Why norm -critique? A feminist critical realist contribution to norm-critical pedagogy

The concept of the ‘norm’ is considered in several strands of critical pedagogy but is rarely given a pivotal role in understanding and/or counteracting gender and sexual inequality. At least one tradition deviates from this tendency: norm-critical pedagogy. In this strand of critical pedagogy, initiated in Sweden in the late 2000s and further developed and disseminated during the 2010s and 2020s to the Nordic region, the concept of the norm is considered the most crucial conceptualisation of power relations in education. The main argument of this paper is that an overly narrow emphasis on this concept hampers the ability to understand and counteract gender and sexual inequalities in education. I develop this argument from a feminist critical realist perspective, analysing key Swedish texts on norm-critique. This argument is structured around the following three characteristics of the concept of the norm within norm-critical pedagogy: (1) it is a taken-for-granted concept, (2) it is a one-size-fits-all concept and (3) the paradox of norms as simultaneously too simple and too complex. Finally, I suggest that norm-critical pedagogy could be developed by drawing upon historical and contextual versions of the concept of the norm and conducting suitable empirical research on its use.