Equity in Science Education: Gender Is Just One Variable: Reply to Atwater
✍ Scribed by Léonie J. Rennie
- Book ID
- 101269464
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 9 KB
- Volume
- 37
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-4308
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The most useful sets of readings in my research methods class are sequences of paperscomments-rejoinders. They serve to highlight several viewpoints, not just one, and promote a good deal of discussion and reflection among students. Thus, I am pleased to find that the eighth issue of Volume 35 of this journal has resulted in at least one comment and the opportunity for rejoinders. This gives writers the opportunity to defend their position, restate it if they think they have been misinterpreted, acknowledge other positions, call upon new evidence, or introduce yet other perspectives. It is hoped that improved dialogue and better communication among writers and readers can result. Thus, I am grateful to Mary Atwater (2000) for stimulating this kind of exchange.
Atwater 's comment (2000) on my article (Rennie, 1998) referred to my failure to deal adequately with social variables other than gender. The original stimulus for the article was frustration with authors' use of the word gender when clearly they were referring only to biological sex. Although the article grew to address wider issues, the initial focus on sex and gender remained. I called upon Unger's (1979) definitions to describe the difference between "sex" and "gender." She had argued that a distinction should be made between "sex," which is biologically determined, and "gender," which is a sociological label referring to "those non physiological components of sex that are culturally regarded as appropriate to males and females" (p. 1086). Such a definition makes the construction of gender dependent on a range of social variables, some of which I listed in my statement, "if the issue of gender is to be considered effectively in science teacher education, account must be taken of the way gender is constructed in terms of ethnicity, class, religion, race, and often other variables as well" (Rennie, 1998, p. 959). At the time, I was concerned that this reminder to the reader, part of just a single paragraph, dealt with the issue in a superficial way, but its expansion was beyond the purpose of the article. Certainly, I disappointed Atwater (2000), who "hoped that [I] would discuss the ways to infuse these ideas in traditional gender science education research" (p. 386).
I agree with Atwater that these ideas must be dealt with in gender research, but I do not believe this can be done effectively in traditional gender science education research.