Teacher Blog: Kathryn

Gender and Work : Evaluation of project

I asked the children to re-do the questionnaire (full results can be found here )done at the beginning to see whether their ideas had changed.

Key things to note:

• Comparing the percentages from February, the boys have stayed exactly the same.
• There is a higher percentage of girls wanting to do non-stereotypical jobs and a higher percentage of girls wanting to do gender-neutral jobs, and therefore less wishing to do gender stereotypical jobs.
• However, it must be remembered that February was data for 2 classes, and July was only 1 class as only 1 class has had all of the interventions. Also, the choice of whether a job is gender stereotypical is subjective.
• Overall, I have noticed that children have got more knowledge about what types of jobs they could have, as the results in July are much more specific and there is a greater variety of job choices.

I asked them to fill in an evaluation form about the whole project. These were the questions and a summary of the results (click here for full results):

1. How much did you enjoy the following activities?

Rate them from 1 to 5 (1 = not at all, 5 = enjoyed it a lot)

	1	2	3	4	5
Questions about graphs that showed how many men and women do certain jobs.	4	4	13	3	6
P4C using images of men and women doing non-stereotypical jobs.	5	7	5	3	9
Liz from WEST coming in	2	2	5	8	12
Research about your future careers	2	2	5	8	10

 

2. Which is your favourite type of activity? (rate them 1 to 5 with 1 being your least favourite and 5 being your most favourite)

	1	2	3	4	5
Looking at graphs	8	6	6	6	3
P4C	10	2	5	4	8
Visitors	5	4	2	7	12
Internet research	3	5	3	6	11
Questionnaires	2	1	12	4	10

3. What have you learned from our work about jobs and gender stereotypes?

Responses were all about how men and women can do any job that they wish too. Some children spoke about following your dreams and that the only person stopping you is yourself. My favourite quote was from one girl who said ‘I would tell my children to follow your goals and respect your dreams. I would say the future belongs in the hands of those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.’ 

4. If you were a teacher, what would you do to teach children about jobs and gender stereotypes?

This question was answered in 2 ways. Some children thought about how they would teach and some thought about what they would teach. The ‘how’ were all methods that we have used already in this project, with the addition of venn diagrams. The ‘what’ were similar to the responses for question 3.

Teacher Blog: Carol

The ‘Chat’ – Evaluation session 14^th July 2015

Carmel, Carol and eight students

Carol: Thanks for coming today, we have asked you to come back because we want to find out how well you thought the sessions worked.

Question 1: Did you enjoy the sessions? Mark 1 to 5 where 5 is good.

1	2	3	4	4.5	5 good
	1	1	2	4

Good and fun sometimes we argued.

Question2: how many sessions did you attend?

1	2	3	4
		2	6

 

Question 3: What did you get out of it? (Written answers)

I don’t know

Nothing

A different view on different topics

Realised more about stuff

Think more about people who I spend my time with.

Learned things debating confidence

Dunno

Nowt

L (girl): I’m more cautious about my surroundings. I’m more aware of what I’m going to do I used to not care about stuff. I think about things more, what I spend my time with.

A (boy): I think about positive and negative consequences.

S1 (girl): I used to kill spiders but I don’t anymore.

S2 (girl): I came because I want to show support for you miss.

Carol: You have well established beliefs already don’t you.

S2 (girl): I know my own opinion. Because I don’t know people here it is hard to talk, I feel a bit awkward.

Carol: Did anyone else find it awkward?

H (girl): because you don’t know everyone.

L (girl): And you don’t want to disclose.

H (girl): I’m very self-conscious.

Carol: How did other people feel about sharing?

A (boy): I was ok.

C (girl): I did.

Carol: Did you feel you had enough time to talk?

General comments all at the same time: Sometimes –some people kept going on – people were interrupting – I had a good point but the subject had moved on.

Carol: We should make sure everyone gets heard. Was I too dominating? Everyone addressed me instead of each other. What would make it better?

S2 (girl): Pick a topic then do a debate like a court case.

L (girl): Sounds geeky.

S2 (girl): Can we get badges?

General comments about stickers, certificates, badges, prefects

Question 4: What skills have you learnt? (Written answers)

Nothing

Non

Learning to take other people’s thoughts and to take them into consideration.

I did but I then lost my confidence and they sort of went away.

I was less confident going against people’s opinion but now I’m not and I talk more. Confidence, Listening, More talk.

Listening to other people’s opinions.

Eye contact.

 

Question 5: It make me think more deeply.

1	2	3	4	5 Agree
1		3	1	3

 

Question 6: Did you find anything difficult to talk about? (written answers)

Kind of

Yes sexual stuff

No I didn’t but I might struggle now

No not really a bit with pornography

Yeh, kind of, porn, sex stuff

The one about porn because we were different age groups, different beliefs

L (girl): That time thing

S2 (girl): I hated that.

L (girl): I think the girls should have done the boys and the boys the girls. I wish I could see inside a boy’s head.

Carol: Boys can seem immature because physically they are two years behind.

Carol: Would it have been better if you had a less opinionated teacher? I know I have strong opinions.

S2 (girl): You are a cool teacher.

General comments: I only come because of you. We do fun stuff. We like your lessons.

Carol: As you get older you realise you don’t know it all.

Someone? : Boys have different opinions and you learn more.

A (boy): I all boys only get the same opinion we would all think the same.

Question 7: Was it fun?

1 No fun	2	3	4	5 Really fun
		2	2	3

 

General comments about how to make the group cool next year – designer glasses for the group! – having a debating club. Debating is cool.

Question 8: What do you want to discuss next year? (written answers)

Sexistness

Death penalty x3

ISIS x4

Judgement / Judgemental x3

Bullying, picking on people x4

What’s banta, what’s offensive x5

Abortion x2

Under age pregnancy x4

Teacher-student boundaries x2

How we treat special needs people in school, should they be treated differently x4

Sexism x3

Disability

Animal cruelty x2

Should you get paid to go to school?

Judging people by looks

Tax Credits, benefits, welfare state x2

Racism

Punishment

Women’s sports

Should you get the vote in prison?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teacher Blog: Carol

Reflection on The Chat – spring 2015 and planning for autumn term 2015

Evaluation – last session this term

• Redo initial evaluation BUT the group membership changed quite a bit over the sessions.
• Ask: What have you got out of this group?

Has anything surprised you?

Were the views of the opposite sex what you expected?

Did you find anything about this group, or the topics, difficult to talk about?

What would improve the group?

Did you get to speak when you wanted to?

• Use continuum lines to assess how they felt about the group

What structure for next term?

• Friday lunchtimes
• Would like to work with older age – logistics difficult
• Could we use older students as leaders? – probably not logistically
• Would like a longer session – after school discussed but logistics difficult as any time
• Would like to be more group led – less dependent on adults
• Can we prevent the group membership changing so much throughout the term?
• Do we want to develop resources, or our skills at running the group? Would the resources end up just being like PSHE stuff?
• Promise a certificate? – Some have asked for this. Should we offer it or stress other group benefits?
• How to promote group talk rather than addressing Carol?
• Carol to reflect on past sessions, re-read notes – did she need to respond as much as she did?
• Use question prompts or sentence starters to promote responses to each other
• Speaker chooses next
• Some members this term said very little, how do we address this? We have tried to develop a place where it feels safe to talk. Do they all feel they can?
• How do we get a global perspective?
• Which matters most – what they talk about or that they talk?
• How do we get a more equal girl/boy mix?