Success for women: A critique of the literature

Abstract

Why should an educator care at all about what success is? The issue is that whatever we may think as teachers, we still teach our pupils to work towards something. That is, we seem to have a long-standing commitment to helping students develop their potential and to achieve success. As teachers our educative philosophy seems to be that we are trying to teach people to fulfil their potential, towards this something called success. But, this 'thing' is a very vague and nebulous concept that many educators really don't know what they are teaching towards. In this paper I am going to suggest what success means but most particularly how it is different and more difficult for women. I believe there is a need for educators to know what they are ultimately teaching towards. This paper also challenges the reader to consider the impact of their understanding of the word success and how the associated assumptions impact on teaching practice.