Carrie Paechter BA PGCE MEd PhD
Carrie Paechter is Professor of Education.
Carrie started her career as a mathematics teacher in London. She was a researcher and then lecturer at King’s College, London and the Open University before joining Goldsmiths in 2001.
Research interests
Carrie’s main research interests focus around gender and identity, especially how children learn gender. She has developed a considerable body of theory around how masculinities and femininities operate as communities of practice. Carrie also works on the relationship between power, knowledge and curriculum, and on how identity is constructed through learning in communities.
Major Research
‘Online learning in divorce: the development and operation of an online learning community through a divorce support website’.
This project is exploring the development of an online divorce wiki and support site, tracing its development through the first year of operation. The aims are to understand the development of the site as an online community of practice during its first year of operation; to identify the different forms of learning that took place there; and to understand the effects of this learning on the identities of the individuals involved and on their ability to negotiate and move on from divorce. The overarching research question is: ‘How can an online community set up as a social enterprise support people in negotiating the processes of divorce, ancillary relief, and shared parenting?’
'Tomboy identities: the construction and maintenance of active girlhoods'. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, 2005-6.
This project sought to explore how tomboy identities are constructed by children in primary schools. The study was intended to establish how tomboys are understood by themselves and their peers, and to use this understanding to encourage girls to take up and maintain active femininities.
Gender, power, knowledge and curriculum
Some of Carrie's work involves investigating the relationships between gender, power and knowledge and how these are played out in the school context. For example, her work on the negotiation of the Design and Technology curriculum investigated how teachers from subjects with different gendered histories came together to try to implement a supposedly 'gender-neutral' curriculum.
Gender embodiment and identity
Carrie is interested in how our bodies affect how we think about who we are, and, in particular, how they affect how we see ourselves as masculine or feminine. Much of her work on masculinities and femininities as communities of practice reflects her belief in the fundamental importance of the body to identity.
Space, time and schooling
Carrie is one of the very few educational researchers in the UK considering the relationship between the physical environment of the school, the spaces within it, and how they are used by teachers and students. This relates both to her work on gender and to that on the curriculum.
Curriculum processes and practices
Carrie is interested in the ways in which subjects are perceived both by teachers and by learners, and how this affects teaching, learning and school management. She has a particular interest in subjects that are marginal to the school curriculum, such as Design and Technology, Music and PE.
Selected publications
Paechter, C. 'Researching sensitive issues online: implications of a hybrid insider/outsider position in a retrospective ethnographic study'. Qualitative Research, forthcoming.
Paechter, C. 'Bodies, identities and performances: reconfiguring the language of gender and schooling'. Gender and Education, forthcoming.
Paechter, C. 'Gender, visible bodies and schooling: cultural pathologies of childhood'. Sport, Education and Society, 16:3, 2011, 309-322.
Paechter, C.F. ‘Tomboys and girly-girls: embodied femininities in primary schools’. Discourse 31: 2, 2010.
Jackson, C, Paechter, C.F. & Renold, E. (eds) Girls and Education 3-16, Open University Press, 2010.
Paechter, C. F., Teachers’ behaviour towards girls and boys’. Talk given to hearing of Committee on Equal Opportunities of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Paris, 3rd December 2008. http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/APFeaturesManager/defaultArtSiteView.asp?ID=829
Paechter, C.F. Being Boys, Being girls: learning masculinities and femininities. Open University Press, 2007.
Paechter, C.F. 'Constructing femininity/constructing femininities'. In C. Skelton, B. Francis and L. Smulyan (eds) The Sage Handbook of Gender and Education, London, Sage, 2006 365-377.
Paechter, C.F. 'Masculine femininities/feminine masculinities: power, identities and gender'. Gender and Education 18:3, 2006, 253-263. 0954 0253.
Paechter, C.F. 'Reconceptualising the gendered body: learning and constructing masculinities and femininities in school'. Gender and Education 18:2, 2006, 121-135.
Paechter, C.F. ‘Power, knowledge and embodiment in communities of sex/gender practice’. Women’s Studies International Forum 29:1, 2006, 13-26.
Paechter, C.F. ‘Power/knowledge, gender and curriculum change’ 129-148, Journal of Educational Change, 4:2. 2003.
Paechter, C.F. ‘Learning masculinities and femininities: power/knowledge and legitimate peripheral participation’ Women’s Studies International Forum 26:6, 2003, 541-552.
Paechter, C.F. ‘Masculinities and femininities as communities of practice’, Women’s Studies International Forum 26:1 2003, 69-77.
Paechter, C.F. Changing School Subjects: power, gender and curriculum. Open University Press 2000.
Paechter, C. F. Educating the Other: gender, power and schooling. Falmer Press 1998. Winner of American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice award.