Presenter Abstracts Alphabetical by main presenter surname Agnew, Shire (University of Otago,
[email protected]) “That’s just silly, we’re all going to get it”: Students’ engagement with alternative discursive construction of menstruation. A recently completed research project investigating what happens when teachers use critical literacy pedagogy to support students to analyse advertising texts in menstruation education provides important contributions to the small body of research located in New Zealand. It found that the discourse positioning menstruation as a shameful secret was still dominant in the teachers’ construction of menstruation. Importantly, however, discourses of celebration and excitement were also identified within the ways students constructed their understanding. For the past 40 years, research literature around the experience of menstruation has reported the continuing dominance of discourses that construct menstruation as shameful and secret. Initially, teachers participated in workshops that explored the ways a critical literacy approach can examine the discursive construction of menstruation. I was, then, able to observe the classroom lessons and interview a small focus group of students from each observed class. From the transcripts of the audio-recorded workshops and interviews, and the field notes taken during the class lessons, I found that while teachers were still taking up the dominant discourse of shame and secrecy, the students were taking agentic opportunities to challenge this dominant discourse as well as explore alternative discourses to construct menstruation. Female students saw their experience of menstruation as providing them with special knowledge that enabled them to position themselves in powerful ways. And both male and female students talked about learning about menstruation as exciting, and considered the lessons interesting.