This article contributes to the discussion of gender inequality in schools with the central theme tracing ways that pedagogical affect im/mobilises agency. I argue that what I call "the schoolgirl affect," as distinctly gendered pedagogical practices in schools, constitute a schoolgirl body that refracts capacity for action in particular…

This paper examines the way lesbian identities are silenced in schools particularly through anti-lesbian harassment. Based on research with 30 self-identified lesbian teachers working across high schools in New South Wales, Australia, the discussion illustrates how various responses to anti-lesbian harassment silence the recognition of such…

Using feminist, queer and postcolonial theories, this paper analyzes the public commentary and anxious concern about child-welfare in a recent lesbian teacher sex scandal in Vancouver, Canada, involving Jean Robertson. Arguing that the public and professional uproar is not really about child-protectionism so much as it is about the place of white…

In this paper I argue that the move towards devolved modes of educational governance provides significant opportunities for feminist and pro-feminist constructionist research to impact on the types of "gender work" used by schools. Research-based understandings of gender in schools have been on the defensive in Australia and elsewhere…

Over the last two decades we have witnessed an emerging set of conditions in schools which render them contexts replete with social messages about the body, health, and self. Research has suggested that both the formal and informal contexts of education are heavily imbued with a "culture of healthism" which places moral obligation and…

In Aotearoa New Zealand journeys of discovery and colonization were also scientific journeys that brought "Maori woman" under the intellectual control of the emerging "scientific" academy. This paper argues that the historical construction of "Maori woman" through the discourses of Enlightenment science continues to…