International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(3), 289–304.ĭrudy, S., Martin, M., Woods, M., & O'Flynn, J. Research at the margin: Mapping masculinity and mobility of African-American high school dropouts. Exploring men's experiences as elementary school teachers. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Ĭoulter, R., & McNay, M. Journal of Research in Education, 12(1), 40–49.Ĭonnell, R. Journal of Educational Policy, 18(3), 253–265.Ĭarrington, B. Re-thinking role models: equal opportunities in teacher recruitment in England and Wales. PhD Thesis, OISE, The University of Toronto.Ĭarrington, B., & Skelton, C. Gendered discourses surrounding elementary school teachers. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.īutton, L. Pollard (Eds.), Gender and education (pp. Beyond rolling models: Gender and multicultural education. Primary school boys’ identity formation and the male role model: An exploration of sexual identity and gender identity in the UK through attachment theory. Available at CMS/workplace/workplacediv/abstractsindex/fac-diverse.aspx.Īshley, M. The role model argument and faculty diversity. Tri-College Department of Education, Loras College, Iowa.Īllen, A.

Anomaly as exemplar: The meanings of role-modeling for men elementary teachers. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Īllan, J. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. In this way, I foreground the extent to which the role model argument has been used to sup port the need for both a gender balanced and a more ethnically and racially diverse teaching profession, while eschewing important political issues pertaining to: (1) the devalued status of doing women's work (Williams, 1993) (2) the significance of teaching for men's sense of their own masculinity and sexuality (Francis & Skelton, 2001 Martino & Kehler, 2006) and (3) the impact of the social dynamics of racism and sexism on minority teachers' lives (Carrington, 2002 Ehrenberg, Goldhaber, & Brewer, 1995 Pole, 1999). This discussion is used as a further basis for interrogating the fallacious assumptions informing the teacher role model discourse which has been invoked in response to a moral panic surrounding the crisis of masculinity vis-à-vis the perceived threat of the increasing feminization of elementary schooling (see Lingard & Douglas, 1999 Martino, 2008). In addition, in the second part of the chapter I draw attention to the persistence of the role model discourse as a particular gendered phenomenon within the context of the call for male teachers in elementary schools to address the educational and social needs of boys. In this sense, my aim is to provide a more informed research based knowledge and analytic framework capable of interrogating the conceptual limits of the role model discourse, particularly as it relates to establishing the potential influence of teachers on students' lives in schools. By reviewing significant research in the field, I demonstrate that the familiar tendency to establish a necessary correlation between improved learning and pedagogical outcomes, as a consequence of matching teachers and students on the basis of their gender and/or ethnic backgrounds, cannot be empirically substantiated. Moreover, claims about the potential influence of teachers, on the basis of their gender and/or ethnicity, have not been substantiated in the empiri cal literature.

In fact, my argument is that the role model discourse is particularly seductive because it recycles familiar stereotypes about gen der and minorities with the effect of eliding complex issues of identity management and conflict in teachers' lives (see Britzman, 1993 Button, 2007 Griffin, 1991 Martino, in press). I stress that the issues sur rounding the call for role models in terms of recruiting more minority and male teachers in schools cannot be treated solely as a representational problem which can be addressed simply by striking the appropriate gender and ethnic balance in the teaching profession (see Latham, 1999). In this chapter I focus on the discourse of teachers as role models to highlight the conceptual limits of such an explanatory framework for making sense of teachers' lives and their impact on student learning in schools.

Role models cast teacher