An action on gender equality: Educational practices for primary school students in Turkey

Abstract

Traditional gender roles are transferred to the children in many ways and this makes it difficult to ensure gender equality. Starting from the problem regarding the sensitivity of students for gender equality in a public school, the aim of this study was to enhance the sensitivity of fourth grade students in a primary school towards gender equality and to examine this development process through the prepared teaching process. The research design was action research and the participants were 32 fourth graders in a primary school in Adana, Turkey. The data collection tools were, Awareness For Gender Equality Form (TCE-FF), semi-structured interview forms, class observations, researcher diary, self-assessment/course evaluation forms and observer evaluation forms. In order to analyze the data, inductive and deductive content analyses, descriptive analysis and constant comparative analysis were used. Findings showed that students enhance their way of defining sexes, gender and gender equality, they put forward many indicators of inequalities and equalities in the right way, they have a better understanding of the contributions of equality and they brought about many suggestions for providing gender equality. These results imply that educational practices could be a part of the solution regarding the struggle against gender inequality.