On a bus, students leaned back in their seats and tried to rest. Some listened to music and looked at cell phone screens, others chatted in small groups. The natural weariness of each outing had taken its toll, the weariness of several days away from home coupled with the joy of having had a good time.
Lola Alberdi Caussethen a geography and history teacher and director of the Sierra la Mesta Public Institute for Compulsory Secondary Education (IESO), spoke to several ESO second-year students.
“Well, girls, what are you doing this weekend?” asks Alberdi.
—Profe, this weekend we’re having a party at Marisa’s (fictitious name). His parents aren’t here… a student replies.
-But how? You still have energy left for parties! I am exhausted! And who are you going to go with? Alberdi is surprised.
“All friends will go!” replies another student.
— Yoli (fictitious name) is definitely missing at the last minute, her boyfriend has her under control…, a third regrets.
“Hey, my boyfriend checks me normally!” Yoli bursts out, visibly angry.
Surveillance and Subjugation Joseba García Plazuelo
The dialogue triggered all the alarms. Astonishment paralyzed the teacher. How could a young girl miss a party with her best friends to avoid her boyfriend’s anger? What exactly did the phrase “My boyfriend controls me normally” mean? Something didn’t work.
So she set to work and decided to design a learning sequence for critical inquiry, capitalizing on her students’ participation in a program recently launched at the institute called Desafío 2.0.
Depending on the partner
He Sierra la Mesta Institute, which is located in the rural area of the municipality of Santa Amalia in Badajoz, educates students with very heterogeneous cultural references and academic ambitions. The pedagogical team had become aware of this peculiarity and looked for alternatives to the routine of packing the curriculum into a textbook. This is the goal of the Desafío 2.0 program, which received the Joaquín Sama Prize for Educational Innovation in 2017, by addressing research topics linked to students’ interests.
One in three young women find it acceptable for their partner to control them
This curriculum enrichment initiative, attended by students interested in deepening specific learning content, took place in the afternoons and online. It had the also voluntary involvement of a team of teachers who considered other styles of teaching and learning, aimed to encourage rigorous and creative learning in students and teachers, and who applied the methodology of research projects and problem-solving in collaborative groups.
The thematic core of the challenge should be different this time: They used the first dialogue and asked the students the question “Do you think you live in a macho environment?”.
Students from the IES Mercedes Labrador in Fuengirola (Málaga) are working on the project “My boyfriend usually controls me”. Juan Francisco Casado
In the 2015-2016 academic year, Alberdi designed this educational project in collaboration with Luis Antonio Lopez Risco, math teacher. They want students to explore, educate and become aware of sexist behaviors that have little or no reflection in their environment and are seen as “natural”. They seek – from a pedagogical point of view – to break with the “androcentric account of social reproduction that has traditionally invested authority in the sociosexual power exercised by the human (male) normative model in the family and home environment” (What says the latest report on deaths from gender-based violence?).
The director of the ANAR Foundation, Diana Díaz, explains the relevance of this task, noting that among young people expressions such as “trust for him is showing him the mobile phone; I understand because he is very afraid of losing me.” At the time, official figures warned that one in three young people considered it acceptable for their partner to control them.
In the beginning the project was very simple. A sequence of research, reflection, elaboration and application of an inventory of macho manifestations in their environment. The work culminated in a small report summarizing data, graphs, interpretations and an evaluative conclusion.
But the project does not end with this first essay. It gives way to another much more relevant educational experience that encompasses the entire institute. Two courses later, in 2017-18, the first conversation students have matured their ideas about relationships to the point where they take the initiative. They organize themselves, ask their teachers for help and design and implement a campaign against machismo. “The rest of the students had to open their eyes as before,” says Alberdi.
For him, trust means showing him the cell phone. I understand him because he is very afraid of losing me
A teenager, about her boyfriend
The campaign on March 8, 2018 was a complete success. The girls repeated the activities they did in the original project but went further: they designed their own activities and gave them their personal stamp.
Alberdi was impressed and decided to give the experience a didactic form and turn it into an Open Educational Resource (OER) accessible to all teachers. Thus, in the 2018-2019 academic year, it publishes the sequence “My boyfriend usually controls me” in the repository of the National Center for Curriculum Development in non-proprietary systems of the Ministry of Education and Training.
Cover of the website “My boyfriend usually controls me.” Accessed at: https://tinyurl.com/29twh2y8Lola Alberdi
gender equality
The experience is then transferred to a professional resource that alternates investigative practice and collective dialogue on gender equality. Users use a personal diary as a didactic tool in which they write not only rational concerns, interpretations, and suggestions for progress, but also emotional and behavioral ones that arose during the didactic sequence.
In the introductory text this statement is formulated: “We will look around at how people behave and we will examine whether there is macho behavior among the people we know or not. We will analyze the media, some movies, music and other aspects of our daily life. We will conduct an investigation on this topic to finally conceive an action that will help make the world a better place.”
It’s not easy to admit being macho, but when they dive into it, they’re taken by surprise
“Before we start, let’s jump!” the sequence begins, and several issues are addressed about the appropriateness of certain tasks and behaviors culturally assigned to men and women, such as: “Women are better able than men , “Women are very emotional, so their emotions always rule their lives in the end”, “Men, on the other hand, are more rational than women”, etc. Each student agrees or disagrees and jumps left or right. Later they discuss the different options mentioned and write down the considerations. At the end they write their reflections in their learning diary (an individual and a collective).
It’s not easy to admit you’re macho, but when you dive in, students get a few surprises. This is the starting premise that subjects them to individual and collective reflection. You are shown the following dialogue between Yoli and Víctor, her boyfriend (fictional names), and Yoli with her friends about a weekend getaway.
Yolanda’s conversations with her friends and with Víctor.Lola Alberdi
After answering a questionnaire that provokes a debate, they reflect on prevailing ideas about love and friendship. “What do you think of Yolanda’s friends? Do they want Yolanda to date and go back to how she was before she started dating Víctor? Do Pablo and Rubén want to flirt with Yolanda? Is it normal for Víctor to feel bad and ask should Yolanda stop dating them? Should Yolanda be more careful and take care of the relationship if she really loves him?” they wonder.
Then they analyze some videos to reflect on the validity of behaviors that are considered normal in adolescents and have a great impact. The stereotypical image of women (“doing things like a girl”) or the micro-machismo (which is there even if we don’t want to see it). They are discussed following a thought routine to question the androcentric model’s mental and discursive schemas that result from the uncritical appropriation of asymmetric power relations.
Is it normal that Victor feels bad and asks Yolanda to stop dating them?
So, having established a conceptual framework for machismo, they organize themselves into cooperative teams to study their surroundings. They use the scientific method to develop a reasoned and rational answer. They start from a previous hypothesis (my environment may or may not be macho) which they must accept or refute by gathering information from other similar experiences. They select the target group, create a survey – dichotomous for the youngest and Likert scale for the oldest – in an online form, email it and post it on the class blog; At the end, they create a results and conclusions report.
“Move and change the world!” they say. The world changes by example. It is important to end the project with an action that involves the center and the environment, as the students did on March 8th. Together they think about how they can run an awareness campaign in the institute and in the neighborhood to remind them of previous actions.
diffusion
The pedagogical value of an awareness project increases when it is designed as an open resource that teachers can use free of charge. To this end, it is integrated with several public repositories: CEDEC, the publication website of the Ministry of Education and Training and the eScholarium platform of the Junta de Extremadura.
It is difficult to keep track of a freely accessible resource published on platforms without a user profile. However, we have evidence of its use in institutes such as Las Lagunas de Mijas (Málaga), Marqués de Santillana de Colmenar Viejo (Madrid), Mercedes Labrador from Fuengirola (Málaga), among other. Also at the Town Hall of Rafelbunyol (Valencia), specifically in 12 first and second ESO courses. It was chosen as a reference for the Open Educational Resources training course organized by the Teachers’ Center of Palma de Mallorca.
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