Reluctant Role Models: Men Teachers and the Reproduction of Hegemonic Masculinity

Paul Sargent

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.9.3.10

Authors

Paul Sargent San Diego State University, U.S.A.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.9.3.10

Keywords:

Masculinities, Men Teachers, Male Role Models, Boys

Abstract

In-depth interviews with men teachers and other key personnel in early childhood education (ECE) revealed that the men are attempting to perform a type of subordinate masculinity that could challenge traditional gender relations. However, their attempts are thwarted by the gender regime embedded in the occupational structure, particularly the demand that they perform as “male role models” for the boys in their classes. This means that they are prescribed to perform in stereotypical ways and to purposely model traditional masculinity to boys, thereby inculcating hegemonic norms of masculinity.

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Author Biography

Paul Sargent, San Diego State University, U.S.A.

Paul Sargent, Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Center for Qualitative Research at San Diego State University. His research typically focused on the social construction of gender, particularly the construction of masculinities. The author of Real Men or Real Teachers: Contradictions in the Lives of Men Elementary School Teachers; “Sociology in the Academy: A Study in Contradictions?” (with Charles F. Hohm), The American Sociologist; “The Gendering of Men in Early Childhood Education,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research; “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Men Caught in the Gender Bind of Early Childhood Education,” Journal of Men’s Studies; and “A Qualitative Comparison of the Effectiveness of Private and Public Refugee Resettlement Programs: The San Diego Case” (with Charles F. Hohm and Robert J. Moser), Sociological Perspectives. His research projects included a video recorded ethnography of a children’s center, to determine if there were differences between the ways adults relate to girls and the ways they relate to boys, and a content analysis of CSI, a television crime series, to evaluate the program’s representation of male and female victims.

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