Power, Gender, and Knowledge in Home Economics Teacher Education Programmes in Nigeria: A Foucauldian Analysis

This study conducts a Foucauldian analysis of the relationships among power, gender, and knowledge in Home Economics teacher education programmes in Nigerian universities, interrogating how disciplinary power structures, gendered knowledge hierarchies, and pedagogical practices reproduce or contest normative assumptions about gender roles and domestic science. Home Economics teacher education occupies a distinctive ideological space in which contested assumptions about gender, professionalism, and knowledge legitimacy are enacted and reproduced through curriculum selection, examination regimes, and institutional culture. The study employs a qualitative Foucauldian genealogical design, combining analysis of teacher education programme documents from twelve universities across all six geopolitical zones, in-depth interviews with 60 lecturers and student-teachers, and observation of 40 university Home Economics teaching sessions. Analytical methods include Foucauldian discourse analysis, genealogical mapping of curriculum evolution, and power-geometry analysis of classroom interactions. The Foucauldian Framework of Power-Knowledge, Feminist Pedagogy Theory, and the Critical Teacher Education Model collectively anchor the study. Original contributions include the first Foucauldian analysis of Home Economics teacher education in Nigeria, a power-knowledge archaeology of curriculum change across six decades, and a critical pedagogy framework for transformative Home Economics teacher preparation. Findings are expected to reveal how gendered power asymmetries embedded in teacher education programmes limit the transformative potential of Home Economics as a discipline. Recommendations address teacher education institutions and the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria. Keywords: Foucauldian analysis, gender, power, Home Economics teacher education, Nigeria.