The long mission towards gender equality in teacher education:

Abstract

Since the 1970s, gender equality has been an aim in international educational politics and policies. Finland has also evidenced a history of hundreds of projects and reports that have repeated the same aims, ideas, and practical innovations for promoting equality; many of them have teacher education as one of the foci. However, the actual pace of change has been very slow. In this paper, we focus on the sustainable impact of a national project on gender awareness in teacher education (20082011). We analyze changes in cultures and curricula in relation to gender awareness in teacher education. The data includes documents of the project, curricula of teacher education, responses of the former activists of the project and interviews with teachers in one teacher education unit. We also use autoethnographic methodology. We suggest that the mission of gender awareness is difficult, but not a mission impossible.