Language & Gender Essay

Language and sexual urge in the schoolroom Many of the issues reviewed in this chapter bear far-reaching implications in enlightenrooms. Classrooms and schools argon among societys primary sociableizing institutions. In them, children come to understand their social identity comparative to each other and relative to the institution. Although schools argon certainly not responsible for teaching students their gender-differentiated social roles, they often reinforce the subordinate role of girls and wo hands by curricular extracts and classroom governings that exclude, denigrate, and/or stereotype them.However, as discussed earlier in this chapter, recent notional insights suggest that identity is not fixed, that words use is not static, and that it is realistic to negotiate social identities through selection language use. It follows, then, that schools atomic number 18 sites in which inequities (based on gender, draw, ethnicity, language background, age, sexuality, etc. can be challenged and potentially change by selecting materials that represent identity groups more than than(prenominal) satisfactoryly, by reorganizing classroom interaction so that all students take on the opportunity to talk and demonstrate achievement, and by encouraging students to critically analyze the ways they use language in their everyday lives. Based on a review of 2 decades of look for on gender and classroom interaction, Clarricoates concludes that interaction between instructors and students and among students themselves is suffused with gender (1983, p. 6 cited by Swann, 1993). Studies reviewed by Swann (1993) describe a range of ways in which gender differentiation is maintained in mainstream communicatory classrooms, including the following trance there argon quiet pupils of both sexes, the more forthspoken pupils black market to be boys. Boys to a fault take to the woods to stand out more than girls. Michelle Stanworth (1983) notes that in her s tudy teachers initially set up slightly girls hard to place. Boys also referred to a face little bunch of girls. Boys tend to be normally more assertive than girls. For instance, a US study of whole-class talk (Sadker and Sadker, 1985) found boys were octet times more likely than girls to call out. Girls and boys tend to sit independently in group work, pupils usually elect to work in single-sex sort of than mixed-sex groups. When they overhear the choice, girls and boys often discuss or write about gender-typed topics. Boys are often openly disparaging towards girls. In practical pillow slips, such as science, boys hog the resources. In practical subjects, girls fetch and carry for boys, doing a lot of the make clean up, and collecting books and so on. Boys occupy, and are allowed to occupy, more space, both in class and outsidefor example, in play areas. Teachers often make distinctions between girls and boys for disciplinal or administrative reasons or to motivat e pupils to do things. Teachers give more attention to boys than to girls. Topics and materials for password are often chosen to maintain boys interests. Teachers tend not to perceive disparities between the numbers of contributions from girls and boys. Sadker and Sadker (1985) showed US teachers a ikon of classroom talk in which boys made three times as many a(prenominal) contributions as girls but teachers believed the girls had talked more. Teachers accept certain behaviour (such as calling out) from boys but not from girls. Fe anthropoid teachers uncloudedthorn themselves be subject to harrassment from male pupils. Disaffected girls tend to opt out quietly at the back of the class, whereas disaffected boys make trouble. (Swann, 1993, pp. 1-52) A 10-year research project by Sadker and Sadker (1993 including participant observation, audio and video recordings, interviews with students and teachers, and large-scale surveys) in elementary, junior high up, and high school, and in university classes in the unite States, and the review of research on language and gender in the classroom by Sommers and Lawrence (1992), both support these general findings. It is interesting to note the parallel between research on girls and boys in schools on the one hand, and on minority and majority students in schools on the other.Just as boys and men ( broadly speaking with no attention to factors like race and ethnicity) assemble to be advantaged at the expense of girls and women in mainstream schools in Britain, Australia, and the United States, white middle-class standard English speakers (generally with no attention to gender) seem to be advantaged at the expense of nonwhite middle-class standard English speakers (see Nieto, 1992, for push discussion). However, as Swann (1993) points out, these findings need to be interpreted with some caution. The differences between sexes are always average ones, and boys and girls behave differently in different contexts. In other words, these are tendencies, not absolutes, that have been documented in mainstream English-speaking classes. It should be emphasized that there is considerable variation that can be exploited by teachers in their own classes. As discussed earlier, for the variation in how girls and boys use language to be understood, research needs to begin not with boys and girls as fixed categories that behave or are treated the corresponding in all contexts, but with a particular community of practice, in this case a class or a school.The analysis, then, needs to counseling on the activity and on how boys and girls rights and obligations are constructed inwardly that activity within that community of practice. Once the class and the activities to be analyzed have been identified, the teacher or researcher can begin by asking how girls and boys, women and men, are represented, for example, in the texts selected for use in the class as well as in the work that the students produce.Res earchers have found that women, like other minority groups, tend to be excluded, marginalized, or stereotyped within the mainstream curriculum cognitive capacity (see Nieto, 1992 Sadker amp Sadker, 1993 Swann, 1993, for further discussion). Although we are not aware of any studies that have documented short-term and perennial-term effects of mainstream curriculum content versus curriculum content that is gender balanced, Swann summarizes the concerns of teachers and researchers about gender imbalances in the curriculum as followsTeachers and researchers have been concerned about imbalances in childrens reading materials because of their potential flying and local effects they may affect the way pupils react to a particular book and the subject with which it is associated they may also affect the pupils operation on assessment tasks. There is further concern that, in the longer term, such imbalances may help to reinforce gender differences and inequalities they may curve chil drens perceptions of what are appropriate attributes, activities, occupations, and so forth for males and females.Introducing alternative images may redress the balance, and also have a disruptive effect, causing pupils to apparent motion accepted views of girls and boys and women and men. (p. 113) Swann (pp. 190-197) provides a variety of checklists that teachers and researchers can use to investigate how girls and boys, women and men, are represented and evaluated in the texts they choose and the activities they organize within their classrooms.When teachers find that their curricular choices are not balanced with respect to gender, for example, that the science text includes a couple of(prenominal) contributions by women, that the literature anthology includes stories primarily by white males about white males, or that the women included in the texts are portrayed only in traditional roles, they can adopt texts that offer images of women and men in less traditional roles.If the goal is to encourage students to question traditional notions, simply providing alternative images in the curriculum content may not be sufficient. Teachers may want to encourage students to talk about traditional and alternative images, by chance by critically reading and responding to sexist materials, by emphasizing choice in womens and mens roles, and by challenging representations of women and men (and other groups) in the students own work. We will return to these points later in this chapter.As has been discussed throughout this chapter, it is not only what is talked about, in this case through the curriculum content, that helps shape gender roles equally or more meaning(a) is an understanding of how girls and boys, women and men, position themselves and each other through their interactions. With respect to the organization of classroom interaction, research suggests that betrothal frameworks, or groupings of students and teachers for classroom activities (e. . , as indi viduals, in pairs, in small groups, or as a teacher-fronted classes), can potently influence the students opportunities to talk and demonstrate achievement (see Erickson, this volume Saville-Troike, this volume). For example, mainstream U. S. classrooms are generally characterized by the transmission model of teaching and learning (Cummins, 1989) and the initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) participation anatomical structure (Holmes, 1978).In these teacher-centered classes, the teacher talks for most of the time as he or she transmits the curriculum content to the student population in a relatively competitive atmosphere, and initiates the students5 participation. The students are encouraged to bid for the opportunity to respond to what Cazden (1988) describes as the known-answer55 question, and the teacher then evaluates the students responses as right or wrong. It is in this traditional competitive classroom that boys seem to be advantaged (Sadker ampc Sadker, 1993 Tannen, 1992) .However, just as women participated more in more collaboratively organized meetings than in traditional hierarchically organized meetings (see earlier discussions of Edelsky, 1981 Goodwin, 1990), some research suggests that girls, as well as students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, participate more in cooperative learning organizations than in traditional teacher-centered classes (Kramarae amp Treichler, 1990 Tannen, 1992 see also Kessler, 1990, for a general review of benefits of cooperative learning). However, the picture is such(prenominal) more complicated simply organizing students into smaller groups is not the answer.In fact, some research suggests that mixed-sex groupings can reproduce boys dominant role and girls supportive role. For example, in a study by Sommers and Lawrence (1992) of mixed-sex peer response groups of college students in piece of writing classes, it was found that males took far more turns than females, produced greater quantiti es of talk, at times appropriated females ideas as their own, and tended to interrupt and/or silence their female counterparts. Females tended to wait, listen, acknowledge, and confirm other students contributions.When Sommers and Lawrence compared male and female participation in the peer response groups with their participation in the teacher-fronted participation framework, they found that boys and girls tended to participate more or less equally in the teacher-fronted organization because the teachers could exert more control over how the participation opportunities were distributed. It is important to mention that the teachers in these teacher-fronted classes were Lawrence and Sommers themselves, and that they were aware of and concerned about equal participation opportunities for males and females in their classes.In a study by Rennie and Parker (1987, cited by Swann, 1993) of primary school students in science classes in Australia, it was also found that boys tended to talk m ore in mixed-sex groupings, and girls tended to watch and listen. However, in single-sex groups, and in classes in which the teachers had participated in a gender awareness course, girls tended to participate more actively. some(prenominal) these examples suggest that when teachers are aware of gender-differentiated language use, they can change the dynamics in their classes so that girls and women are not subordinated, at least in the short run.Swann (1993) provides some useful suggestions for teachers and researchers who are interested in consistently observing and analyzing the dynamics within their own classes to understand how girls and boys are positioned relative to each other (Chap. 8), as well as suggestions for changing discriminative practices (Chap. 9). The research discussed thus far has been concerned with genderdifferentiated language use in mainstream, white, standard Englishspeaking contexts in the United States, Britain, and Australia. Even in these relatively s imilar contexts, it is evident that factors other than gender (e. g. participation framework and activity type) may affect the way people behave. Although there has been relatively little detail research to date on the ways in which boys and girls from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds interact in the classroom, an area of particular concern to ESL and bilingualist teachers, it is likely that factors such as culture, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status interact with gender to shape students participation opportunities. For example, Swann (1993) discusses a series of analyses of gender and ethnic imbalances in classroom discussions in four nursery and primary schools in Ealing, England.Swann points out that in the original analysis, Claire and Redpath (1989) found that boys averaged three times as many turns as girls, and that some boys were more talkative than others this finding is consistent with much of the research on girls and boys participation in class es. Their follow-up analysis of the same data, however, suggests an interaction between gender and ethnic group. They found that the boys who dominated the discussion group were white and black Afro-Caribbean the Asian boys participated much less frequently. whitened and black Afro-Caribbean girls participated about equally Asian girls participated the least of any group. They presuppose that the topics of discussion and teachers attitudes and behaviors in the lesson might contribute to these classroom dynamics (see Swann, 1993, p. 65, for further discussion). Consistent with Claire and Redpaths first analysis, research by Sadker and Sadker (1993) found no systematic differences between black and white students, students from different age groups, or students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.