Abstract
The development of gender issues and gender studies has been facilitated along with the rapid progress in science and technology in addition to the political and social changes at the global and local levels. Emerging gender issues are important to understanding changing gender politics and social relations. This study took an undergraduate course on “Introduction to Gender Studies” as an entry point to explore the associations between fundamental and emerging gender issues and the significance of learning emerging gender issues to students. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were adopted in this study. With students’ approval, I observed and took notes on their class performances and interactions during the teaching semester, and took their required papers as text analysis. Following the semester, with students’ voluntary participation, I conducted 43 (26 women, 16 men, and 1 nonbinary) quantitative surveys and 8 (6 women and 2 men) in-depth interviews with students from the previous class to understand how gender studies education has shaped their knowledge and life. In conclusion, the study finds that a systematic introductory course on gender is a critical way of learning and knowledge accumulation for students to systematically comprehend and analyze gender as a social classification and as a way to shape people's daily relationships and experiences. The knowledge base and topic familiarity on the broad issues of gender is a prerequisite for the student's understanding of emergent gender issues. At the same time, it is important to incorporate emerging gender issues into teaching to enable young generations to find gender issues significant. To create a friendly and flexible environment for class discussion is key to strengthening students' learning motivation. Gender in particular is an academic field closely related to everyday life. Daily gender experience and related academic concepts and discourses are connected through discussion and class assignments in the course, which directly affects students' learning motivation and effectiveness.