ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the significance of gender to education in the UK context. It considers how entrenched conceptualisations of gender continue to underpin concerns about participation and outcomes in formal schooling. The chapter discusses key contemporary issues, such as gender and achievement, gendered identities and behaviour in the classroom, and the 'feminisation' of the educational sector – and the inter-linkages between the three. It argues for the continuing relevance of gender as a structural category and highlights the importance of multiple subjectivities in identity construction and the pitfalls of binary thinking about gender in relation to education and social life. The chapter examines competing explanations for differences between men and women. Men and women tend to behave in different ways across society as a whole, as well as in education in particular. The relevance of gender to education Gender is an important issue to consider in relation to education in terms of access to, participation in, and outcomes of, schooling.
