Abstract:

The results of TALIS surveys (OECD, 2014; OECD 2018) show that Slovakia is repeatedly one of the countries with the highest proportion of women in education professions (Dončevová, 2023). In recent years, there has been an acceleration of men leaving Slovak schools, but this problem is also observed in other countries (Kostelecká & Valášková Vincejová, 2023). The aim of the study is to examine the definitions of the term feminisation in relation to the school work environment over the last ten years and the implications of this phenomenon in databased studies published between 2014 and 2024. Through a literature review, we aim to capture how and in what contexts selected concepts closely related to the above-mentioned issue are interpreted (feminisation in the school environment, factors influencing the gender composition of the work team, the consequences of rigid gender roles in school professions, the possibilities of positively structuring power relations in the work of teachers, etc.). The text is a partial output of the VEGA grant project of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Slovak Republic No. 1/0316/22 Multidisciplinary Aspects of the Feminization of Education (2022-2025). The findings form the initial base before entering the field of selected primary schools in the framework of a qualitative investigation of the school microsystem in autumn 2024. Through the tools of school ethnography (observation of everyday events in the work team, content analysis of school documents, focus groups, individual semi-structured interviews) we want to investigate the specifics of the issue in the Slovak school environment. The aim of the qualitative research will be to compare the consequences of the gender distribution of work teams and the perception of gender roles in them in the domestic and foreign context. The planned research will result in the design of support tools for working with school managers to activate leadership skills and abilities.

Keywords:

Feminisation in the school environment, gender distribution of the work team, gender roles, school professions, teaching profession.