Since 2007, “PCP,” organized annually by SU Gender, and funded by the Sabancı Foundation, serves as the only program nationwide that trains teachers in areas of gender, inclusion, diversity, intersectionality. This program entails weeklong training sessions and workshops for teachers and students in Faculties of Education (FoE) across Turkey. An offshoot of the PCP is entitled “Purple Folders,” involving the preparation of gender-inclusive class materials for teachers. Purple Folders are designed by university professors, high school teachers, senior students in the FoE to serve as classroom materials, and to help teachers integrate gender and human rights into their curriculum. The proposed project itself aims to promote quality education in human rights and gender studies, whose impact also has the potential to reach beyond academia, through civil society. Apart from contributing to academic literature, PCP also aims to create a network for teachers and educators to share and enrich gender-inclusive materials and education methods.
PCP: overcoming inequalities
PCP’s methods of overcoming inequalities, removing impediments, ensuring sustainability, bringing about change in women’s and girls’ access to education are multifold.
Removing financial & technology-related barriers:
1) In order to overcome impediments to women’s and girls’ access to education, we provide entirely FREE education programs to all and fund ALL expenses related to travel, accommodation and meals during our programs.
2) During COVID-19 pandemic, defining access to computer technologies and the internet as a human right (and the only means to access education), we provided FREE laptops and internet access during the duration of our education program as well as computer literacy programs to all teachers and students in need.
Overcoming inequalities regarding age, health, disability, childcare, gender-based discrimination and/or violence by offering innovative online education programs:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we shifted to online education and will continue to offer online education programs even when pandemic-related travel restrictions are lifted. We were able to access many women who were not able to travel due to health, disability, age-related problems, who could not leave toddlers, young children, sick and elderly at home for being primary caregivers. Other women who were not able to travel before because they could not get permission from their families, connected to our online courses without leaving their homes. Victims of violence or discrimination could also form online networks of solidarity.
Overcoming discrimination and inequalities by transforming the curriculum into being more gender-inclusive:
While most of PCP’s efforts are focused on bringing women and girls equal access to education, PCP also aims to transform the curriculum of education so that the teaching material, in-class and extracurricular activities are gender-inclusive. The PCP team designs Purple Folders in all subjects related to high school education so curriculum can be informed by feminist methodologies. “PCP Gender Equality Award” (to be launched in September 2021) will reward best practices of 15 teachers each year who have succcessfully completed our trainings and who are engaged in feminist pedagogies and creative practices both within and outside the classroom. PCP’s education sessions are based on critical pedagogies so all participants can actively participate and create new teaching materials. By integrating research modules on gender studies into the program, all participants can find out about cutting-edge projects related to gender and women’s studies and can research ways of carrying such presentations into their teaching experience. Through our “Purple Seed Award,” teachers with innovative ideas on gender inclusive pedagogies for implementation will be rewarded in an award ceremony. Each year, PCP teachers will present their ideas at the “Purple Seed Panel,” which we hope will be inspirational to a multitude of educators and trainers within and beyond the PCP network.
Through “PCP networks” and “PCP Forum” (to be launched in 2021) that encompasses all teachers and students who have participated in our programs for the last 14 years, we believe we have ensured inclusive and equitable quality education during our programs and a lifelong learning opportunity for all participants through the webinars and discussions that we organized for the entire network on a regular basis. Our feminist program design seeks to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls.
Lastly, through training of teachers and potential teachers, we seek to construct a safe teaching and learning environment for all students and peers who are being educated by PCP teachers throughout their teaching career. The safe teaching and learning environment of PCP extends to approximately 10,080,000 students considering the number of students any teacher potentially instructs during their teaching career. Based on the evaluations of PCP’s activities, independent M&E experts** concluded that PCP served to increase significantly the level of knowledge of the participants on gender issues, on practices of resistance, on techniques of building gender-responsive teaching environments. In addition, M&E experts reported that the PCP enhanced the self-confidence of the participants, the value they attached to their jobs, while increasing their capacities to participate in local networks.