Too important to fail: Male teachers offering care ethics to support girls’ learning. A study of secondary schools in Ghana and Ireland
Adiikanbasi, Patience
Adiikanbasi, Patience
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Publication Date
2025-07-02
Type
doctoral thesis
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Abstract
The recent global pandemic (COVID-19) has exposed a care crisis in schooling, prompting reflections on common vulnerabilities, accountability, and subsequently triggering a rethink of gender equality in education. This qualitative rhizomatic inquiry with postcolonial and poststructural framing maps the trajectories of male teachers’ caring pedagogies and girls’ learning. The qualitative rhizomatic methodological approach was employed partly due to the sensitivity of the issues around male teachers and adolescents, and due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on qualitative research. The research helps to deepen our understanding of how male teachers can offer care ethics for girls’ learning in secondary schools in Ghana and Ireland. Centring the ‘how’ over the ‘what,’ resulted in data that was iterative. Thus, the analytical framework was a blend of thematic and rhizomatic analysis. Three thematic events (Power, Pedagogy, and Sexualization) were discussed as well as Relationality as the overarching event. These themes arose from multiple factors related to girls’ sociality, sports, time management, pedagogy, classroom management, and assessment.
How girls negotiate and navigate school structures and state machinery to define their education are analysed against the presence of educators and extant educational policy. While educators and policymakers value academic scores, the girls in this research feel safety is core to their wellbeing at school. Nodding's theory of care was evidenced in the male teachers’ classroom management and pedagogical practices which utilize fatherly values for girls’ learning such as Daddy’s girl/Daddy’s daughter and good fathers as portrayed in popular culture. The data also demonstrate male teachers’ use of subtle ways of offering care ethics for girls, such as diplomatic meetings on stairs and corridors and after sports games/matches. Here, care is given consciously to where it is most needed and where it can be reciprocated. The research argues that male teachers play an important role in providing care for girls' school needs.
Publisher
University of Galway
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Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International