Role of Reflection in Facilitating Teachers for Gender Sensitive Political Literacy Instruction

This paper is written around the study that was initiated to analyze the challenges that students especially girls face in being developed as leaders in the political sphere. It was carried out to understand how a teacher educator could facilitate gender sensitive political literacy instruction in schools through action research. Reflection is embedded at every stage in Action Research. Reflection helps teachers in shifting the focus from what they teach to what students learn. The research process involved exploring, understanding and reflecting on teachers’ current perceptions and practices of gender sensitive political literacy instruction. Later, teachers were facilitated to teach for gender sensitive political literacy and lesson plans were developed and taught collaboratively in primary and secondary classes. Reflective dialogue was held after each lesson that teachers taught in the classroom. Findings revealed that teachers do not perceive any need for girls to be educated for political knowledge and skills and even if they acquire some knowledge it can be best utilized by keeping their husbands and children informed about current affairs. The classroom practices also revealed discriminated teacher-student interaction where boys dominated classroom discourse of teachers, gender blind teaching and learning materials, authoritative school culture and gendered perceptions of roles and responsibilities of men and women held by society.