Gender and Educational Guidance: Questions of Feminist Practice

Questions are raised about gender in relation to educational guidance and counselling, considered as a broad family of practices, largely within the liberal humanist tradition. Three fields of study with substantial feminist contributions are suggested as potentially relevant: discourse theory; research on curriculum construction; and therapeutic counselling. Of these, discourse theory is the most problematic. Feminist approaches to curriculum are distinguished as reconstruction, incrementalism, and radical transformation. In the area of therapeutic counselling, significant work includes feminist psychology, the examination of counselling as gendered practice, and single-sex groups. Each of the three fields of study is discussed, and questions and implications for guidance are identified. Ways towards a more thoroughly gendered approach to guidance are suggested.