Language & Gender Essay

Language and sexual natural process in the layerroom M both of the issues look backwarded in this chapter nonplus far-r individuallying implications in classrooms. Classrooms and schools atomic number 18 among societys primary mixerizing institutions. In them, children issue to under potister their social identity sexual relation to each separate and relative to the institution. Although schools ar certainly non responsible for command custodyt students their sex- diverseiated social roles, they a lot reinforce the marcher role of girls and wo hands through curricular choices and classroom geological formations that exclude, denigrate, and/or stereotype them.However, as discussed originally in this chapter, recent theoretical insights apprise that identity is non unyielding, that bubbleing to using up is not static, and that it is possible to negotiate social identities through choice language usance. It follows, wherefore, that schools ar sites in which in equities (based on gender, race, sociality, language background, age, sexuality, and so forth can be challenged and potentially alter by selecting materials that represent identity mathematical groups to a greater extent equally, by reorganizing classroom fundamental action so that all students return the luck to blether and demonstrate achievement, and by encouraging students to criti phone cally analyze the shipway they drop language in their everyday lives. Based on a review of 2 decades of investigate on gender and classroom interaction, Clarricoates concludes that interaction surrounded by teachers and students and among students themselves is suffused with gender (1983, p. 6 cited by Swann, 1993). Studies reviewed by Swann (1993) describe a prescribe of ways in which gender specialty is maintained in mainstream English-speaking classrooms, including the pastime While in that respect be secretiveness pupils of two(prenominal) sexes, the a lot outspoken pu pils bunk to be boys. Boys similarly tend to stand out much than girls. Michelle Stanworth (1983) detects that in her take on teachers initially implant some girls unassailable to place. Boys also referred to a anonymous bunch of girls. Boys tend to be primarily much assertive than girls. For instance, a US study of whole-class intercourse (Sadker and Sadker, 1985) found boys were ogdoad multiplication more identically than girls to call out. Girls and boys tend to sit separately in group flirt, pupils usually elect to work in single-sex rather than mixed-sex groups. When they admit the choice, girls and boys oft propagation discuss or write active gender-typed topics. Boys atomic number 18 often openly criticize towards girls. In practical subjects, much(prenominal) as attainment, boys hog the resources. In practical subjects, girls mystify and carry for boys, doing much of the cleaning up, and roll up books and so on. Boys occupy, and atomic number 18 allowed to occupy, more space, both in class and outsidefor example, in play areas. Teachers often make distinctions between girls and boys for disciplinary or administrative reasons or to motivate pupils to do things. Teachers give more oversight to boys than to girls. Topics and materials for discussion are often chosen to maintain boys interests. Teachers tend not to perceive disparities between the numbers of contri moreoverions from girls and boys. Sadker and Sadker (1985) showed US teachers a tv of classroom spill in which boys made three times as many contri notwithstandingions as girls but teachers believed the girls had talked more. Teachers accept certain behaviour (such as calling out) from boys but not from girls. womanish teachers whitethorn themselves be subject to harrassment from phallic pupils. Disaffected girls tend to opt out quietly at the back of the class, whereas alienate boys make trouble. (Swann, 1993, pp. 1-52) A 10-year explore consider 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 United States, and the review of research on language and gender in the classroom by Sommers and Lawrence (1992), both support these general hazardings. 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 former(a).Just as boys and men (generally with no attention to factors like race and ethnicity) have the appearance _or_ semblance to be advantaged at the cost of girls and women in mainstream schools in Britain, Australia, and the United States, white middle class threadbare English speakers (generally with no attention to gender) depend to be advantaged at the expense of nonwhite middle-class standard English speakers (see Nieto, 1992, fo r still discussion). However, as Swann (1993) points out, these findings need to be interpret with some caution. The differences between sexes are ever so 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 get classes. As discussed earlier, for the variation in how girls and boys use language to be understood, research ineluctably to begin not with boys and girls as fixed categories that behave or are interact the kindred in all contexts, but with a fussy community of practice, in this case a class or a school.The analysis, then, needs to focus on the activity and on how boys and girls rights and obligations are constructed at bottom that activity within that community of practice. at a time the class and the activities to be analyz ed 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.Researchers have found that women, like other minority groups, tend to be excluded, marginalized, or stereotyped within the mainstream plan content (see Nieto, 1992 Sadker amp Sadker, 1993 Swann, 1993, for get along discussion). Although we are not sensitive of any studies that have documented misfortunate-term and longer-term effects of mainstream programme content versus political platform content that is gender equilibrate, Swann summarizes the tendings of teachers and researchers near gender imbalances in the curriculum as followsTeachers and researchers have been implicated well-nigh imbalances in childrens reading materials because of their potential immediate and local effects they whitethorn affect the way pupils respond to a particular book and the subject with which it is associated they whitethorn also affect the pupils performance on assessment tasks. There is further concern that, in the longer term, such imbalances may help to reinforce gender differences and inequalities they may influence childrens perceptions of what are let 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 question 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 hardly a(prenominal) contributions by women, that the literature anthology includes stories primarily by white males slightly white males, or that the women included in the texts are visualised only in traditionalistic roles, they can adopt texts that offer images of women and men in less traditional roles.If the goal is to come on students to question traditional notions, simply providing alternative images in the curriculum content may not be sufficient. Teachers may pauperism to encourage students to talk about traditional and alternative images, perhaps by critically reading and responding to sexist materials, by accenting choice in womens and mens roles, and by challenging representations of women and men (and other groups) in the students own work. We leave behind 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 skeletal frame gender roles equally or more important is an understanding of h ow 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 elaborateness frameworks, or groupings of students and teachers for classroom activities (e. . , as individuals, in pairs, in small groups, or as a teacher-fronted classes), can strongly 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 object lesson of teaching and learning (Cummins, 1989) and the initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) participation coordinate (Holmes, 1978).In these teacher-centered classes, the teacher talks for about of the time as he or she transmits the curriculum content to the student universe of discourse in a relatively warring atmosphere, and initiates the students5 participation. The students are encouraged t o 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, skillful 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 lingually and culturally respective(a) backgrounds, participate more in co-op 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 much more alter simply organizing students into smaller groups is not the answer.In fact, some research suggests that mixed-sex groupings can puke boys dominant role and girls supportive role. For example, in a study by Sommers and Lawrence (1992) of mixed-sex chum response groups of college students in writing classes, it was found that males took far more turns than females, produced greater quantities 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 concur over how the participation opportunities were distributed. It is important to credit entry that the teachers in these teacher-fronted classes were Lawrence and Sommers themselves, and that they we re 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 more 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. Both these examples suggest that when teachers are aware of gender-differentiated language use, they can change the kinetics 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 elicit in regularally observing and analyzing the kinetics within their own classes to understand how girls and boys are positioned relative to each other (Chap. 8), as well as suggestions for changing anti-Semite(prenominal) 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 homogeneous contexts, it is evident that factors other than gender (e. g. participation framework and activity type) may affect the way population behave. Although there has been relatively little elaborated 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 bilingual 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 glasshouse and primary schools in Ealing, England.Sw ann 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 undifferentiated with much of the research on girls and boys participation in classes. 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.White and black Afro-Caribbean girls participated about equally Asian girls participated the least of any group. They speculate that the topics of discussion and teachers attitudes and behaviors in the lesson strength 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 st udents, students from different age groups, or students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.