Gender and Education: public policy and pedagogic practice.

The article examines the Queensland Department of Education's Equal Opportunity Policy for Girls and Boys and the Implementing Guidelines for that policy within the context of the pedagogical practices of one secondary school. Most recent movement in sociology of education has been the recovery of human agency as a dynamic force within schools which had been previously seen as determining structures. This paper attempts to address this recovery of agency within a structural theory of education. The assumption of the individual as a passive recipient of society's message through institutions such as the school failed to account for the lived experience of the practitioners and students and precluded the possibility of transformative work. The theoretical purpose of this article is directly linked to attempt to understand gender relations as integral to the structure of schooling and the subjective positions made possible within such structure. There are a variety of difficulties associated with this work which are raised at appropriate places in the article.