Unit 2

Language, Gender and Education I

In order to complete this unit successfully, you will need Coates (1998), Bergvall, Bing and Freed (1996) and the new Course Reader to hand.

Introduction

In a recent publication, Joan Swann (2003), who has become one of the researchers at the forefront of language, gender and education studies (and who you have already come across in Language and Gender I), defined the term schooled language in order to refer to 'language that, in various guises, pervades schools and classrooms: the language through which teaching and learning, school and classroom organization, and discipline take place; the language that is taught and assessed as part of the formal curriculum; but also the language that escapes adult intervention that hangs around playgrounds, corridors, the fringes of lessons' (2003: 624).

This is a very useful definition, and one that will be utilised in this unit. However, the unit also has a much broader focus. In addition to considering the language of primary and secondary schools, issues of language and gender in further/higher education will also be focused on. Material that has been conducted both within native speaker classrooms and within the field of language teaching will be examined. Data will be analysed from educational environments in the UK, USA, Australia, Greece and Portugal.

Despite the wide-ranging definition of "schooled language" given by Swann, language and gender research in the broader field of education has tended to focus on two main areas of enquiry: the spoken discourse of classroom interaction and the written discourse of textbook material. We will focus on spoken classroom discourse in this unit. The discourse of textbook material and other written teaching resources will be focused on in Unit 3. This unit will also look at the most recent developments in the field of language, gender and education by examining the recent reporting of boys' underachievement at school.

If you cast your mind back to the start of Language and Gender I you will recall that Units 3 to 10 of the course are set out in roughly chronological order to reflect the development of language and gender theory: from deficit to dominance, from dominance to difference, and from difference to diversity. Early studies in the field of language, gender and classroom interaction conducted in the early 1980s fall firmly in the area of the dominance approach. This will probably come as no surprise to you, due to the prevalence of the dominance approach in the early 1980s, and again, we come across the work of Dale Spender. After publishing Man Made Language, she went on to examine language and gender in the British education system in a publication entitled Invisible Women: The Schooling Scandal (1982).

Before we examine Spender's work in more detail, you should re-read Swann's article which appears as Chapter 9 in the Coates' Reader to refamilarise yourself with the criticisms that Swann gives to the dominance approach through her analysis of classroom talk. You should bear these arguments in mind when considering the next section of the unit.

In Spender's publication, she argues that one of the reasons why boys dominate classroom interaction in British classrooms is due to the distribution of teachers' attention. Although there are differences between Spender and Swann in terms of theoretical positioning, Swann's argument that teachers (and female students) contribute to male dominance in the classroom accords with Spender's view that teachers give more attention to their male students.

Spender reports that as a teacher herself she always attempts to give equal talking time to her female and male students. However, when she recorded herself in lessons she discovered that on average she spent 58% of her time talking to boys and only 38% of the time talking to girls. From this finding she makes the crucially important point that what teachers think they do and what they actually do in the classroom can be considerably different.

She also argues that pupils themselves were aware of the fact that boys dominate classroom talk. Reporting the work of Stanworth (1981), Spender (1982: 55) asserts that when students of both sexes were asked who dominates in the classroom, they all overwhelmingly indicated that the boys received the most attention and were also told that they were "important and liked'.

In the USA, Saker and Saker (1985) report that boys spoke more often in class, and teachers reprimanded the girls for calling out but not the boys. Kelly (1988) reports that regardless of the age of students, the country in which the class is taking place, social class or the subject matter being taught, girls receive less attention than boys by both female and male teachers.

What are your reactions to these findings? What have been your own experiences as a student in classes at all educational levels? Do you think that you were given more/less attention due to your gender? If you are a teacher, do you think that you give equal time to female and male students in your classroom? If possible, record and analyse a lesson to see if your perceptions of what you think you do differ from what you actually do in terms of talking time and attention.

In a publication that is influenced by the more recent theoretical advances in language and gender research, Sunderland (2000a) makes a series of important points which are crucial to interpreting gender and classroom interaction between students and teachers. However, she does not dispute Spender's earlier assertion that a number of studies have found differences between the amount of attention girls and boys receive in the classroom. In fact, she quotes other studies which have found the same phenomenon. Instead she argues that it is not the amount of attention that is important in the classroom; rather, it is the kind of attention that students receive which should be looked at.

Sunderland highlights that a good deal of teacher attention that is directed at male students takes the form of reprimands for their bad behaviour. She makes the crucial point that if the statistics show boys are receiving more attention, this does not necessarily mean they are receiving better learning opportunities.

In a study which she conducted in the foreign language classroom (Sunderland 1996), although the boys received more attention this was largely because they were being told off. In fact, the teacher appeared to be constructing girls as the more academic students by presenting them with better learning opportunities. The data revealed how girls were being asked questions which required longer answers, and these answers were expected to be in the target language. She argues that these findings illustrate the prime importance of distinguishing between amount of attention and the form the attention takes as far as learning opportunities are concerned. She points out that " while boys may appear to dominate the classroom in one sense, girls may dominate it in another' (2000a: 163).

Whilst the studies that we have examined so far have taken difference as the starting point for examining interaction in the classroom, Sunderland also draws on the notion of performativity, introduced in Unit 8 of Language and Gender I, to illustrate how gender identities are performed in the classroom. She argues that the performativity model demonstrates the role that classroom discourse plays in shaping the gender identity of students. In taking such an approach, she advances the view that a focus on gender difference does not have to be the focus of educational research. She also suggests that disadvantage may not always be the most relevant concept to consider when analysing classroom interaction.

She uses the following data extract to illustrate how the performativity model can be used to conduct studies of classroom interaction (2000a: 167):

1 2	Teacher:	we're going to have two more boys I think . two more boys what about Ray and Max
3	Ray.Max:	no
4	Teacher:	no. why not
5	Lia/May:	we're boys
6	Kay/Bea:	we're boys
7	Kay:	we're boys miss
8 9	Teacher:	all right we'll have two more girls and then we'll see if the boys have got any courage

Here, the girls can clearly be seen to be actively performing their gender identities by claiming to be boys in order to gain a turn in the conversational floor. As Sunderland suggests, this is a very effective strategy, and the girls succeed in their wishes.

Sunderland then reports on how she interviewed the boys after the above interaction had taken place. They both stated that the reverse would never have happened: under no circumstances would they have pretended to be girls.

Consider the above example in light of the view that boys have more limited gender identities open to them than girls. Do you think this can act as a disadvantage to boys in the classroom?

As well as practically applying performativity theory to her classroom data, in another work Sunderland (2000b) also highlights the potential advantages of following a communities of practice approach to investigating classroom discourse. As the CofP framework was designed within the discipline of Education by Lave and Wenger (1991) to investigate how apprentices learn to integrate themselves in a CofP, a key group that could be classified as a CofP is a group of language learners.

In order to consider the benefits of adopting the CofP approach to investigating the educational domain, you should now re-read Bergvall's (1996) chapter on gender and interaction in the HE environment which appears in Bergvall, Bing and Freed's edited collection.

In another work which also draws on the recent theoretical advances of language and gender study, educational researcher Judith Baxter (2002) takes an approach which she terms Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA) to investigate oral assessment in classroom interactions. Her data are taken from a mixed-sex secondary school class in the UK. The pupils are aged between 15-16, and they are studying for their GCSEs (General Certificate in Secondary Education). Her FPDA approach draws on the Foucauldian notion of discourse as a social practice, introduced and illustrated in Unit 8 of Language and Gender I.

Baxter argues that there are 4 competing classroom discourses which work to condition what she describes as 'effective' or 'ineffective' student speakers in terms of how they are assessed by both teachers and their peers. These discourses are as follows (2002: 10):

1. The discourse of approval: including both teacher approval (how teachers appear to favour or privilege certain pupils) and peer approval (popularity, friendship, personal confidence etc.)

2. The discourse of gender differentiation: this discourse was seen to inform commonsense thinking and was deeply embedded within the discursive practices in terms of classroom structure.

3. A discourse of collaborative talk: both teacher and student expectations that the talk which the students were being assessed on should be 'cooperative, facilitative and supportive'.

4. A mainstream school discourse of fair play in classroom talk: the teacher must appear to be fair to students when allocating the turn-taking system.

The following extracts are taken from Baxter's (2002: 11-16) data. Examples 1 and 2 are extracts of classroom talk, whereas Examples 3-5 are taken from interviews that Baxter conducted with the students after the interactions had taken place. Analyse these data for evidence of the 4 competing discourses that are outlined above. Who do you perceive to be the most effective and ineffective speakers in Examples 1 and 2? What does your analysis reveal in terms of the gender of the speaker, and the overall gender discourses that operate in this school?

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4
Rebecca has been asked what she thought of the whole class discussion:

Example 5

Baxter (2002: 17) summarises her study by making the following argument: "while [girls] should not be constituted as victims, girls are nonetheless subject to a powerful web of institutionalised discourses that constitute boys more readily as speakers and girls more readily as an appreciative and supportive audience. Thus, teachers and educators do need to intervene to take some form of transformative action. Girls need to learn to resist certain dominant classroom discourses'.

In light of Baxter's quotation, list ways in which you think teachers and educators could teach girls to 'resist certain dominant discourses'. How far would you agree with the view that girls need to be taught how to do this? Can you come up with alternative approaches which may change the dominant discourses of the classroom?

Since the early 1990s, there has been an increased focus on boys' underachievement in the classroom in a number of countries. In the UK, this argument has resulted from comparisons of GCSE results, and more recently (since 2000) with A-level results (Advanced level), the examinations students take to gain university entry. Swann (2003: 632) reports that since around 1994, statistics have shown female students out-performing male students, resulting in a 'globalized moral panic'. These statistics can be seen as contributing to the popular culture view that masculinity is 'in crisis'.

However, the statistics mask a number of crucial issues, including the school subject, performance at school and job opportunities. Swann also argues that despite these statistics apparently showing boys to be at a disadvantage, once males enter the workplace, this no longer seems to be the case as they are presented with greater job opportunities and do not encounter the barrier of the 'glass ceiling' that women face. They also receive higher pay than their female counterparts for performing exactly the same job. The statistics also do not take into account differences within groups of boys and girls as a result of crucial social factors such as social class and ethnicity.

According to Swann, educationalists who are been called upon to explain the failure of boys have blamed a range of things including:

• 'Laddish' culture that fails to place any value on academic achievement
• Different learning styles
• Differences in maturity
• Lack of male teachers, and thus appropriate role models
• The effects of 'girl-friendly' schooling due to earlier equal opportunities policies following studies which demonstrated male dominance and female disadvantage

Swann also points to concerns regarding boys' language use and literacy in particular. Part of this derives from the commonly held assumption that women have better linguistic skills than men due to biological differences. However, whilst certain sociolinguists ascribe to this theory (see Chambers 1995), such studies of biological difference have proved inconclusive overall. Despite the persistence of such a view in popular culture, Cameron (2000: 74) argues that it is far more accurate to see better communication skills as 'symbolically associated with the behaviour of women and girls rather than that of men and boys'.

Swann (2003: 640) considers future directions for language, gender and education research within the current political climate. She argues that research which uses 'complex and highly contextualised models of language and gender will be wary of over-ready generalisations about boys 'underachievement'. The focus on male underachievement and the general move within language and gender studies towards investigating masculinities has led to a number of projects investigating language and masculinities in the classroom.

You should now read two examples of recent research that has taken place in the field of language and masculinities in the Australian education system. These articles, by Pam Nilan (2000) and Nola Alloway et al. (2003), appear in the Course Reader.

This brings us up-to-date with recent developments in language, gender and education studies in terms of classroom interaction and studies of achievement. Unit 3 will now examine the other main area of research in this field, the analysis of gender representations in textbooks and other written teaching materials.

For more details on the British Government's responses to boys' underachievement you should visit the following website operated by the Department for Education and Skills. It includes practical advice for teachers as well as statistics on gender and achievement.

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/genderandachievement/

Baxter, J. (1999) Teaching girls to speak out: The female voice in public contexts. Language and Education 14(1): 5-19.

Baxter, J. (2002) A juggling act: a feminist post-structuralist analysis of girls' and boys' talk in the secondary classroom. Gender and Education 14(1): 5-19.

Cameron, D (2000) Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture. London: Sage.

Chambers, J. (1995) Sociolinguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Clegg, S. (2001) Theorising the machine: gender, education and computing. Gender and Education 31(3): 307-324.

Gunnarsson, B-L. (1997) Women and men in the academic discourse community. In H. Kotthoff & R. Wodak (eds.) Communicating Gender in Social Contexts. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Kelly, A. (1988) Gender differences in teacher-pupil interactions: an meta-analytic review. Research in Education 39: 1-23.

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leontzakou, C. (1997) How teachers deal with gendered EFL textbook material. MA Dissertation, Lancaster University.

Raphael Reed, L. (1999) Troubling boys and disturbing discourses on masculinity and schooling: a feminist exploration of current debates and interventions concerning boys in school. Gender and Education 9: 3-18.

Saker, M. & Saker, D. (1985) Sexism in the schoolroom in the 1980s. Psychology Today March: 54-7.

Shehadeh, A. (1999) Gender differences and equal opportunities in the ESL classroom. ELT Journal 53(4): 256-61.

Spender, D. (1982) Invisible Women: The Schooling Scandal. London: The Women's Press.

Stanworth, M. (1981) Gender and Schooling. London: Hutchinson.

Sunderland, J. (ed.) (1994) Exploring Gender: Questions and Implications for English Language Education. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall.

Sunderland, J. (1995) 'We're boys miss!' Finding gendered identities and looking for gendering of identities in the foreign language classroom. In S. Mills (ed.) Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives . London: Longman, pp. 75-89.

Sunderland, J. (1996) Gendered Discourse in the Foreign Language Classroom: Teacher-Student and Student-Teacher Talk and the Social Construction of Children's Masculinities and Femininities. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Lancaster University.

Sunderland, J (2000a) New understandings of gender and language classroom research: texts, teacher talk and student talk. Language Teaching Research . 4(2): 149-173.

Sunderland, J. (2000b) Issues of language and gender in second and foreign language education. Language Teaching 33: 203-223.

Swann, J. (1992) Girls, Boys and Language. Oxford: Blackwell.

Swann, J. (2003) Schooled language. In J. Holmes and M. Meyerhoff (eds.) The Handbook of Language and Gender . Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 624-644.

Swann, J. & D. Graddol (1988) Gender inequalities in classroom talk. English in Education 22(1): 48-65.

Swann, J. & Graddol, D. (1995) Feminizing classroom talk? In S. Mills (ed.) Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Longman.

Tett, L. (2000) 'I'm working class and proud of it': gendered experiences of non-traditional participants in higher education. Gender and Education 12(2): 183-194.

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