The article points out some pedagogical challenges in supporting girls and young women in their emancipatory movements today. It spotlights a specific section in gender pedagogy by focusing on the aim of self-determination (rather than achievement) in the field of social-pedagogy and it refers to the concept of "girls work" in Germany. A critical…

Internationally, there is widespread concern about the need to increase participation in the sciences (particularly the physical sciences), especially among girls/women. This paper draws on data from a five-year, longitudinal study of 10-14-year-old children's science aspirations and career choice to explore the reasons why, even from a young age,…

This contribution gives an overview over 40 years of girls-work in Germany. It highlights certain topics and theoretical implications and emphasises especially the realisation of queer theory and deconstructivism in the last 10 years. (Contains 4 notes.)

A growing number of authors recognise the increasing expectations placed on young women as the vanguard of economic, social and cultural change. This paper explores how these imaginings have come to bear upon young women's bodies, as part of a special issue on pedagogical responses to the changing position of girls and young women. In examining…

In this article I consider past and current forms of feminist practice and "girls work" and debates within contemporary English youth work. Drawing on previous scholarly work in Girlhood studies, youth work and youth policy, I explore the range of dominant discourses that have come to shape youth work practice within the current economic and…

In this paper I examine how young women construct their identities with others in online communities. I argue that the proliferation of social networking and its popularity among young people means that performed identities are increasingly collaboratively constructed, with the individual having less control over their public image than was…

This paper presents research into how four female trainee hairdressers use Facebook. The participants are friends, attending college in the north of England. In this work I was interested in participants' presentations of self as presented through their Facebook activities. This work draws on New Literacy Studies to consider the written texts and…

This paper takes as its starting point the concept of concerted cultivation as coined by Annette Lareau. It examines whether a focus on concerted cultivation adequately captures the various practices observed in young women's experiences of being privately educated in four schools in one area of England. We suggest that a variety of practices of…

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in applying actor-network theory (ANT) to educational research and analysis. This article presents an account of how an ANT analysis of socio-material practices with a focus on objects can bring informal learning and identity formation to view. It is based on a doctoral study of the everyday…

In this paper the focus is on the possibilities that poetry and prose offer as pedagogical tools that can both accommodate and address difficult and painful knowledges. The paper presents and analyses poems and prose written by students at a non-traditional secondary school for disadvantaged girls (many of whom identify as Indigenous Australian).…

Taking Butler's notion of embodied performativity in relation to education and global flow, this article uses one example of Samoan cultural dance within a community arts education programme to argue the need for localised, context- and culture-specific arts pedagogies which incorporate diversity in all its expressions, suggest an emerging…

In this article, the author explores what happens when a group of African American women came together to engage with popular culture narratives (PCNs) soon after 9/11. The author relies on Endarkened Feminist Epistemology to understand the development of raced and gendered meaning making and knowledge development within the inquiry. She also…

Every now and then the feminisation of the teaching force is put forth as a barrier to reduce educational equality between the sexes. The feminisation of education is supposed to have a negative impact on boys' achievement, causing educational as well as behavioural problems. It is not just boys who allegedly suffer; over the years, the…

This paper presents the philosophies and practices of "Laura", a young English community liaison worker and former religious studies teacher who has recently converted to Islam. Drawing on data generated from a qualitative and predominantly interview-based research project that investigated issues of pedagogy and social justice in English schools,…

In this article we are concerned with how young women's subjectivities are constructed within relations of power, particularly in the context of schooling and the transition to adulthood. We focus on the possibilities and limitations for agency to be exercised by women in the education system and more generally, the resources that they can draw…