Implementation of “Gender Identity and the Roots of Prejudice” (SOI-RO-328)
Author: Alina Ramona Vlad, English teacher
School/Organization: Alexandru Ioan Cuza National College, Galati, Romania
Human personality is related especially to the social environment, as it represents a mirror in which one reflects his true face. This means that people perceive themselves relating to people surrounding them. Therefore, we realise that identity involves a personal and a social dimension. Belonging to a community or group certainly influences our existence and values. Group membership is the foundation of social identity. The search of one’s own identity is one of the basic problems of modern society. A relevant issue is “What am I going to be?” because identity firstly involves transformation, growing our personal identity under the influence of external factors. From this point of view, the identity involves several facets that may conflict. A role in a group may not correspond to that of another group or the way the individual perceives himself may not be in accordance with the way he is viewed by others. Citizenship is also a form of identity, and it may have European or Romanian connotations, being closely connected to common cultural heritage and cultural diversity. The young people I work with acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes throughout their adolescence and their lives as young people. Every learning experience contributes to a clearer understanding of the environment they live in, which invariably leads to an increase in the level of participation in society. The learning scenario ’Gender Identity and the Roots of Prejudice’’ implemented from the Teaching with Europeana blog captured my interest as it approaches a complex theme, a very controversial topic in today’s society. My students confronted a learning experience, which helped them reflect on what they have lived and felt; they made generalisations or interpretations of personal experiences and, finally, they identified methods and solutions in order to apply what they have learnt. I used the LS as a starting point for discussing identity but we expanded upon social validation, stereotypes and embracing diversity.
The learning scenario “’Gender Identity and the Roots of Prejudice’’ – was created by Busiello Rosanna and implemented by Alina Ramona Vlad with a group of 15 students aged 16-17 during a class of English as a Foreign Language. Through teamwork and groupwork, students advocate for own values, debate, explore attitudes that influence behaviours and decisions, take a stand against prejudice and discrimination, delve deep and develop the ability to recognize how stereotypes affect relationships. Gender education, especially if it addresses both girls and boys, can be a positive force for creating gender equality in modern society. It seeks to change the roles that girls and boys and women and men play in private and public life. By reducing gender stereotypes, gender education assists children in building a genuine civic equality where males and females live in relationships of cooperation and in mutual respect. This recognition can lead to genuine partnerships between men and women, which is a key goal of gender education. In this way, children learn that the different contributions of men and women to family and society are equally important and that both men and women have equal rights and responsibilities. It is worth noting that the group, as proficient speakers of English have already gained previous familiarity with the substantial amount of information available on the Europeana blog.
I party used Rosanna Busiello ‘s learning scenario but I made some adaptations to the resource in keeping with the topic of stereotypes, social norms and prejudice. The teaching time allotted to the activity is 100 minutes.
Circle of values
Activity 1
The teaching time allotted to this activity is 50 minutes.
We started our learning journey by exploring the Europeana blog on the topic of great female characters in European literature that break the mould. The goal of this activity is to help students reflect on how discrimination against women is deeply rooted in people’s mentality and how stereotypes and social norms affected women’s role in society. Five of the finest (anti-)heroines from European literature
Instructions (after having done our research)
1. Give students five minutes to think about which national heroines and heroes (historical or living) they particularly admire.
2. Hand out the paper and pens and ask each person to draw two columns. In the first column they should write the names of one or two heroines plus a brief description of who they are and what they did for their country. Underneath they should write key words to describe the characteristics they associate with heroines in general.
3. Repeat the process for one or two heroes. Write this information in the second column.
4. Now ask the participants to get into small groups of four people to share their choices of heroines and heroes. Ask the groups to come to a consensus on the worthiest heroine and hero.
5. Now come into plenary and write the names of each group’s heroines and heroes in two columns on the flipchart. Add the key words that describe the characteristics.
6. Discuss the list of characteristics and the use of heroines and heroes as role models and the extent to which they are gender stereotypes.
Debriefing
Start by reviewing the activity and what people learnt about heroes and heroines and then go on to talk about stereotypes and how they influence our perceptions and actions.
• What values do the heroines and heroes stand for? Are these values the same for both, or are there differences?
• What do people understand by the word, “stereotype”? How true are stereotypes? Are stereotypes always negative?
• Do you personally, and people in your society in general, have general stereotypes and expectations of men and women?
• Do participants feel limited by these expectations? How?
• Does the list of characteristics produced in this activity reflect traits that some might describe as national characteristics?
• To what extent are social and cultural barriers the result of stereotyped thinking?
• Stereotyped expectations often act as barriers to both men and women limiting their life choices and options. What gender-related barriers have participants experienced? In the home, school, club or work place?
• Can they identify strategies to break away from cultural norms and values related to masculinity and femininity?
Example of what a group in Romania produced:
Many women/men have played vital roles in Romania’s history, changing not only Romania but also the entire world. They’ve excelled in many areas, from arts to sports, putting Romania on the world map.
| Heroines | Heroes |
| Nadia Comaneci-When asked what they know about Romania, many people associate the country’s name with the great former gymnast Nadia Comaneci. And why wouldn’t they, since Nadia was the first athlete to score a perfect 10 at the Olympic Games. | Constantin Brâncuși – a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer. |
| During her career, Nadia Comaneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals, remaining in history as one of Romania’s best athletes and one of the world’s best-known gymnasts. | A pioneer of modernism, he is considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century. The son of poor parents, he worked hard to fund his training at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts and became a skilled sculptor. He left behind 1200 photographs and 215 sculptures at his death. |
| strong, cunning, womanly, powerful, beautiful | strong, powerful, brave, courageous, adamant, obstinate |
Further information
A “stereotype” is an oversimplified, generalised and often unconscious preconception about people or ideas that may lead to prejudice and discrimination. It is a generalisation in which characteristics possessed by a part of the group are extended to the group as a whole. For example, Italians love opera, Russians love ballet, and people who are black come from Africa. When roles are attributed to women or men or there are expectations about how they should behave because of their gender, it is called “gender stereotyping”. There may be confusion about the words, sex and gender. Sex refers to the biological differences between men and women, which are universal and do not change. Gender refers to social attributes that are learned or acquired during socialisation as a member of a given community.
Gender therefore refers to the socially given attributes, roles, activities, responsibilities and needs connected with being men (masculine) and women (feminine) in a given society at a given time, and as a member of a specific community within that society.
Make a personal pledge to be more aware of stereotyping in their daily life, especially that which leads to prejudice.
Follow -up activity
Students are assigned the task of taking pictures that represent different men and women’s stereotypes in society.
They made a Canva wall of their artistic representations.
Activity 2
Part 1: Challenge the social standards!
The goal of this activity is to reflect on why people have different perspectives on events and to foster open-mindedness, critical analysis and a sense of justice.
The teaching time allotted to this activity is 30 minutes.
Description of activity: Joanna’s Story:
Joanna (17 years old) loves Tom (36 years-old,) who lives on the other side of the river. A flood has destroyed all bridges across the river, and has left only one boat afloat. Joanna asks Noah, the owner of the boat, to take her to the other side of the river. Noah agrees, but insists that Joanna has to have sex with him in return. Joanna doesn’t know what to do and so goes to her mother to ask her what she should do. Her mother tells Joanna that she doesn’t want to interfere with Joanna’s personal business. In her desperation, Joanna has sex with Noah who, afterwards, takes her across the river. Joanna runs to Tom, kisses him and tells him everything that has happened. Tom pushes her away angrily and Joanna runs off. Not far from Tom’s house, Joanna meets Jerry, Tom’s best friend. She tells Jerry everything that has happened to her as well. Jerry attacks Tom for what he has done to Joanna and walks off with her.
1.Make copies of the story and give them out to each member – but nobody in the group is allowed to make comments)
2.Each participant needs to know the story and individually has to rank each character (Joanna, Tom, Noah, Joanna ’s mother, and Jerry) according to their behaviour:
Whose behaviour was worst? Whose second worst? Whose is the best? (The first is the worst… the last the best);
3.After they have made their individual ranking, divide them into small groups of people (2 or 4) to discuss how they perceived the behaviour of the characters and try in the group to reach a consensus (negotiate which character should occupy each place).
4.After they have finished let the groups come together and complete another consensus list. It’s almost impossible to manage to achieve a consensus list. After approximately 15 mins of debating stop the process and write up on a flipchart/board the list each group has. It is likely there will be a lot of disagreement, so you should stop the game and start debriefing in the full group.
Students are shown some Europeana resources to form a mental picture of the characters:
Resource 1
Lovers sitting in the countryside
Resource 2
Former Likud PM Yitzhak Shamir
Resource 3
A young couple in sixteenth-century costume
Resource 4
Two men giving flowers to a young woman
Debriefing
How did you decide who had which place – individually – and then in the first group?
How hard was it to agree a consensus list in the group?
Why do you think we have different choices?
Who has the best values from all of us?
How do we get to have the values we have?
Did you have any conflict inside the group?
Who is the most correct person in the world? Do you think that an African or a person from Asia would answer different from you? Why?
Have you ever confronted with somebody on his values?
Did you ever ask why you have this conflict of values?
What did you learn from this exercise?
Evaluation
Why should we be aware about our values? How are values connected with culture? What did you learn about yourself and about the others? What can you do next when you are confronted with different people with different opinions or values?
Values are very often seen as at the foundation of “culture”, and they are so deeply rooted that most people find it difficult to negotiate about them.
How can we really live together interculturally then? What kind of “working arrangements” could you make?
Part 2: Tear out stereotypes!
The aim of this activity is to promote tolerance and empathy towards others who are different – The teaching time allotted to this activity is 20 minutes.
Materials: Slips of paper with synonyms / idioms /verbs and their prepositions/ colocations/ phrasal verbs
Instructions
1. Ask participants to find their group according to the phrase on their slip of paper.
2. One person gets an expression that will not fit any group.
3.No one may talk, they may only use non-verbal communication.
Tips: Be aware of who cannot find their group. This should not be a participant who has already experienced exclusion or discrimination. Initially participants will think that this is just a short exercise to form groups for an activity. Eventually they will realize that this is “the activity” and will start to understand its meaning. You may decide to stop the activity at any point if there are no interesting developments or allow it to continue until the group decides they are all happy with the outcome.
Help the group explore their feelings about what they did and what they learned.
Debriefing
How did you feel at the moment when you first met someone with the same expression as yourself?
How did the person with the odd expression feel?
Did you try to help each other get into groups?
Did you realise that the instruction was: “Find your group” with no specific detail?
Why did you think that finding your group means having people with the same expression but no other aspects of your identity?
What other groups do you belong to, for example a football team, school, NGO?
Can anyone join these groups?
In our society who are the ones who cannot find their group?
What aspects of people’s identity are most prevalent and what can limit their participation? What is the “coloured spot” in real life?
Does being the odd one out always mean they have been excluded or can it be a choice to want to stand apart from others and be different?
Do you have personal experience of being (voluntarily or not) the odd one out?
Follow up
A group of students are assigned the task to create digital posters for the students’ campaign ‘’Tear the stereotypes out! Be who you want to be!’’
Another group are assigned the task of Writing a blog page and assuming any identity they wish.
Students’ work
A snapshot into the life of a teenager
Students’ feedback is collected using https://www.menti.com/alha5jkbng15
Increase your understanding and recognition of diversity
One important objective of these activities was to confront young people with the limitations of their own perspectives, social norms and values instilled in them from an early age, develop insights into the origins of their own values and enable them to recognize how prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination affect interpersonal relationships and attitudes towards others and demonstrate respect for others both as individuals and members of a different culture, group, race, religion, etc;
The activities managed to actively involve young people in building a model of implementation of self-reflection. They have learnt that people are different in many visible and non-visible ways and by understanding, valuing and managing diversity effectively we can all benefit as individuals.
My piece of advice to the other educators would be to approach topics that give students the possibility to choose, to listen, to change opinions, to share and to create alternatives, the possibility of never getting bored.
‘’I know I’m not seeing things as they are, I’m seeing things as I am’’ (Laurel Lee)
Choosing and building an activity, then transforming it into successful classwork, is always a very difficult process as it is necessary to create a safe space where young people learn to communicate and cooperate with their peers. The most practical way to achieve changes in attitude and behaviour is active participation, which means the involvement and contribution of each one of us, teachers and students alike, in order to change mindsets and break stereotypes whether at social, cultural, economic or political level. The comprehensive range of digital resources on Europeana is very inspiring, supporting educators to implement many great ideas.
I do recommend this learning scenario to my fellow teachers as a model of good teaching practice.
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? Why don’t you read about the related learning scenario? Gender Identity and the Roots of Prejudice created by Rosanna Busiello
Did you find this story of implementation interesting? You might also like:
- Gender Beliefs and Stereotypes in Professional Activities implemented by Ana Paula Alves
- The Mad Mina and the invisible gender implemented by Emma Abbate
- Boys don’t do ballet. Really? – Addressing gender stereotypes on career choice implemented by Maria de Fátima Silva
Do you want to discover more stories of implementation? Click here.
CC0 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Statens Museum for Kunst.