, a crucial obstacle to the advancement of equality seems to be that the division into two results in assumptions about the fundamental dissimilarity of women and men – or vice versa. In the most extreme cases, women and men are seen as complementing each other in a manner whereby the two together form ‘a complete human being’. This way of thinking includes the assumption of the heterosexuality of the two parties. What makes this problematic in terms of equality is that characteristics that are labelled as masculine are seen as more valuable than feminine ones (Brunila, Heikkinen and Hynninen, 2005: 26).
Projectisation
Equality work in education has become caught up in project-based activities. The rise of project-based work or projectisation (Brunila, 2009; Brunila et al., 2011) is a part of a larger societal shift towards market economics that has started to challenge the Nordic welfare states. Projectisation is the result of decentralisation and the marketisation of the public sector. During the past decades, because of the retreat of the welfare state, Finland has also become subject to restructuring. Furthermore, Finland’s accession to the European Union in 1995 brought significant changes to the nature of welfare politics, including gender equality policies and practices. Structural Funds, Community Initiatives and programmes increased the number of projects, influenced the forms of implementation and shifted the focus towards an employment perspective that emphasised equality (Vehviläinen and Brunila, 2007).
As a consequence, hundreds of national and international projects and reports including teacher education have repeated the same aims, ideas and practical innovations for promoting gender equality, challenging educational segregation and providing girl-friendly or boy-friendly pedagogies, etc. Although they have raised awareness of heteronormativity and diversity issues, most activities have ended up reproducing heteronormativity by targeting the educational choices of women and girls in male-dominated branches, such as the technology sector (Vehviläinen and Brunila, 2007). This is also the conclusion of a comparative study of gender equality work between Finland and Sweden (Brunila et al., 2011). Project work, however well-intended, is a setting or situation where girls and women, from their childhood, over and over again, learn to position themselves and are positioned as a potential and mobile labour force. More valued heteronormative ‘masculine’ manners are repeatedly presented as ideals that help one to assert oneself in current or future education and in labour markets, especially in those sectors where men have traditionally constituted the majority of the labour force and are considered to be the most important (Brunila et al., 2011).
Marketisation
While any kind of change in the above described persistent ideals of teacher positions have taken time in Finland, equality work has turned into publicly funded projects and has received instrumentalised and market-oriented meanings (Brunila, 2009; Ikävalko, 2016; Ylöstalo, 2013). Marketisation in this paper is referred to as a situation where several producers compete over public tasks and/or where internal steering systems are developed with the market and industry as models (Brunila et al., 2011; see also Gordon, Lahelma and Beach, 2003).
As an outcome, people involved in equality work may need to be pragmatic (Weiner, 2006) and, due to current global marketisation, increasingly demonstrate the impact of their work in market-oriented terms (Brunila and Ylöstalo, 2015). ‘Productiveness’, ‘competitiveness’, ‘efficiency’, ‘technical goals’ as well as ‘measurable objectives’ have been part of the equality discourse in education since the late 1980s. Especially after Finland joined the EU, these terms started to appear in the outcomes of equality discourse. Consequently, this rather extreme degree of marketisation has caused criticality and pessimism towards the potential of equality work (Brunila, 2009; Holli, 2003; Ikävalko and Brunila, 2011; Ylöstalo, 2013). This has constantly challenged both equality specialists and equality researchers to reconsider the ways to theoretise and analyse not only the limits but also the possibilities of equality.
As a summary, projectisation, marketisation and heteronormativity have formed a circle by benefiting each other and regulating how equality ought to be talked about in order to be heard. Heteronormative, project-based and market-oriented equality work does not seem to offer much space for such critical perspectives to be heard because of prevailing norms and conflicting power relations. This has ended up reproducing the persistent paradoxicality in education related to equality. In this paradoxicality equality is self-evidently considered part of official education policy documents. In teacher education practices, however, equality remains mostly invisible. Although the theme of equality has been promoted by equality work for decades, related targets have proved difficult to transfer into teacher education.
Data and analysis
We believe that enhancing questions related to equality is at the core of education. We, the authors of this article, have contributed to questions of equality and education for the past 20 years. While doing this we have been keen on finding approaches that are politically relevant, something that makes sense of this world and our thinking. For us teaching is always political.
For this article we were able to collect research data from a university course taking place in 2016. The course, Education and Social Justice, was an obligatory course for students who were studying to become primary school teachers. The main aims of the course were to help the students look at teachers’ work in the school context more ethically and critically, especially from the perspective of social justice.
The official outcome of the course was that the students would be able to promote equality and parity in diverse school contexts, become familiar with ethical, juridical and structural aims for equality, and understand their connection to power. The students were also expected to learn how to promote democratic education in schools. The main contents of the course were to handle issues of social justice related to school and handle the role of education as socialisation in culture and also the teacher’s role in the promotion of social justice. Questions of human rights, global and democratic education are central to the course. The course consisted of several lectures and group-work sessions. The topics of the lectures varied from the theory of social justice to the language rights of cultural minorities. There were three different group-work days, which focused on global education and educating global citizens, sexual diversity in education, and democratic education. The course was visited by several experts from outside the university, for example from NGOs (e.g. from the Lesbian and Gay Movement and the Association of Greenpeace Families).
We were interested to hear what kinds of thoughts this type of course would raise among the students. We asked them to reflect on sexual diversity in schools and what kinds of thoughts the theme would raise, how this theme could be acknowledged in schools and how teachers can acknowledge these themes in their activities as teachers. It was also interesting to read the essays because this is currently the only course provided for students that handles these aspects. Altogether we received 51 essays. The length of essays varied: some students wrote several pages reflecting on the issue, some wrote only a few words. Overall, the essays gave a many-sided overview of primary school teacher students’ conceptions of sexuality in schools.
The essays were analysed based on a discursive reading of the data. We followed a Foucauldian approach, noting to whom discourses are directed, what can be said and thought, but also about who can speak, when, and with what authority. Discourses embody meaning and social relationships; they constitute subjectivity and power relations as well as constrain the possibilities of thoughts (see also Brunila, 2009, 2011; Brunila and Ikävalko, 2012). We argue that educational practices including teacher education are at the very centre of normalisation, involving hierarchies, regulations and what is considered normal and thus what is considered abnormal (see Ball, 1990). It is therefore not trivial what kinds of discursive practices are enhanced in the teacher education context.
Essays on ‘Sexual diversity in school’
This was the first time that student teachers had received any structured knowledge about social justice and sexual diversity during their studies. The first thing we noticed while reading the essays was the positivity among the students towards issues of sexual diversity. ‘This is an important topic, which is crucial for teachers to acknowledge.’ ‘The topic raises a lot of thoughts.’ ‘I got a lot of new knowledge.’ ‘I got a lot to think about.’ ‘Before this course I never thought about this. Now that I got more information I have started to pay more attention towards sexual diversity when I teach.’ ‘For me it was important to understand that as a starting point teachers are considered unisexual heterosexuals.’
It is also worth noting that the students’ essays considered teachers to have a central position in promoting both social justice and sexual diversity in schools: ‘Teachers have a very central position to influence teaching practices in relation to justice and equality.’ ‘The way teachers orientate themselves towards these matters is an example in itself. The kind of words they use and how they act if someone is bullied.’ ‘This course has provided me with ways to make ideas about sexuality visible in school.’ ‘I learned sensitivity about handling these issues as a teacher.’ Teachers can do so much. If there is bullying towards sexual minorities or sexual harassment, you must talk about it. Teachers must take care that sexual diversity is discussed in schools so that students get enough knowledge so that they do not practice stereotypical thinking themselves. Now that these themes are discussed I have started to pay more attention to my orientation, maybe sometimes even too much. I wonder whether I can call girls girls or should I call them students. I’ve also paid more attention to toilet facilities. Unisex-toilets I think is a good example of gender equality. The biggest thought I have is to let children be as they want to be. ‘In my own activities as a teacher it is crucial to deconstruct heteronormativity, for example by presenting diverse examples of families, avoiding to [sic] gender expectations, paying attention to bullying, and in biology presenting diversity as normal.’ ‘This topic made me to [sic] realise that as a teacher I have a huge responsibility in considering these themes and when encountering students.’ ‘As a teacher one can pay attention to the way one speaks, attitudes and materials that you use with children.’ ‘As a teacher one should be very gender-sensitive and promote gender equality as well as sexual diversity.’ ‘Teaching should be gender-aware.’ A large number of school practices are based on an understanding of the dichotomy between men and women and the way one should supposedly behave, for example in the gym, in using the terms ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in school, in leadership duties. ‘Teachers should not strengthen stereotypical ideas of gender roles. Teachers should be gender sensitive and promote equality in school.’ ‘Teachers should not be gender-blind and students should not be categorised based on their gender.’ ‘Traditional gender roles should be consistently challenged.’
In terms of sexual diversity, the dichotomised gender order contains the idea of heterosexual femininity and heterosexual masculinity. This is problematic because it keeps reproducing the idea that heterosexuality is ‘natural’, and therefore it becomes a norm against which all other sexualities are classified as deviant. In education and in schooling the dominance of heterosexuality is maintained by producing the image of two different types of body that are inherently biologically, hormonally and genetically gendered as ‘female’ and ‘male’ bodies (Brunila, Heikkinen and Hynninen, 2005.) In practice, we produce and implement these images, often without even realising it.
In addition, these essays told a great deal about the current situation in teacher education and in schools in relation to social justice, and especially about the issue of sexuality. There are so many conflicting trends. Students might be reminded about the dangers of binary thinking concerning boys/girls but at the same time gender norms are pushing through the talk. Also research that is presented to us reproduces differences between boys and girls. ‘The knowledge I have about these matters does not come from teacher education’. ‘So far teacher education has not included these perspectives. This course is the first time.’ ‘This was the only course where sexuality in teacher education was considered. The lecture on rainbow families really opened my mind. ‘ ‘In teacher education we do not talk about this very much. It feels like it is always some kind of ‘workshop’ so that it is not always acknowledged’ ‘This is a topic students are left to study on their own.’ ‘I think we do not talk about sexuality in school enough. Children are not stupid so you should not underestimate them.’ School is not a sexually diverse place. Gay/lesbian/whore-naming is unfortunately common. I’ve had students who I believed were gay, but the topic is still a taboo. Students talk about it but ‘official’ knowledge or discussions do not take place. It produces the idea that there is something shameful about it. ‘Sexuality is a tabu [sic] in school. Once you mention the word sexuality both teachers and students start to feel awkward.’
The essays also showed what kind of wider discourses exist to hinder promoting equality matters: ‘The issues concerning sexuality are not very important, because they are not very central for pupils’ development.’ I wonder about the teacher’s own behaviour related to sexuality. As a woman I should remember that outfits that are too revealing are forbidden. For example, dresses that are too tight can be considered inappropriate. Luckily I don’t have to highlight my sexuality if I don’t want to. ‘This theme raises mixed thoughts in me. I feel that I should understand everything about sexual diversity although it is a very personal matter.’ I felt the whole theme and how it was handled was not very neutral and was even propagandist. More important would be, for example, to get more information about teaching literacy skills. Teachers should still keep the focus on enhancing traditional aims. Gender neutral toilets, for example, do not belong to this category. ‘Sexual diversity in school is still a strange concept. I got a huge amount of information but whether I was given factual information is a different matter.’ Why should diversity be taken to extremes by stopping using terms like girls and boys? Biological facts do not change, and acknowledging human rights is something else than toilet signs. Because I am going to work as a primary school teacher sexual orientation will not play a key role in student development.
Also found in the essays was the persistence of heteronormativity with certain notions of ideal masculinity and femininity as well as the presentation of ‘biological facts’ as an argument in favour of the prevailing hierarchical gender order and heterosexuality. It is still not widely acknowledged in education how heteronormativity organises and guides education by creating a code of behaviour that expects women to behave in a ‘feminine’ way and men in a ‘masculine’ manner. This code includes ideas of how teachers should look, dress and even what length their hair should be (e.g. Hakala, 2007). Issues of sexual diversity still raise confusion among students, which shows that prevailing notions of heteronormativity continue.
It is no surprise, therefore, that in the majority of essays students wrote that they would need more understanding as well as practical suggestions related to promoting social justice and sexual diversity in their teaching in schools. ‘I believe I need more understanding before I start teaching. This education has not provided practical help yet.’ ‘This topic is not discussed enough. And I don’t have tools to deal with sexual minorities. In other words, I don’t know.’ ‘I had hoped to get more answers to my questions and also more general practice.’ ‘Teacher education should provide more facts and historical background about this.’ ‘I would have liked to get more information about how to promote cooperation between girls and boys in practice and how to girls and boys should be addressed.’
When we look at teacher education nowadays, equality work is still carried out by short-term equality projects and by individual courses arranged by people who consider equality matters important. However, the new curriculum for comprehensive school is more aware and informed about gender and sexuality issues than before. During recent years the atmosphere towards sexual diversity has changed compared to the 1970s when homosexuality was considered a crime and attitudes towards homosexuality were rather negative. In 2002 registration of homosexual partnerships became possible and in 2017 an equal marriage law was finally confirmed. Although Finnish society and schools are, from the European perspective, considered liberal and equal (Parker, Wellings and Lazarus, 2009), issues concerning sexuality have been largely hidden in Finnish society and especially in the school context (e.g. Hakala, 2007). Furthermore, many researchers (e.g. Kilpiä, 2010; Lehtonen, 2003) claim that hierarchical gender order and notions of heterosexuality as the expected norm still exist. In addition, studies have shown that young people who do not fit into the pregiven gender and sexuality categories have faced bullying and discrimination (Liinamo, 2005: 105–106; Toomey, McGuire and Russel, 2012).
The situation is changing, albeit slowly. It is worth mentioning that the issues concerning sexuality have become a part of the national curriculum, which suggests that an increasing number of schools are providing students with knowledge about sexual diversity. The Finnish New Curriculum requires the promotion of equality in education. According to this curriculum, education should provide more knowledge and understanding of sexual diversity. In addition, gender differences should not be emphasised or reproduced. Any kind of discrimination is forbidden. In addition, schools are obliged to conduct gender equality plans, which also offer an opportunity to draw attention to issues concerning gender and sexuality in school. There are now specific school subjects where these matters can be emphasised and they are expected to be considered throughout the curriculum and through teachers’ everyday practices (Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet, 2014). However, in practice, there are still rather few practices that officially promote equality and challenge heteronormativity in teacher education. It is still usually up to individual teachers who consider these issues important and want to promote them in their teaching.
It is quite obvious that these kinds of courses that were analysed here are relevant and the student feedback supports this argument. However, we strongly disagree that these types of courses alone are sufficient. More knowledge and understanding is needed through the whole educational system, including teacher training, unless we want to keep reproducing the same problems related to inequalities. In 2017, equality work is still carried out mainly by short-term projects and individual courses here and there. The work is not systematic and it is not yet considered an important part of policy agenda.
Conclusion
Education is not just being shaped by marketisation, competitiveness and efficiency, but involves even more implicit changes in the ways in which we perceive ourselves. In education, social, cultural and normative power relations create an image of what kind of being, interaction, body and desire is appropriate at any given time, and these power relations can be seen all around us. At the same time, as Brunila et al. (2005) have argued, power relations produce ways of being and doing suitable for everyone as well as different premises and opportunities for action. In this way, experiences also become gendered and sexualised, and they gender and sexualise other things. Failure to comply with these culturally produced ways of thinking and operating can result in various punishments.
It goes without saying that teachers are in a key position in society in that they teach and train new members of a society. Teaching should be considered a special interactive relationship, interrelating knowledge and power through the discourses of the culturally and historically constructed school institution, discourses that operate in the practices and narratives of teaching, the teacher, and pedagogical dialogue (Hakala, 2007). Therefore, teacher education should be an intrinsic part of equality work, which is not the situation as yet. It is interesting to note that in Finland, gender studies as well as equality work carried out through education and numerous equality projects have generated competence and expertise that has not yet been utilised to any large extent.
Although equality work is not tied to the curriculum and thus it opens up space for different forms of courses and pedagogy for equality, there are always different and often contradictory expectations and requirements that teachers must consider in order to produce knowledge (see also Ylöstalo and Brunila, in review). The persistency of heteronormativity raises considerable challenges and it is still a crucial obstacle to the advancement of equality that moves beyond binary thinking. Very often, equality legislation is the starting point for equality work, but as we have argued, in education it has not yet led to systematic and concrete practices.
It would, moreover, be important to explore equality work from a pedagogic perspective. To understand equality work from this perspective would mean seeing it as a form of teaching. In education, the existing power relations involved in both teaching in general and equality work in particular also need to be taken into account. At what point we teach about equality power is always a central element. Education as a pedagogic practice is also a matter of power. Power is a fundamental part of teaching, and the teacher must acknowledge the power that is embedded in teaching and help students to be conscious of the mechanisms of power that maintain inequalities.
Our results hopefully raise some practical suggestions about what would be a suitable way to organise teacher education related to equality and sexual diversity. One obvious step would be to make it systematic and not just the task of an individual obligatory course. Acknowledging students’ own reflections would be crucial, and supporting critical reflections would involve asking how we assert our rights to know about equality, gender and sexuality. This would help in focusing the attention on questions of power, on the limits of knowing, and on the relation between knowledge and power. This in turn would hopefully help in questioning and doubting our own presuppositions.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.