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Sociocultural Aspects Of Gender In School

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Aside from race, gender is another sociocultural factor that has influences on children within school. When examining gender and schooling, discourse plays a significant role in how gender impacts a child’s educational experience. Boys in schools are often perceived as being mischievous, troublemakers and naughty due to their genetic makeup. They are expected to disobey the rules and defy the teachers. On the contrary, girls in school are expected to conform to the rules, and are often overlooked. Gender performativity is reinforced by the institutional habitus of schools, and when students do not conform to the ideal view of the male or female genders, they are placed at a disadvantage. Ferguson (2002) asserts that two representations of black masculinity in society and school today “are the images of the African American male as a criminal and as an endangered species” (p. 585). Both sociocultural factors that are entailed in this description of the African American male, race and gender, have significance in how teachers and administration interact with and treat this specific identity of a child. In this case, the male gender identity serves as a source of expectation that the student will disobey the rules of the school and defy the teacher. This is a common association with those of the male gender. On the other hand, because sociocultural factors often intertwine, the racial aspect of this identity asserts that the student is either a danger to others, like a

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