Sandra Acker
Biographic Data
| ID | 283179 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sandra Acker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sandra |
| FAMILY NAME | Acker |
| SIGNATURE | ACKER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3662-2314 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 437 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Feminist scholars working around the neoliberal university
A considerable scholarship now describes the increasing neoliberalization of universities and the accompanying impacts on academic research and researchers. However, less attention has been devoted to issues of research project leadership, especially for academics with feminist commitments. This article reports results of a qualitative study of 12 senior academic women from 6 countries who are known for feminist research and explores how they pur…
A commentary from Canada on Marília Carvalho's viewpoint
Chairing and caring
This article uses three frames of analysis, each with gendered implications, to interpret the author's narrative of experience as a department chair (head of department) in a Canadian university from 1999 to 2002. The narrative is based not only on memory but on transcripts of interviews conducted with the author at various points during her term as chair. The three frames are: (1) learning leadership; (2) surviving organisations; and (3) perform…
Tenure troubles and equity matters in Canadian academe
The focus of this article is the tenure review process in Canadian universities, a rigorous and high-stakes evaluation of junior academics that serves as a prime exemplar of ‘disciplining academics', our project's title. In-depth interviews in seven Ontario universities with 30 knowledgeable informants such as senior managers and faculty association personnel provide the data. Literature on tenure and the persistence of equity issues suggests tha…
Gendered games in academic leadership
This article looks at women's efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women's leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in-depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada, Australia or Britain, I focus on four contrasting case studies. For some women it is possible to build a sati…
Women ‘learning to labour’ in the ‘male emporium’
This article reflects an interest in exposing links between women's academic work and the gender codes which organize and shape working life in the university context, both now and in the recent past, as a contribution to the sociology of women's work. Our specific focus is the gendered division of labour in teacher education in universities in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu and McNay, and through an analysi…
Sleepless in academia
The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and mea…
Globalisation women's work and teacher education
This article examines how broader international transitions and changes in teacher education are manifested locally, as lived experience, in female teacher educators' working lives.Using cross-national data from Britain and Canada, it illustrates how broad international changes are redefiningparticularly through the social regulation of gender conflicts in the workplacethe terms and conditions upon which women are expected to function as 'workers…
Making a Difference
This article reports a study of Australian and Canadian women in management positions in university faculties of education. It provides a perspective on the contradictory and multilayered experiences of the first cohort of academic women to reach management positions in any significant numbers in education. The article explores the way in which women are positioned as different but at the same time negotiate their place by using marginality and d…
Undergraduate research supervision
This article reports the findings of a small study aimed at analysing the way supervisors of undergraduate research discuss their style of supervision. The study was motivated by an interest in the possibility that gendered ways of working may influence the student-supervisor relationship. A qualitative approach to data collection was taken, using unstructured and taped interviews with supervisors, with transcription viewing by the supervisors fo…
Becoming a teacher educator
Doing Good and Feeling Bad
Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 27 women academics in faculties of education in Canada, this article explores some of the consequences of the gendered division of labour in universities. Jean Baker Miller's phrase, ‘doing good and feeling bad’, characterised the women in the study. They reported working excessively hard, taking responsibility for supporting others, including colleagues and students, and being ‘good department citizens’. Yet t…
Carry on Caring
This paper is based on an ethnographic study in one English primary school, 'Hillview'. First, I review feminist and other approaches in the literature to the familiar association between women and caring. After a description of the school and the study, I consider Hillview teachers' caring activities in the classroom and whether maternal imagery is justified. Sources of stress and struggle, which lend a sober side to romanticized notions of teac…
Research Students in Education and Psychology
Although some attention has been given in the literature to the notion of variable supervisor style, students are often discussed as if they are interchangeable and homogeneous. Results from this study of education and psychology departments in British universities suggest that there are several different ways to present oneself as a student, some more in continuity than others with the requisites for academic success. Five such ‘student styles’ …
Creating Careers
Teachers' careers have been approached from a number of angles. Some writers conceptualize careers primarily as individual decisions, while others emphasize the structural constraints that shape and limit careers. One such constraint is the gender differentiation that pervades the teaching occupation, as demonstrated by statistics that show men disproportionately in management roles. Generally neglected is the middle ground, ways in which percept…
Special Series on Girls and Women in Education
Teachers' careers have been approached from a number of angles. Some writers conceptualize careers primarily as individual decisions, while others emphasize the structural constraints that shape and limit careers. One such constraint is the gender differentiation that pervades the teaching occupation, as demonstrated by statistics that show men disproportionately in management roles. Generally neglected is the middle ground, ways in which percept…
Girlies on the Warpath’
Gender issues in education are not simply a woman's problem. They constitute a more general problem of theorising about the nature and processes of education. Where studies advocate the eradication of inequality via education it is most often teachers who are seen as the crucial agents of change. Despite this recognition, surprisingly little attention has been paid to preparing teachers for taking on such a task. This paper considers, firstly, ho…
Teachers’ Culture in an English Primary School
This paper uses ethnographic data to investigate the impact of recent government legislation on primary school teachers. The reactions of one inner city primary school are reported in detail. It is argued that primary schools have distinctive cultures and these shape the response to the legislation. The relationship is dynamic as the legislation also influences the culture. The headteacher's role is undergoing particularly marked changes. Heads a…
Managing the Drama
Previous studies of the work of primary school headteachers tend to adopt a fairly superficial approach to categorizing tasks and contacts. As part of an ethnographic study of teachers' work in an inner city primary school, I 'shadowed' the headteacher for three one-week blocks plus four interviews and numerous informal talks. Life at this school was intense and often dramatic. I develop an approach which suggests the headteacher's work contains …
Teachers, Gender and Resistance
Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid‐1970s. Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity. Less often studied is the teacher herself or himself. In particular, the question ari…
The Invisible Decade
Feminist theory and the study of gender and education
Women, the other academics
Shorter Notices
Sex Discrimination in Education
Journal Article Sex Discrimination in Education: a reply to Shaw Get access Sandra Acker Sandra Acker Correspondence: Dr Sandra Acker, University of Bristol School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 IJA, England. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, July 1981, Pages 107–118, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1981.tb00573.x Published: 30 May 20…
Sleepless in academia
The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and mea…
Feminist theory and the study of gender and education
Feminist scholars working around the neoliberal university
A considerable scholarship now describes the increasing neoliberalization of universities and the accompanying impacts on academic research and researchers. However, less attention has been devoted to issues of research project leadership, especially for academics with feminist commitments. This article reports results of a qualitative study of 12 senior academic women from 6 countries who are known for feminist research and explores how they pur…
Chairing and caring
This article uses three frames of analysis, each with gendered implications, to interpret the author's narrative of experience as a department chair (head of department) in a Canadian university from 1999 to 2002. The narrative is based not only on memory but on transcripts of interviews conducted with the author at various points during her term as chair. The three frames are: (1) learning leadership; (2) surviving organisations; and (3) perform…
Women ‘learning to labour’ in the ‘male emporium’
This article reflects an interest in exposing links between women's academic work and the gender codes which organize and shape working life in the university context, both now and in the recent past, as a contribution to the sociology of women's work. Our specific focus is the gendered division of labour in teacher education in universities in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu and McNay, and through an analysi…
Making a Difference
This article reports a study of Australian and Canadian women in management positions in university faculties of education. It provides a perspective on the contradictory and multilayered experiences of the first cohort of academic women to reach management positions in any significant numbers in education. The article explores the way in which women are positioned as different but at the same time negotiate their place by using marginality and d…
Gendered games in academic leadership
This article looks at women's efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women's leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in-depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada, Australia or Britain, I focus on four contrasting case studies. For some women it is possible to build a sati…
Carry on Caring
This paper is based on an ethnographic study in one English primary school, 'Hillview'. First, I review feminist and other approaches in the literature to the familiar association between women and caring. After a description of the school and the study, I consider Hillview teachers' caring activities in the classroom and whether maternal imagery is justified. Sources of stress and struggle, which lend a sober side to romanticized notions of teac…
Creating Careers
Teachers' careers have been approached from a number of angles. Some writers conceptualize careers primarily as individual decisions, while others emphasize the structural constraints that shape and limit careers. One such constraint is the gender differentiation that pervades the teaching occupation, as demonstrated by statistics that show men disproportionately in management roles. Generally neglected is the middle ground, ways in which percept…
Women, the other academics
No-Woman's-Land
Becoming a teacher educator
Special Series on Girls and Women in Education
Teachers' careers have been approached from a number of angles. Some writers conceptualize careers primarily as individual decisions, while others emphasize the structural constraints that shape and limit careers. One such constraint is the gender differentiation that pervades the teaching occupation, as demonstrated by statistics that show men disproportionately in management roles. Generally neglected is the middle ground, ways in which percept…
Teachers’ Culture in an English Primary School
This paper uses ethnographic data to investigate the impact of recent government legislation on primary school teachers. The reactions of one inner city primary school are reported in detail. It is argued that primary schools have distinctive cultures and these shape the response to the legislation. The relationship is dynamic as the legislation also influences the culture. The headteacher's role is undergoing particularly marked changes. Heads a…
Girlies on the Warpath’
Gender issues in education are not simply a woman's problem. They constitute a more general problem of theorising about the nature and processes of education. Where studies advocate the eradication of inequality via education it is most often teachers who are seen as the crucial agents of change. Despite this recognition, surprisingly little attention has been paid to preparing teachers for taking on such a task. This paper considers, firstly, ho…
Teachers, Gender and Resistance
Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid‐1970s. Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity. Less often studied is the teacher herself or himself. In particular, the question ari…
Tenure troubles and equity matters in Canadian academe
The focus of this article is the tenure review process in Canadian universities, a rigorous and high-stakes evaluation of junior academics that serves as a prime exemplar of ‘disciplining academics', our project's title. In-depth interviews in seven Ontario universities with 30 knowledgeable informants such as senior managers and faculty association personnel provide the data. Literature on tenure and the persistence of equity issues suggests tha…
Women, the Other Academics∗
∗ This paper is a much‐expanded version of a talk given to the British Sociological Association, Education Study Group, Day School on Feminist Action and Analysis in Education, Bristol, 17th February, 1979. I should like to thank Geoff Millerson, Caroline St. John Brooks, Michael Berry, Miriam David, Philip Gammage and Sara Meadows for comments on the draft version and Maureen Harvey for help with the typing
Globalisation women's work and teacher education
This article examines how broader international transitions and changes in teacher education are manifested locally, as lived experience, in female teacher educators' working lives.Using cross-national data from Britain and Canada, it illustrates how broad international changes are redefiningparticularly through the social regulation of gender conflicts in the workplacethe terms and conditions upon which women are expected to function as 'workers…
Undergraduate research supervision
This article reports the findings of a small study aimed at analysing the way supervisors of undergraduate research discuss their style of supervision. The study was motivated by an interest in the possibility that gendered ways of working may influence the student-supervisor relationship. A qualitative approach to data collection was taken, using unstructured and taped interviews with supervisors, with transcription viewing by the supervisors fo…
Sex differences in graduate student ambition
Managing the Drama
Previous studies of the work of primary school headteachers tend to adopt a fairly superficial approach to categorizing tasks and contacts. As part of an ethnographic study of teachers' work in an inner city primary school, I 'shadowed' the headteacher for three one-week blocks plus four interviews and numerous informal talks. Life at this school was intense and often dramatic. I develop an approach which suggests the headteacher's work contains …
Research Students in Education and Psychology
Although some attention has been given in the literature to the notion of variable supervisor style, students are often discussed as if they are interchangeable and homogeneous. Results from this study of education and psychology departments in British universities suggest that there are several different ways to present oneself as a student, some more in continuity than others with the requisites for academic success. Five such ‘student styles’ …
Sex differences in graduate student ambition
Women, the Other Academics∗
∗ This paper is a much‐expanded version of a talk given to the British Sociological Association, Education Study Group, Day School on Feminist Action and Analysis in Education, Bristol, 17th February, 1979. I should like to thank Geoff Millerson, Caroline St. John Brooks, Michael Berry, Miriam David, Philip Gammage and Sara Meadows for comments on the draft version and Maureen Harvey for help with the typing
Sex Discrimination in Education
Journal Article Sex Discrimination in Education: a reply to Shaw Get access Sandra Acker Sandra Acker Correspondence: Dr Sandra Acker, University of Bristol School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 IJA, England. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, July 1981, Pages 107–118, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1981.tb00573.x Published: 30 May 20…
No-Woman's-Land
Shorter Notices
Women, the other academics
The Invisible Decade
Feminist theory and the study of gender and education
Teachers, Gender and Resistance
Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid‐1970s. Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity. Less often studied is the teacher herself or himself. In particular, the question ari…
Teachers’ Culture in an English Primary School
This paper uses ethnographic data to investigate the impact of recent government legislation on primary school teachers. The reactions of one inner city primary school are reported in detail. It is argued that primary schools have distinctive cultures and these shape the response to the legislation. The relationship is dynamic as the legislation also influences the culture. The headteacher's role is undergoing particularly marked changes. Heads a…
Managing the Drama
Previous studies of the work of primary school headteachers tend to adopt a fairly superficial approach to categorizing tasks and contacts. As part of an ethnographic study of teachers' work in an inner city primary school, I 'shadowed' the headteacher for three one-week blocks plus four interviews and numerous informal talks. Life at this school was intense and often dramatic. I develop an approach which suggests the headteacher's work contains …
Girlies on the Warpath’
Gender issues in education are not simply a woman's problem. They constitute a more general problem of theorising about the nature and processes of education. Where studies advocate the eradication of inequality via education it is most often teachers who are seen as the crucial agents of change. Despite this recognition, surprisingly little attention has been paid to preparing teachers for taking on such a task. This paper considers, firstly, ho…
Creating Careers
Teachers' careers have been approached from a number of angles. Some writers conceptualize careers primarily as individual decisions, while others emphasize the structural constraints that shape and limit careers. One such constraint is the gender differentiation that pervades the teaching occupation, as demonstrated by statistics that show men disproportionately in management roles. Generally neglected is the middle ground, ways in which percept…
Special Series on Girls and Women in Education
Teachers' careers have been approached from a number of angles. Some writers conceptualize careers primarily as individual decisions, while others emphasize the structural constraints that shape and limit careers. One such constraint is the gender differentiation that pervades the teaching occupation, as demonstrated by statistics that show men disproportionately in management roles. Generally neglected is the middle ground, ways in which percept…
Research Students in Education and Psychology
Although some attention has been given in the literature to the notion of variable supervisor style, students are often discussed as if they are interchangeable and homogeneous. Results from this study of education and psychology departments in British universities suggest that there are several different ways to present oneself as a student, some more in continuity than others with the requisites for academic success. Five such ‘student styles’ …
Carry on Caring
This paper is based on an ethnographic study in one English primary school, 'Hillview'. First, I review feminist and other approaches in the literature to the familiar association between women and caring. After a description of the school and the study, I consider Hillview teachers' caring activities in the classroom and whether maternal imagery is justified. Sources of stress and struggle, which lend a sober side to romanticized notions of teac…
Doing Good and Feeling Bad
Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 27 women academics in faculties of education in Canada, this article explores some of the consequences of the gendered division of labour in universities. Jean Baker Miller's phrase, ‘doing good and feeling bad’, characterised the women in the study. They reported working excessively hard, taking responsibility for supporting others, including colleagues and students, and being ‘good department citizens’. Yet t…
Becoming a teacher educator
Undergraduate research supervision
This article reports the findings of a small study aimed at analysing the way supervisors of undergraduate research discuss their style of supervision. The study was motivated by an interest in the possibility that gendered ways of working may influence the student-supervisor relationship. A qualitative approach to data collection was taken, using unstructured and taped interviews with supervisors, with transcription viewing by the supervisors fo…
Making a Difference
This article reports a study of Australian and Canadian women in management positions in university faculties of education. It provides a perspective on the contradictory and multilayered experiences of the first cohort of academic women to reach management positions in any significant numbers in education. The article explores the way in which women are positioned as different but at the same time negotiate their place by using marginality and d…
Globalisation women's work and teacher education
This article examines how broader international transitions and changes in teacher education are manifested locally, as lived experience, in female teacher educators' working lives.Using cross-national data from Britain and Canada, it illustrates how broad international changes are redefiningparticularly through the social regulation of gender conflicts in the workplacethe terms and conditions upon which women are expected to function as 'workers…
Sleepless in academia
The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and mea…
Women ‘learning to labour’ in the ‘male emporium’
This article reflects an interest in exposing links between women's academic work and the gender codes which organize and shape working life in the university context, both now and in the recent past, as a contribution to the sociology of women's work. Our specific focus is the gendered division of labour in teacher education in universities in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu and McNay, and through an analysi…
Gendered games in academic leadership
This article looks at women's efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women's leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in-depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada, Australia or Britain, I focus on four contrasting case studies. For some women it is possible to build a sati…
Chairing and caring
This article uses three frames of analysis, each with gendered implications, to interpret the author's narrative of experience as a department chair (head of department) in a Canadian university from 1999 to 2002. The narrative is based not only on memory but on transcripts of interviews conducted with the author at various points during her term as chair. The three frames are: (1) learning leadership; (2) surviving organisations; and (3) perform…
Sociology (26 works) · Political science (17 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Pedagogy (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (12 works) · Gender Roles and Identity Studies (8 works) · Higher education (8 works) · Law (8 works)