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Paper short abstract:

I will share my reflections facilitating the course, "Gender, School, and Society," to preservice teachers in southern India, using an autoethnographic narrative approach, and with the Capabilities Approach as the framework.

Paper long abstract:

In a country as diverse as India, with pronounced gender, region, religion, caste, and several other intersectional diversities, a greater number of PK-12 learners are enrolled in rural areas than in urban areas, and in public schools than in private schools. Teacher Education Programs must prepare preservice teachers, who are as diverse as the nation’s PK-12 learners for teaching for equity and inclusion.

In my paper, I will share my reflections facilitating the course, "Gender, School, and Society," to preservice teachers at a private Catholic university, in a cosmopolitan city in southern India, using an autoethnographic narrative approach, with the Capabilities Approach as the framework. In my class, on the continuum of gender-sensitive preservice teachers, on one end are those who have egalitarian views about the genders, who use transformative teaching practices, and are on the threshold of taking on a social action approach (Banks, 2016) for gender equitable policies; at the opposite end of the spectrum are those preservice teachers who have strong views about male superiority, male physical prowess, and who question gender equality; and, in between are those who unquestioningly practice patriarchy. Thus, there seems to be a danger that teachers might continue to reinforce social inequalities (Jeffrey et al., 2003), including gender, among PK-12 learners and in society. There is a need for PK-12 teachers who use their agency in positive ways to foster the capabilities and agency (Sen, 2000) of the marginalized or oppressed genders in their classrooms. DeJaeghere’s (2019) Capabilities Approach framework looks promising for the Global South: preservice teachers must be led to recognize their agency; that educational practices can develop capabilities of recognition as well as of imagining alternative futures; transcending the focus from the individual and from being aware of systemic, unjust social structures to making social changes.

In terms of the conference theme, with respect to issues of gender: there is a crisis in society, and apparently in some of my post-pandemic generation of university students and in their PK-12 school learners; co-existing capabilities in society and in my students, sustain our motivation to keep navigating the course on gender; and, as a teacher educator, I commit to the cause of ensuring educational equity to all genders, and wish that all my preservice teachers would commit themselves as well to bringing educational, including gender equity to their PK-12 learners.