Knowledge of Life and Death! A Classroom Study of Gender Negotiations among Pupils and Teachers in Primary School History Education

Abstract

In this article, we analyse how gendered subject positions during the Middle Ages are talked about in the history education classroom in primary school. Discourses about gender norms in the past were followed by discourses about how to interpret these differences and injustices, where we see that: i) the interpretations are constructed as being linked to biology, ii) teacher and pupils construct a present ‘us’ who understand better than a past ‘they’, an us who have greater freedom of action to choose for ourselves how to live our lives, and where iii) this is explained by the view that mediaeval people did not understand very well. It is between these discourses that the negotiation of how to interpret gender norms and gendered positions takes place. Negotiations result in a discourse that stresses today’s society as one of equality and equity. These discourses also enable various counter-discourses in which pupils challenged the constructions of women in the past offered by the teacher and textbook in the classroom.