Gender in the cultural context of university learning: photography as a revealing voice

Résumé

The EHEA reports propose a new learning approach based on the construction of knowledge. It must be considered that this change must go beyond than a different methodology we use today. So, we must move towards a change of the cultural context that triggers a new culture of learning. Several studies from the sociocultural perspective (Gay and Cole, 1967; Rogoff and Lave, 1984; Scribner and al., 1982; Carraher, Carraher and Schliemann, 1985; Saxe, 1989; Capon and Kuhn, 1979; Buendía and Olmedo, 2002, Olmedo, Pegalajar and Buendia, 2011), have focused on the importance of context where learning actions are developed and the necessity to commit for these permeable and enriched contexts by masculine and feminine characteristics. This paper focuses on describing and rewriting to interpret objects relationships in photographs submitted by the participants, three groups of postgraduate students in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Granada, who build the cultural context of learning from their perspective, differentiated by gender identity. Through image-based research, the underlying main conclusion is that, despite the efforts made at university to change to a constructivist learning model, it is not still fully accepted by the students, because a lack of use of these learning modalities. Gender has not been included as a guide in the new theories and university methodologies; women try to adapt and reconfigure the space to needs demanded by the new shares, making it more versatile. The men are more conservative and reaffirmed in an individual priority modalities character, situated in traditional learning environments, such as a classroom or a study room.