Preliminary Programme

This paper highlights some features of an innovative nonformal educational scientific and vocational Program for High School Students in Brazil entitled Programa de Vocação Científica that over its 20 years of existence has attracted more females than males to be apprenticeships. In order to understand more the program from the perspective of the actors involved a qualitative research have been undertaken including interviews and focal groups with both girls and boys who were selected in the year of 2006 to be part of the program. The results are discussed in light of the students’ own opinions for their participation and considering the literature review on education, gender relations and professional choices (Show less)

Whereas the history of lay women teachers working in the public educational system has been intensively studied during the past twenty years, women religious teaching in the private sector have received far less scholarly attention. Of course this group of women has not been completely ignored. Besides a number of historical studies that deal specifically with this subject, many useful data about the educational work of women religious are “hidden” in miscellaneous publications, like for example monographs on schools that were run and staffed by religious orders of women. However, as it stands, there remain many uncertainties regarding the contribution of women religious to education.
In order to improve this situation, it is necessary to get a clearer idea of the research that has been carried out on these women so far. Which aspects have been examined in detail and which topics have hardly been touched upon? What are the major theories on the subject? Which approaches and methodologies have been followed? Can one recognize an evolution in the way researchers have looked at these women?
In the framework of a project to study the feminization of the teaching profession in Belgium, we propose to draw up the balance of the scholarship on the history of the educational work of religious orders of women in Europe, North America and Australia from the 1960s until the present. It is hoped that this overview will both stimulate and guide further research on these “forgotten” women teachers and will contribute to a more balanced picture of the process of the feminization of teaching, a fundamental development in educational history which so far has been almost exclusively studied from the angle of lay women. (Show less)

This paper studies the social origins of the students attending the first teacher training school for females in Lisbon, in its early years. The institution came about from the process to create teacher training schools to administer specific, specialised and relatively lengthy training for primary school teachers in Portugal. The idea that it was necessary to give suitable pedagogical and practical training to these teachers had increasingly gathered strength. By cross-referencing the problem of the professions with the topic of social origins, this study is also concerned with the gender issues linked to the process of feminisation of the teaching staff.
The School was attended by students coming for underprivileged social backgrounds, with a high number having been taken in by charitable institutions for children and youths at risk, such as asylums, orphanages, shelters, etc. Although the numbers of students attending the school coming from these institutions at the beginning did not constitute a high proportion, it is pointed out that it provided an opportunity for largely abandoned youngsters who applied for the teacher training course. As such, they continued under the protection of the State in a boarding school regime and as residents. Likewise, pedagogues and politicians argued that institutions protecting abandoned children and youths were ideal sources to supply the teaching staff trained by this new school, as it was precisely these institutions that housed girls with a willingness and desire to attend the Teacher Training School.
In the context of the social protection policies of the epoch, based on the ideas of social regeneration and on the role that education played in boosting the progress and development of the country and its population, this was a way of providing youths at risk and who had been abandoned with a more solid education and a dignified and praiseworthy future profession.
In the light of the conceptions of the epoch on education and social care it is understandable that the first teacher training school for females was installed in a Shelter (whereas the counterpart for males had been installed in a former palace). The Teacher Training School also represented a continuation of the social control over the young, reinforcing their moral and Catholic education, as well as the adoption of correct attitudes and conducts, such as honesty, order, discipline and love of work, in tandem with the sense of mission and professional knowledge.
Wide-ranging sources of information shall be used, such as the filed documents from the institution, the pedagogical press of the epoch and publications from authors that wrote on the topic. (Show less)

In this paper I would like to focus on the confusing and contradictory position of women in the Christian Union of Primary School Teachers (COV) in the fifties and the beginning of the sixties. In spite of their numerical dominance in both the teaching occupation and the union – two thirds of the members were women – they never exercised real structural power in teacher unionism during this period. The few women that filled a post in the local committees were either secretary or treasurer and did not seem to be interested in politics. Service and pedagogical activities were more important to them. During a certain period the female members even had their own column in the union’s journal “Christene School”, a column that didn’t focus on the core-business of the union, but dealt with subjects such as embroidery, cooking, and furnishing the classroom.

Yet, despite the fact that women seemed to have a different notion of unionist and activist culture, some women-specific claims became important in the union policy in the early 60’s: a special Commission of Women Teachers was created, the marriage bar became a central issue in the debate concerning the legal statute of the catholic teachers in the years 1961-1963 and the dispute about the compulsory cleaning of the classroom received much attention in the meetings of the national board of the union. Men started talking about “women’s business”.

Although the activism of women was of a different kind than that of their male colleagues and was not based on structural power within the union, the female unionists seem to have left their mark on the policy of the union. On the basis of primary sources, national and international literature, I will try to situate the commitment and influence of women teachers in their union in its social and historical context by analysing the prevailing ideology concerning gender, power, labour and the family. (Show less)