In this study we examine one
framework of boundary crossing in activity theory (Engeström, 2001) as a normative way of opening a deliberative discourse
about gender as a construct in Teacher Education. The framework was part of a
European project for eliciting pedagogical innovation with teachers with an
outcome of gender awareness (Mooney
Simmie and Lang, 2012, 2017). Seven case studies were conducted analysing data
from a convenience sample of seven teacher educators who alongside the authors
acted as national coordinators for the project. Data sources included questionnaires
of initial ratings, case study reports and interviews. A cluster analysis of
ratings was guided in a step-wise manner by Xing & Marcinkowski (2015) and
yielded two distinctive cluster groups where one group of case studies had high
ratings of gender-specific settings. This finding was then used in a
qualitative interpretation of data sources for a deeper contextual
understanding of teacher educators’ perspectives. Gender-specific settings had
a reported context of aspects in an activity system which three case studies
grasped as school-based planning, pedagogical innovation and
mentoring-supports. The framework for
analysis of higher order gender aspects showed success in separating out case
studies with isolated views of gender. Some teacher educators were deeply challenged
by this expansive view of gender awareness and findings showed limitations in the
partially restricted framing of gender as an activity system at the outset of
the project. The study underscores the promising explanatory power of the
framework adopted and opens up hypotheses for further study and consideration.