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Adolescent Girls and Classroom Discourse November
1995 1.
Introduction The topic of this study was the construction of gender and ethnicity in the face-to-face communications of early adolescent girls. The study was carried out through in-depth observations and analysis of the oral and written discourse of girls in two grade eight classrooms. There is a growing concern in the educational community that schools are less than successful places for girls and children of color. Fine and Zane (1989, p.78) remind us of how insidious it is that "public schools are marbled by social class, race and ethnicity and gender, yet they are laminated in denial, represented as if race, class and gender neutral." For example, adolescent girls can be considered less successful academically than adolescent Euro-Canadian boys because more boys than girls excel in high school mathematics and science and go into the scientific fields of study. At the University of Saskatchewan, women comprised the majority of the Arts and Science student population, but only 30% of the Bachelor of Sciences degrees were awarded to women in 1992 (University of Saskatchewan, 1993). As educators, teacher educators, and researchers, the authors wondered why this kind of discrepancy continues to exist and what are some possible sources of the problem. We wondered what happened to the girls we worked with during their middle years. Believing that early adolescence is an important time for girls in terms of their academic and social development, we thought it could be helpful to look more specifically at their experiences during this period. According to the American Association of University Women (1992), adolescence is a time when girls begin to change their view of themselves as learners and come to doubt their own potential. The association's report, How Schools Shortchange Girls, suggests that girls do not see themselves in the same academic light as boys, nor do they succeed academically in the same ways, starting about the time of pre-adolescence. The writers reported "that on average, 69 percent of elementary school boys and 60 percent of elementary school girls reported that they are 'happy the way I am'; among high school students, the percentages were 46 percent for boys, and only 29 percent for girls" (p.12). From this evidence, it is clear that attitudes change during the middle years. There is a growing body of research on gender issues in classrooms. Sadker and Sadker (1994) pointed out the many implications of gender bias in the classrooms. They suggest that these biases contribute to the loss of self-esteem and academic security for girls.
There seems to be little question that adolescence is a time of change, and as part of that change, youths constitute and reconstitute whom they see themselves to be in relationship to those around them. Adolescence is also a time when the lives of boys and girls become more differentiated by gender. Both in school and outside of school, adolescents are segregated by gender a great deal of the time. Boys and girls take on the new adolescent behaviors that are specific to their gender. From the way they hold their school books to their demeanor and talk, they are specializing their behaviors according to gender. These are things that we have not paid a great deal of attention to in classroom in the past. Is there something in this early adolescent experience that makes the course of their gender-differentiation both unique and problematic for girls? Based on this assumption and concern, we designed the study to look at the school experience of grade eight girls in terms of their gender and discourse. It attempts to address the general question: What are the implications for the classroom in the ways that adolescent girls represent themselves as gendered through their oral and written discourse? Research Questions We focus on how gender is constructed in the face-to-face communications of middle years girls in multicultural urban classrooms by addressing the following questions:
This research included ethnographic and socio-linguistic approaches to the examination of classroom interaction and language. The findings are presented here as a micro-ethnographic case study. During the 1994-95 school year, we observed the students in the classrooms, recorded the girls' interactions, tape-recorded their talk, read their written texts and interviewed them about their writing. We also tape-recorded their speech in small group discussions. The classroom teachers were interviewed on a regular basis to gather their observations, as were other teachers and school personnel who had direct contact with the girls. The following sections describe these data sources in more detail. Participant Observation Field notes from observations of these classrooms provided an overview of the classroom community, student-student interactions, student-teacher interactions, language use, and social relations. These participant observer field notes were typed, studied for emerging themes, coded, sorted, and re-sorted according to emerging patterns. The observations provided the groundwork for understanding the social context of learning among the students in these classes, and among the girls in particular. They also provided the basis for identifying the range of classroom writing opportunities and for describing the contexts in which oral discourse took place. Outside the classrooms, we observed and recorded school-wide events, staff meetings, middle years teachers' committee meetings, and student council meetings, and we participated in an extra curricular event called "TANSI", the meetings of the Aboriginal youth group. We believed that these events outside the classroom helped us to develop a deeper understanding of the middle years experience for girls at this school. The field notes from each event were coded to identify various references to adolescent girls. Oral Discourse in order to understand the role that oral discourse played for girls in this class, we looked at their talk in the classroom during both "informal activities" and "formal task activities" (James and Drakich 1993, p. 287). We looked primarily at their talk in small groups. In these classrooms, the students often worked on group projects in small groups either in their classroom, in an adjacent room, or in the hallway. The group discussions were student-led, and the students wither worked through a task that they had been given or, alternatively, they worked on one that they had designed for themselves. These groups were primarily self-selected and were a regular part of the classroom activities. Some of the group activities were literature-related and others were a part of their social studies course. The small groups provided the researchers with the opportunity to record the girls' talk in a context common to many classrooms. Written Discourse We observed the girls as they did creative and free writing, recorded their writing behavior, and described the context and social conditions that were in play when they wrote. Analysis of the girls' writing focused on what they did when they wrote, what they wrote about, how they used writing to communicate, how they viewed their own writing, how they interpreted their audience, and how they included themselves in what they wrote. The girls' writing was read by both the observer and the classroom teachers and was discussed by them with the girls. These discussions took place in the form of interviews, which looked at both the processes and the products of the girls' writing experiences in these classrooms. The girls were asked to talk about their writing and who they were as writers, as well as the role that written discourse played in their lives. They were encouraged to discuss their growth as writers and how they saw themselves emerging in their own written text. All the girls received a preliminary interview that provided a time to get to know them and to find out the following: the kinds of writing that they did, their reasons for writing, the functions that writing served for them, where they got ideas for their writing and what they liked or disliked about classroom writing. Six girls, who we felt best represented a cross section of the class, both academically and socially, were selected for further in-depth interviews. The next interview focused on texts that these six girls had selected from their writing file as best representing them as writers. The same girls were interviewed a third time in order to discuss more explicitly issues related to gender for grade eight students at this school. Interviews with Teachers and School Personnel The classroom teachers were secondary observers in this research and were interviewed regarding the girls' oral and written discourse throughout the year. Informal interviews with the teachers also provided insight into the classrooms as learning communities and the girls' roles in these communities. Various other school personnel were also interviewed in order to get a fuller understanding of the context of this school and community. Among those interviewed were the school social worker, aboriginal liaison worker, special needs teacher, and principal. The focus of the questions for the social worker, the aboriginal liaison worker and the principal were the broader context of the school, the student population and the community. These people were also asked to discuss what they saw as issues for girls in this school and what they thought it meant to be a girl in eighth grade. The special needs teacher talked more specifically about the oracy and literacy of the girls she worked with in the classrooms. Gender: A Social Construct
This scene from a typical physical education class emerged and kept re-emerging amongst many images from the 1994-95 school year. The girls participated in physical education activities less and less as the class continued, and Trina's timid comment, "at least we got there", typified a kind of "settling for less" mentality among the girls. We asked ourselves "what did this event and others like it mean to the girls in our study? What did it tell us about gender relations in this school? Does it tell us anything about gender relations in Canadian society?" We wondered if there were messages here about gender and learning and what inclusion and exclusion meant for these girls. Our study of gender and discourse has been shaped by several theoretical perspectives. In an ethnographic tradition we have sought to understand and present a socio-cultural phenomena from the perspective of the participants, and in doing so, we have immersed ourselves as best we could in the world of the "insider" (Malinowski, 1948). The cultural world examined in this is the experience of girls in their senior year of elementary school, seen in relationship to both the micro and macro levels of social behavior and social order. Meredith Cherland (1994), a classroom ethnographer, describes this relationship, "When I enter elementary school classrooms, I listen to a conversation, see the larger social order at work in shaping it, and, at the same time try to see how that conversation is in fact creating the social order before my very eyes" (p. 3). In our view, which is based on anthropological and sociological perspectives, the phenomenon, "gender" is socially constructed (Garfinkle, 1967; Goffman, 1976, 1977). We do not support a biological framework for gender, but rather suggest that humans construct their gender identities, beginning at a very young age, and continue to construct or reconstruct them through their interactions with others. Garfinkle's (1967) classic research with a youth who had just undergone a sex change and was reconstructing herself as a woman laid the foundation for this social theory of gender. Garfinkle demonstrated the process of a person constructing her gender identity and the subtleties of identity construction in relationship to those around her. Gender is both individual and personal. It is part of the social relations of human interaction, and it is symbolic (Thorne, 1994; Harding, 1986; and Scott, 1988). It is also a flexible and fluid phenomenon that differs in its relevance and value according to context. Social psychologists describe early adolescence as a crucial time for girls as they socially construct their identities. Gilligan (1993) suggests that adolescent girls watch, listen, and change according to the people around them. She says that "on a daily basis, girls receive lessons on what they can let out and what they must keep in, if they do not want to be spoken about by others as mad or bad, or simply told that they are wrong" (p. 149). The reality of girls' gender construction during adolescence is important, yet little understood. We believe that if teachers understand how girls learn the subtleties of gender and can see how they are representing themselves through their discourse, they will know how to support girls better. Talk: A Social Construct On the basis of an ethnography of communication frameworks, Hymes (1974) suggested that humans in any speech community represent themselves through their use of speech and construct who they are through interactions with others. The speech of an individual tells a great deal about who she is, as well as her relationships to others. Philips, Steele, and Tanz (1987), Hill (1987), Tannen (1986, 1990, 1991, 1993), Lakoff (1975, 1983), and Ochs (1987), to name a few, have specified how the speech of women differs from that of men. Their work has provided insight into the way that women use language and create themselves as gendered through language use. Tannen (1986, 1990, 1991, 1993) has also contributed to a profile of cross-gender communication, delineating and describing the linguistic features of talk between men and women, as well as the effects of this talk on the dynamics of power. Coates (1986) suggests that different patterns of oral discourse affect relationships within school, as in society, and that the characteristic pattern of discourse in a classroom environment can create or support literacy and learning differentially for girls and boys. Considerations of differential learning and power were key to our research as we looked for information to help us better understand what was going on with adolescent girls. We believed that it would be helpful to examine how young adolescent girls were learning the discourse patterns of their world and how they were creating who they are through their oral discourse. Text: A Social Construct Recognizing that classroom writing does not take place in a vacuum, our study looked at writing as a social activity. Cooper and Holzman (1989) suggest that:
Written discourse is also embedded in the world of the writer. The realities of the writer's life affect and shape the discourse. In a writing study with Native American children in Arizona, Bird (1992) discussed the embeddedness of literacy of Tohono O'odham children. When she compared the children's writing to the personal and social realities in their lives, it was obvious that the children's life experiences affected what they chose to write about. Bird stated that "the evolution of their texts cannot be seen apart from the complexity of who they are as writers working within the context of their multiple communities" (p. 68). She found five features of the children's lives represented in their writing:
Calkins (1994) advises us of the importance of social factors during adolescence, saying that during this important time, adolescents "construct a sense of personal identity. It is a time for trying on selves, for reflection, self-awareness, and self-definition" (p.158). She also suggests that it is a time when adolescents begin to embrace the notion of resistance and this experience can be conflicting form any of them. All these issues are important for youth at this age, and they "need to write about the poignant, turbulent events of their lives" (p.174). A person's writing is connected to the multiple experiences of life and to the multiple sign and communication systems that shape it. Cooper (1989) proposes "an ecological model of writing, [in which a] fundamental tenet is that writing is an activity through which a person is continually engaged with a variety of socially constituted systems" (p.6). He suggests that writers are not inventing ideas; they are transposing ideas from their "interactive landscape" (p.12). Writing is also a gendered activity. Bird (1992) indicated that she found gender differences between what boys and girls chose to write about. The girls wrote more about home and family, while the boys wrote more "true fantasies". The boys also were more likely to resort to violence to resolve conflict than were the girls (p.78). We believed that the girls in our middle years classrooms were continually negotiating the relationships and experiences of adolescence. Their lives were multiply connected to the realities of a multicultural urban life and factors that affected them as girls. We wondered if and how these connections affected their literacy, particularly how their written discourse reflected multiple social realities. We hoped that our research would provide a view of written discourse from the perspective of these young women and shed some light on the implications of gender in schools. 4. Results of the Investigation Context/Setting of the Study This research was done in two grade eight classrooms in St. M school in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, during the 1994-95 school year. St. M school is situated in a lower income, west-side neighborhood called Harbourview. In the community served by the school there are many issues of gender. For example, teen pregnancies, single parenting and abuse of various kinds are not uncommon. Historicially, girls from this neighborhood have been relatively successful in terms of passing through the grades in elementary school and high school, but they have not generally continued on to post-secondary education. A good number have, in fact, dropped out of high school and started families at an early age, with many of these living below the poverty line. Others have ended up in low paying traditional jobs or stayed at home as homemakers and caregivers. Gender divides the population of Harbourview and Saskatoon in a number of ways. Family life, public life, and the work place are obviously gendered. Women continue to work in the service industries and professions like teaching and nursing, where men work at a wide range of professional and blue collar jobs. Men still earn more than women in Harbourview, as they do throughout the city and the country (nationally, women earn only 63% of what men earn, according to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 1995). Children in Harbourview experience segregation by gender. In the community and school, they are segregated for sports and special interest clubs like girl guides and boy scouts. Thorne (1993) suggests that North American children learn at an early age that "girls and boys are on different sides" (p.63). In 1994, women comprised 51.4% of the population of Saskatoon, but the ratio of females to males varied in different age groups. For example, there were more boys than girls under that age of ten years, but the numbers equalized for those in the pre-teen and teen years. The 20-49 year old group had slightly more women than men, and in the 50 years plus categories, there were markedly more women than men. The city of Saskatoon has another division which is both geographical and social. There is an "east side" and a "west side" to the city which are clearly marked by the river. This construct, "east side" vs. "west side", has existed since the "east side" was settled as a temperance colony, and the non-temperate "west side" developed across the river from it. To this day, the "east side" is though of as the more prestigious place to live, with the University and many of the city's wealthy homes located there. The "west side" is thought of as more culturally diverse and less affluent. The "west side" has been the home to immigrants over many years. The Chinese community, for example, has a very visible presence there, with Chinese restaurants, grocery stores, and a home for the elderly. The Cantonese language is spoken in these places, while Chinese newspapers and notices indicate that Cantonese is a significant written discourse as well. Ukrainian immigrants to Saskatoon also originally settled on the "west side." Even though they now live throughout the city, they still have a presence here. It is not uncommon to hear the Ukrainian language spoken in the stores and community centers, but evidence of it as an authentic means of written discourse is uncommon. Several older suburbs in this area are home to many elderly Ukrainian people, and there are a Ukrainian restaurant, two butcher shops, several bakeries and a handicraft store. The "west side" is also home to many Aboriginal people. A number of community services serve primarily an Aboriginal clientele. For example, the Indian and Metis Friendship Center, and Indian-run organization, provides community, social, recreational and cultural services. The Aboriginal people on the "west side" tend to be poorer than their European or Asian counterparts and to have lower levels of education and higher rates of unemployment. They often face problems related to housing, racism, lack of employment, and health. Aboriginal languages are spoken in their homes and in such public places as the hospital or drug store. However, there is no print in any Aboriginal language found in public places. The community of Harbourview itself has further demarcations of economy, culture, and gender. Harbourview Road, for example, divides the community into two parts. On one side of the road, there are mostly apartments, and on the other side, there are houses. The apartment buildings are home to many Aboriginal people, as well as unemployed and working class non-Aboriginals. Some residents in these apartments are students at the community college or the University. Others are single mothers working in their homes while raising their children, or going out to work part-time. The residents in the houses are also predominantly working class families, although slightly better off financially than the apartment dwellers. There are more households with two adults, more two income families and fewer Aboriginal homes. There is less mobility among the families in the houses compared to the families in the apartments, even though some of the houses are rented. According to the 1991 census, 57.7% of the families in Harbourview were two-parent families, 17.4% were one-parent families, and 24% were single individuals. The average annual family income was $36,886 in 1991 (Statistics Canada), yet 28.3% of the families earned $19,999 or less and 11% earned less than $10,000. In 1993 the population of this community was 4,740, of which 973 were children of elementary school age. There were few elderly people in the area. In fact, less than 10% of the population was over the age of fifty. There were also few well established, long-term home owners, with a correspondingly great number of temporary residents. Many school classrooms have a turnover of 50% of their students in one school year. Harbourview is shaped roughly like a triangle. One side is bordered by the railway tracks, grain elevators, and stock yards; another side is bordered by a main thoroughfare and shopping mall; and the third side is bordered by Briarpoint, another lower middle income neighborhood. There are a few community services and commercial properties in Harbourview and in the adjacent neighborhood, Briarpoint. Children come to St. M school from both of these neighbourhoods. St. M school is part of the Saskatoon Catholic School Division and is one of twenty-five elementary schools in this division. Parents choose to send their children to these publicly funded Catholic Schools. During the 1994-95 school year, St. M School had about 500 children in grades K to 8. Approximately half were girls; at least one third were of Aboriginal ancestry. There were also a few Asian, Filipino, East Indian, South American and African children. There were 20 teachers, eight teacher assistants, a principal, a secretary, a part-time social worker/counselor, a part-time librarian, and a part-time Aboriginal liaison worker. There were two classes of grade 8 students at St. M school during the 1994-95 school year. Room A was a grade 7/8 combination and Room B was a grade eight class. The student population in each room fluctuated between 25 to 30 youths throughout the year. In room A, there were slightly less than equal numbers of boys and girls, and at least one third of the students were of Aboriginal ancestry. There was also one boy from Pakistan. At the beginning of the school year, ten of the students were in grade seven and 15 were in grade eight. The homeroom teacher for the fall term was an experienced whole language teacher, who taught Language Arts, Religion, Physical Education and Social Studies. She also had the responsibilities of Vice-Principal of the school. The other teacher was itinerant, spending only part of her teaching time at this school. She taught Mathematics, French, Science and Art in Room A. At the beginning of 1995, the Vice-Principal/teacher was transferred to another school and a new teacher/Vice-Principal came into this room. She, too, was an experienced teacher and taught the same subjects as her predecessor. At the beginning of the school year, there were 17 girls and 12 boys in Room B, half of whom were Aboriginal youths. Four adolescents were new to Canada, having arrived within the past five years, one girl from Central America, two boys from South America, and a very recent arrival from Iran. For the first two months of the school year, Room B had a young male teacher who was replacing a teacher on maternity leave. He was a first-year teacher who established a very positive working relationship with the students during these two months. When the regular teacher returned at the beginning of November, she resumed teaching all subjects with the exception of French. She was very energetic, holistic and creative in her approach to teaching and had taught middle years for ten years. The grade eight girls in Room A and Room B were the focus of the research. However, as there were quite a number of girls who arrived and left during the course of the school year, the numbers were always changing. Room A, for example, had eight girls in total, but only five who started and finished the year there. There were also five girls in the room in grade seven, but even though there were almost as many girls as boys in total in this classroom, the girls seemed to be in the minority in terms of their presence. In contrast, in Room B, the girls were slightly in the majority and had a much stronger presence. They asserted themselves in the class and interacted quite a lot with some of the boys. In both rooms there were very obvious friendship groups. In Room A, the Aboriginal and non Aboriginal girls seldom interacted with each other, whereas in Room B, there were groups that included both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal girls. There were, however, two Aboriginal girls in Room B who were not part of the other girls' social interactions on any regular basis throughout the year. As Thorne (1994) also found, we concluded that gender and separation by gender played an important role in these classrooms; however, there were occasions and contexts where gender was not the deciding factor. There were times, for example, when ethnicity or age played a larger role, and this was often the case with the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal girls in Rooms A and B. Gender and ethnicity were not talked about in these classrooms. Nor were there discussions about culture, race, class, or identity. To our knowledge, none of the girls spoke another language in these classrooms. General Classroom Discourse Both classrooms were places where students were encouraged to share their ideas, compare what they were learning, ask questions and take ownership for their own learning. Both were places where the teachers tried to make everyone feel comfortable and create an open and inviting atmosphere. Every morning in Room A, for example, the students and teacher opened their day with the Lord's Prayer and 10 minutes of sharing time. The students talked about their families, themselves, and their accomplishments. The teacher listened attentively and encouraged everyone to share. The girls, however, seemed much more reticent than the boys to talk in this forum, and the boys dominated the talk. Debra Tannen's (1990) analysis was helpful in understanding why this might be so. She suggested that men talk more than women in 'public' contexts and women tend to talk more in 'private' contexts. James and Drakich (1993), in their review of research on this topic, compare the differences in research findings and summarize Tannen's work as follows:
Tannen (1990) suggests that the situation is different for women in private contexts. Here women are more likely to be close to or at least know the individuals, and as women see talk as important for the maintenance of relationships, they talk more in these private contexts. There were plenty of opportunities throughout the school day for talk in both classrooms, and the students discoursed on a variety of subjects. Some of their talk was very private, in which case they whispered, and some was made very public through the use of loud, directed comments. There was a great deal of mobility on the part of the students in these classrooms which facilitated talk in pairs and small groups. The girls made and took advantages of opportunities to talk to each other throughout the day. They were busier at this than were the boys. All of the talk in both classrooms was in English, even though there were youths who spoke Spanish, Cree, Saulteaux, Portuguese, Urdu, and Arabic. These languages were not used even for the whispered, private talk. There were several girls who indicated in the TANSI (Aboriginal culture) group meeting that they spoke an Aboriginal language, but they also said that they didn't use it in the classroom or at school. This decision to speak in English was evident as well at the TANSI potluck and social held one evening at the school. When the drummer gave a prayer in Cree, everyone listened attentively; however, none of the girls used the Cree language publicly throughout the evening. Talking seemed to have varied purposes. Sometimes it had a social function for both the boys and girls, such as getting others to laugh; sometimes it served to get attention of others; and at times it was used to control others and gain power. There were numerous instances where "talk" resulted in intimidation and silence on the part of classmates. Talk and the absence of talk were powerful phenomena in these classrooms. There were times where the absence of talk was obvious and followed various unwritten rules and codes of silence. For example, squealing on others was sometimes a definite "no". However, the decision to talk or not depended on who the person being squealed on was and her relationship to her classmates. If she was well liked, no one talked; if she was of lower status in the classroom, someone might tell the teacher. In one class when the teacher made inquiries as to classroom property that had disappeared, no one seemed to know anything or would offer any leads. It was as though the class members had all agreed not to talk. Keeping information in confidence, or "not telling anyone", was also very important. In one instance where two girls realized that their friend was seriously depressed and threatening suicide, they hesitated to talk to the teacher, worrying about whether or not they should break the "don't tell anyone" pact. Talk took on many forms and functions, and its range of content was wide and varied. Some topics appeared frequently in general classroom talk and other topics never arose. There were topics that were more likely to be a part of the "girl talk" and some that were "boy talk". Topics common to both gender groups were school events, parties, weekend activities and the other sex. Boy Talk The boys' public discourse took up a great deal of space in both classrooms. Boys often spoke to each other in loud voices from their own desks, which could be as far as three or four rows apart. Accompanying their words with gestures, eye contact, and laughter, a number of boys in both rooms were very conspicuous, and if they were absent, there was a noticeable difference in the class's talk. Even those students who were less verbal participated in the public 'boy talk' by listening, watching and laughing. In these classrooms, less public 'boy talk' tended to feature such topics as bikes, cars, money, gadgets, and sports at the professional, local, and school levels, as well as more general talk about what the boys were going to do and when. There were a couple of small groups of boys who hung out together and talked privately, without participating verbally in the larger public "boy talk" of the class. In one of the classrooms, the boys' discourse seemed to be part of a process of one-upmanship. It was a kind of game to see who could "out talk" or "out lip" the others. There was, among some of these boys, a constant search for the next laugh from the largest crowd. Often this discourse had someone from the class as the scapegoat. Discrediting and belittling the girls was a common occurrence, most often done in such a way that the teachers would not hear. One such instance occurred when a group of boys and girls were organizing their presentation about the book, Island of the Blue Dolphins. One small boy said to his group, "It's about some old Indian bag holding a stick." His group included an Aboriginal boy, an Aboriginal girl, and five others. The Aboriginal girl, who was very popular among both boys and girls made a comment back to him. He quickly backtracked and said directly to her, "Oh, you won't look like that!" There were no further responses. Another such incident involved the use of the term, "Nanabush", to refer to the Aboriginal girls. One of the boys said to two Aboriginal girls across the aisle from him, "Shut up, Nanabush." Then more quietly, he said "Nanabush, you get..........," when one of the girls responded, "You don't have a bush," he countered with, "Who knows a bush!" in a suggestive tone and manner. The girls averted their eyes and said nothing further. A few minutes later the same boy pointed to another Aboriginal girl in the class and said, "There's nose a bush." In a short while, he turned back to the first two girls, who were talking and said, "Don't say anything about me, Ros a bush." He repeated these terms several times over the morning and the girls kept silent. The boys' public discourse included a great number of references to sex and sexuality, including many homophobic references. Phrases like "this is so gay" and "faggot" were common. This sort of talk was usually delivered to an audience and seldom received a response. The ultimate put down was a sexual one. There were other more explicit sexual references that were directed at almost all the girls. In both classes, one or two of the girls appeared to be targeted by the boys for these comments, and one or two were spared. References to the sexual act and comments on the girls' body parts were common, as were terms like "slut", "bitch", "tightass", and "pussy". Verbal abuse became an issue in one classroom when the students were immersed in a Social Studies unit on "personal and social issues for adolescents". When the girls started to talk out about the way the boys treated them, the things they said, and how they felt about it, a great deal was revealed. The boys denied that their language was hurtful and said that they didn't think the girls would take these comments seriously. The boys saw it as joking and teasing. The dynamics of the "boy talk" in both classrooms was both complex and changing. Although not the focus of this study, an understanding of the existence of "boy talk" helps us better understand the girls' experiences in these grade eight classrooms. Girl Talk Among the frequent topics for "girl talk" were boys, romance, clothes, fatness, the events of last night or the weekend, who was doing what, and who said what to whom. Discussions of relationships, both positive and negative, were also prominent. The girls' public discourse frequently included talk about family, and it was not uncommon to hear the girls telling about something that went on with their siblings or parents. Shannon's teen sister's baby, for example, was a common topic of discussion. Although there were few references to sex in their public classroom talk, the girls did privately respond to the boys' verbal harassment with terms like "fag" and "gay". These terms were used primarily in retort to the boys, and the retorts, too, were done so that teachers wouldn't hear. The girls didn't use this terminology in reference to other girls, acknowledging that they used it with the boys as a means of self-defense. The social networks for talk were very important for the girls. One level of discourse included girls from both classrooms as they socialized at recess and lunch and lingered in the hallways and each others' classrooms after the bell rang. There was less public discourse among the girls in Room A, where the girls' talk was extemely low key. The girls in Room B, however, kept their discourse more obviously public. They commented back and forth and often included the boys in their banter. In both classrooms, however, the girls' private talk was very intense. The girls moved around the classroom a great deal and were continually jockeying for available desks in order to talk to one of their girl friends. Their behavior supports the view of Tannen (1990) that women talk more in private contexts than public contexts because women are socialized, more than men, to believe that talk is important to the "maintenance of harmonious relationships" (James and Drakich, 1993, p.306). When the girls worked in groups, it was not uncommon for two or more floors of conversation to be going on at one time. For example, one or two girls would be involved in leading the formal task and asking questions like, "who would like to......?" Meanwhile others would be discussing a separate topic, "when are you going to fix your....?" "Right after school!" "Good, it's annoying me." Alternatively, the brief interjection of a new topic might occur with a return to the formal task activities. Three girls in a group preparing for a presentation on their study of Island of the Blue Dolphins demonstrated this layered conversation:
There were both public and private spheres for discourse, with different kinds of opportunities leading to different kinds of talk. One kind of public discourse was the theatrical or stage talk with which the girls experimented when they did stage or video presentations. For example, when they were given a choice of ways to respond to a novel they had just read, several groups of girls chose to make video presentations on their novel for the class. During the filming of these videos, their talk changed. Some tried out TV language, and several girls took on the role of a talk show character, using phrases like, "Don't.........girlfriend", and, "Now you listen to me girl, I had enough of you!" in an accent imitating the one used in the American South. These presentations were videotaped and shown to the rest of the class. As the process of making the videotape removed the actors one step from the audience, it seemed to give them the freedom to explore new varieties of language. They did not use this kind of language with a live audience. It was as though the video camera became an intermediary. The girls used terms in their everyday speech that seemed to serve the function of representing themselves as teens. Terms such as "whatever", "cool", and "like" were extremely frequent, as in most current teen language. Some girls used terms like "chick" and "stoner" to refer to one another, but they were used as a kind of compliment or statement of inclusion, not in a derogatory manner. The girls also used the term "bitch" for girls they were not getting along with, and this term functioned to exclude others. The "girl talk" described here gives a glimpse of the implicit socio-linguistic rules at play in these classroom. The girls used their talk to identify themselves with those they saw as their friends and to separate themselves from others. They used it to construct the image of who they saw themselves to be. Both public and private oral discourse played a very important role in the definition of gender for these girls. Written Discourse In both classrooms there were plenty of opportunities to write, as both teachers emphasized writing and the process of writing. The students wrote reports, essays, and study notes, and they had opportunities for creative and free writing. They wrote on a regular basis, although not daily, keeping their finished pieces, as well as works in progress, in a writing file at their teachers' desks. Non-Curricular Writing A great deal of writing took place in both classrooms that was not curricular. The girls wrote on their desks, binders, jeans, jackets, running shoes, and skin. Given the opportunity to cover their desks with colored paper, the girls wrote all over each others' desk tops. They wrote compliments and greetings like "Amber wuz here", "You're a cool chick", or "Right on, chick". On several occasions the girls wrote messages n each others' arms and hands. One day Sheena had writing covering her entire hand and arm from the tips of her fingers to her elbow. Another very common aspect of their classroom writing was "notes". When the girls were asked, all of them admitted to passing notes in class, although several said they "don't do it so much this year." The boys sometimes tried to intercept the notes but did not write them. One day when the teacher intercepted a note, the boys asked to be allowed to read it. The girl who had written and passed it actually begged the teacher not to read the note out loud. She admitted that it was a list of "who loves who" and stated adamantly that it was "not true". Note-writing, according to the girls, functions as a replacement for talk, but is generally not as personal as talk. According to Taylor (1993), such substitutional writing serves an important function when a person isn't physically near enough for direct oral communication. Notes often included comments like, "how are you, what are you doing after school, meet me at that place," or as Jerline pointed out, notes could include "rumors that go around, or if you want to do stuff after school." The girls wrote about the class, for example, whether it was interesting or boring, and they told each other about recent events. Sometimes notes served just to pass the time, or as Sheena suggested, "[S]ometimes you get really bored and there is nothing else to do so you just write a note to somebody." There were implicit rules about the passing of these notes and "people [i.e., the girls] just 'know' who to pass to who." The rules were, according to the girls, established early in the school year and generally followed. As a genre of out-of-school writing, the diary was very popular. All the girls had written in a diary at some point; many still did, and some had very recently stopped. Yet we only found a couple of examples often girls using a diary format in their creative or free writing. Caywood and Overing (1987) express some concern about this and suggest that what is expected as classroom writing is not the kinds of written discourse that women have excelled at in the past. The spheres of discourse given a place of privilege in classrooms are those traditionally used by men.
The Writing Process For the most part the girls in these classrooms liked to write. They certainly had their preferences about what they liked to write, and what conditions were best for writing, but not one said she didn't like to write. Most of the girls preferred to have choice in deciding what to write and what form the writing should take; however, a few thought it was just easier to be told what to do. Atmosphere and concentration were two elements of writing that mattered to the girls. It was important to allow sufficient time for the writers to settle down, collect their thoughts and get started. We found that some of what looked on the surface like idle staring was part of the girls' prewriting time. They took time to organize themselves and their thoughts. We found that it helped the girls to talk about options for prewriting and what writers do as they get ready to write. Similarly, we found that it was important to both allow and support students in their efforts to interact with others and their environment when they wrote. Some found that there were times when they could not concentrate in the classroom because there were just too many distractions. When this happened, they preferred to write outside the classroom or at home. Cindi described how she created an atmosphere to write at home by making a cup of tea, sitting at the table, taking time to relax, and just thinking for a while. Atwell (1987) in her seminal book on adolescents, In the Middle, discussed the need for both quiet and interaction as a problem in classrooms:
Getting started was sometimes problematic for the girls. Deanne said, "Sometimes it's hard, sometimes I'll just sit there for hours and hours and, like, think till I get like two or three lines and then I can just keep going." She preferred to write poetry and was very focused on the conciseness of language. She felt the first few lines had to be right or she couldn't continue. If she had too much trouble starting a piece, she said she just picked another topic and tried again. The writing process was unique for each girl but most were aware of the basic steps and strategies. Some followed the steps more religiously than others. Some believed that prewriting was a good way to get their ideas down, and most saw the value in revision. Writers like Cindi, Shannon and Tanis seemed to pay less attention to the details of the writing process and more attention to getting their ideas across in an interesting and exciting way. Shannon said, "You want it to be interesting and make sense that is different from any other story they have read." Writers like Dori and Janice, conversely, focused more on the steps of drafting, revising and editing. Dori commented, "Yeah, I'll revise it once or twice, I'll just kind of go through it for spelling mistakes, or what sounds better paragraphing maybe." As a poet, Deanne took a great deal of time with her first draft, did little prewriting, and always did a second draft that generally didn't contain major revisions at that point in the process. In writing prose, however, she put ideas down on scrap paper, thought out episodes and events in advance of starting to write, and made more major revisions. The girls used a variety of stimuli if they found they were running out of ideas. They stopped and reflected on what the writing was about, reread something they had read, asked a friend for ideas, or just put the piece aside fora while, sometimes for up to several days. Cindi explained that she sometimes had the opposite problem of too many ideas all at once, leading her to lose her train of thought. Cindi described this problem as, "like getting too many ideas at once. I don't --that bothers me, 'cause I get confused," so she "wrote down, like, brief little pointers about what was going to happen." This was the strategy she used to keep track of her ideas during writing. On the other hand, Tanis said, "Like, I have lots of ideas, but I never get them down on paper. Like, I just kinda keep them in a file in my head." Writing the ending to a story was sometimes an issue. Tanis suggested, "I think about an ending and if I don't like it, I'll just keep on thinking of different ones and see which would match the story better." When the teachers expected lengthy pieces of writing, the girls attacked the task in a number of ways. Some wrote during class time; some wrote at home. A few girls wrote, shared the draft with friends or the teachers, and then rewrote. Others wrote the piece in one sitting and handed in their first or second draft without anyone else reading it. In these classrooms, it was not uncommon to see a student working on the same piece of writing over a ten-day or two-week period. Shannon, for example, worked on "The Life of Young Girl: Part One" in five class periods from April 24 to May 10 without ever taking her work home. This 700 word introductory excerpt from a longer piece demonstrated her focused approach to writing. Others, like Cindi, wrote at home every day for about ten days in order to complete a prologue to her mystery story, "See of Revenge." This 1,300 word introduction was very clearly crafted to hook the reader. We realized through the experiences with these girls how important it was to set sufficient time aside in class for them to both compose and revise. We also realized that this time needed to be both daily and ongoing. Good serious writing takes time to complete, as Sarah Freedman (1994) also found with the Writing Exchange Project sponsored by the National Center for the Study of Writing. The project showed that "students who achieved the most were in classes where the teacher expected them to produce lengthy academic pieces and where they were given several months to craft each one" (Freedman, Flower, Hall and Hayes 1994). Donald Graves (1992) recommends "allocating at least three hours or class periods a week in order for this habit of mind to take hold." Writing Topics The girls got their ideas to write from a variety of sources. In a manner similar to Donald Graves' (1974) notion of "grazing", they drew on a wide range of resources. Sometimes they grazed close to home, looking around the classroom and at books they had read. Sometimes they went further afield, using ideas that they had read in the newspaper, cartoons, or popular magazines. Movies and television shows were also prominent resources. One girl said she used her daydreams to spark her writing. Although they said that they didn't use the substance of their own lives as the basis for writing because "it's too boring", they admitted that they did use the lives of their friends. Karen said, "one of my friends will tell me about their problems and their secrets that you can't tell anyone so I guess they just come out in my writing.....most of my friends are really sad and they talk a great deal of about suicide and they are having really tough lives and so I just mention that.....I promise not to tell anyone so I just write it down." Macey's (1992) work with primary children supports the work of Bird (1992) and Graves (1974) in suggesting that boys and girls pick different kinds of topics to write about. Madey found young English boys wrote more about action and adventure and the girls wrote more about family or domestic themes. The girls' writing contained many more references to feelings and was more often written in the third person, whereas the boys wrote in the first person. Donald Graves (1974) in his early work with young children specified territorial realms for male and female writers. He found girls wrote more frequently about topics in the primary territory, closer to home and school, whereas boys chose topics of a more secondary territorial nature. The girls in his study did not frequently write about topics like crime and current affairs. Our study did not confirm this tendency in writing. We found that the grade eight girls wrote about topics from both primary and secondary territories. During free writing and creative writing times, the teachers gave the students complete choice of topic and genre. The girls wrote about a wide variety of topics but used a limited number of genres. In expository writing, they wrote about trauma, abandonment, teen pregnancy, divorce, suicide, intimidation, shoplifting, drugs, interracial dating, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, dreams, friends and relationships. Their poetry covered topics like romance, loss, dreams, friendship, relationships, animal life and philosophy. Their fictional and narrative writing included crime, mystery, murder, adventure and horror stories. They also wrote teen fiction, focusing on boyfriends and relationships. Many of the topics that the girls chose were, although completely their own choice, a reflection of the themes under study in these classrooms. The girls believed that their writing represented them uniquely. Although most said that the didn't consciously try to put themselves into their stories, many commented that indirectly, their world and personality had come through in the words. Some said that they used the names of friends, relatives or acquaintances for their characters and that some characters were composites of people they knew, i.e., "kind of based on my friends." Tanis, on the other hand, wrote herself into her horror story, "The Night of Torture", in which she played one of the main characters and used the names of five friends for other characters. She also used places or buildings she knew. "I use place, 'cause like, where I used to live there used to be, like, really old big houses, so I'd use them in my stories for haunted houses." Jerline believed that the way she expressed her feelings was very distinct and showed in her writing. Jamie, a very quiet girl, said that she had pictures in her head that she used in her writing. Denne, a Central American girl who had witnessed a shooting death in her homeland said, " I just have a picture in my head and when I'm writing about hate or violence, or something like that, I use that picture." Several of the girls saw themselves as emerging writers who were constructing ideas through their writing. Others saw themselves as merely doing what they were told. Helen expressed the former belief very clearly when she said, "I think of writing, like, when you're writing, you express feelings, and yourself and brings more ideas to your head." Deanne wrote poetry both in and out of class and often gave her poems to friends or family as gifts. She didn't keep copies for herself, explaining that she "could just write them over again." Having constructed them in the first place, she believed that she could reconstruct them is she wanted, whenever she wanted to. Audience The writer's workshop and attention to the writing process were an important part of both classrooms. The teachers encouraged and expected the students to write both in class and at home. They expected them to find topics that were of interest and encouraged them to take risks as writers. The teachers outlined the basics of the writing process and expected final copy of pieces of writing to be put into the writing files. The teachers responded to their students during the writing process, listening to the writers' dilemmas and offering questions and suggestions. They moved around the class and interacted as needed. Response to their work played an important role for these writers. Most were comfortable with their girls friends as an audience and valued their friends' responses. Similarly, Barnes (1994) found that young children write for readers of their own sex. The girls also were very conscious of the teachers as their audience, however, and valued their teachers' feedback. The girls believed that some individuals were a better audience for a writer than others. Among teachers, for example, some were more active as an audience than others and really read and thought about the student's work. Some girls noted that they had had teachers in the past who just skimmed their writing and did not engage in it in a way the was particularly meaningful or helpful to them as writers. They thought there were times this happened out of kindness and other times when it was due to a lack of interest on the teachers part. Similar comments were made about family members and friends who read their work. Dori said, "I think that even if it was bad they probably wouldn't say it sucked." Most girls in these classrooms were extremely cautious about having their work read to the entire class. They made it very clear that they were not comfortable with the boys as their audience. They did not want the boys reading their work, and when asked to write something, they often asked, "do I have to read it out loud?" If on a voluntary basis they could select items from their writing file to be read out loud, some girls were prepared to let the teacher read their work, but they wouldn't do it themselves. On one occasion during "Author's Chair", the classroom atmosphere varied from roars of laughter to solemness and quiet. However, following the reading of Tanis' "Sea of Revenge", one boy loudly stated, "I read that in a book." Tanis, visibly upset, denied that was so, and sat quietly at her desk for the rest of the period. The next time there was an "Author's Chair" in the classroom, Tanis would not have her work read. The students in these two classrooms were not the kind of audience with which many of the girls were comfortable. Considering the relationship between the genders in these rooms, this was understandable. The girls did not feel comfortable with the way the boys talked about them. To put themselves in the public eye by reading their work was like setting themselves up for ridicule, perhaps not immediately and overtly, but still introducing a risk of ridicule that many of the girls did not want to take. Variation Among Writers There were several girls in each class who wrote lengthy, imaginative stories and frequently added to their writing files. They wrote long stories, had ample ideas, trusted their own writing decisions and reflected on their own work. They liked to write and admired other writers. Cindi suggested that a good imagination was essential to being a good writer, as was "someone who had had a lot of experiences and has lived a very different exciting life. I think they could, like, write very differently, very good." She also believed that it was important for a good writer to have the ability to say to herself, "I am not going to quit. I am going to sit down and write this no matter how long it takes. I've got to write this." There were also several girls who seldom added to their writing files. Although they wrote, they didn't view themselves as writers. Janelle, for example, was extemely quiet in class. Outside class she loved to write letters and wrote daily in a diary. Viewed by her teachers as a non-reader, she had been tested by the school and identified as having special needs. She was in a pull-out program to supplement her classroom activities. She wrote two poems in class in early May, one called "Questions" and another called "Who's Holding Sheena Now?" She hesitated to let any of her classmates read them or to put them in her writing file. She was very tentative about her own writing and didn't believe in her own authority. She explained, "I just think they might be dumb and that they won't like them or something." As she was one of the girls in the classroom who was picked on the most, it stands to reason that she would mistrust this audience. If her classmates didn't value her, she didn't believe they would value her thoughts. The poem, "Questions", shoed how Janelle was trying to make sense of her world and to communicate this effort. In her poem, "Who's Holding Sheena Now?", she was trying to make a statement about her friend Sheena. There were other girls as well who didn't put their work in their writing files. The Aboriginal girls in these classrooms, for example, handed in far fewer pieces of writing than their non-Aboriginal classmates. Helen, a most articulate and literate youth, kept her work very private and shared only the minimum amount required. Jamie never handed in anything until the last month of school when she started to find her voice. Her empty writing file was matched by her silence in class. Sarah Freedman (1994), a researcher at the National Center for Research on Writing, suggests that in a multicultural context, classroom teachers and their students are expected to exchange cultural understandings, but that much of the responsibility lies with the minority student to learn the majority culture. Freedman believes it is a tough order to expect minority students "to negotiate the maze of American culture and its multiple discourse communities each with their own conventions , roles, and appropriate languages", and that writing provides a way to find a window on these intercultural realities. She believes that writing can help "students take part in inter cultural collaboration by making different ways of talking, thinking and being explicit" (p.15). This process was not in obvious operation with the Aboriginal girls in either Room A or B. They did not use their writing to explore or explain their worlds. It seemed as though they chose to explore popular teen culture rather than their Aboriginal world. This lack of reference to an Aboriginal experience paralleled the absence of talk in Aboriginal languages in the classroom and the school. These aspects of Aboriginality seemed to have no place here. Free writing and creative writing times in these classrooms were positive experiences for the girls, and the teachers found a great deal of growth in the girls' writing over the year. Caywood and Overing (1987) believe that the writing classroom "has the potential to be the single, most important learning experience for students if it provides them with confidence in their own ideas and belief in their own authority" (p.xv). This may be particularly important for girls at this stage of early adolescence as they try to understand the conflicts and discrepancies in their lives. Conflict in the Classroom The experiences of the girls in these classrooms was different than that of the boys. Being a teenager was not gender neutral of gender equal. As boys and girls interacted in these middle years classroom, they brought with them previous experiences with gender socialization, and their daily interactions over the school year contributed to the construction of who they were. This process was not without tensions and conflict. The extent of conflict between boys and girls was disclosed when an adult witness saw five grade eight boys surround and hit one of the girls. The girl pleaded with the perpetrators of the violence to stop. They didn't stop until they realized that an adult was present. This incident provided the teacher with an opportunity to inquire, with both the boys and girls, into the nature of the verbal and physical abuse in the classroom and the school and to discuss ways to address it. The girls complained that they were being harassed in the classroom, school corridors and on the playground. They felt bullied and intimidated, and although they wanted it to end, they were worried about losing their friendships with male classmates. These two realities created conflict for the girls. The separate discussions with the boys and girls revealed a great deal about the relations of power in the classroom. The teacher believed that these conflicts had been affecting the overall classroom dynamics and classroom learning. It had, she believed, reached a point where it affected her interaction with the students as well. She, too, felt bullied and threatened by some of the boys. The emergence of this kind of conflict may not seem obviously related to the girls' written discourse but it certainly affected classroom talk. As the conflict became more and more evident, we believe it greatly affected other aspects of the "grade eight experience" for these girls. It was part of a classroom atmosphere of intimidation, one where some of the girls were not comfortable enough to either speak of share their work. 5. Implications for Teaching and Learning The girls in the study constructed their gender identity in these classrooms through their interaction, talk and written text. Their discourse was shaped by the larger social order as well as their immediate environment. Talk played a very important role for them, with private "girl talk" functioning to build relationships and support networks of learners and friends. They relied to a great extent on private talk, but when given an environment that was non-threatening and an opportunity to use talk in creative ways, they tried out more public talk. On the basis of their overall experiences, we encourage classroom teachers to find ways to support talk for girls and to find ways of ensuring that they, too, have ample opportunity to explore both public and private talk in large and small groupings. A great deal of writing went on in these classrooms that was not curricular, and some of it, like the "notes", went underground. "Notes" were an interesting example of text that was not only socially constructed, but differentially valued. "Noted" carried with them a particular social context and were primarily written by girls. As teachers, we need to think about the role that instances of substitutional literacy (Taylor 1993) like this plays for girls in our classrooms and what value it could have. Perhaps we need to look for ways to support all kinds of writing in our classrooms and take care not to privilege some while discarding others. Teachers could recognize note writing as a valid form of classroom communication, let the girls write, and set up mail boxes to facilitate the exchange. The limited range of genres used by the girls brought forth numerous questions as to what this means and what could be done to expand the range. A look at using more genres in the classroom is necessary if we are going to support girls' literacy development. We need to find ways to open the doors to all genres, give choices to our students and welcome such alternatives as letters, diaries, autobiographies and dialogue journals. It became very obvious throughout this research that the composition process was very time consuming and required an atmosphere of freedom, encouragement, collaboration, and concentration. Creating this combination of elements within a classroom was essential but challenging for these adolescent girls. One of the implications here is the importance of creating a literate climate in middle years classrooms. If we are going to have serious, high quality writing from students, there needs to be considerable and concentrated time for writing in classrooms on a regular basis. Teachers play the key role in ensuring that this takes place. It is also important that we recognize how large a role literature plays for writers, and this is something that really needs to be explored further in terms of girls as writers. Meredith Cherland's (1994) work with girls reading fiction and constructing identity gives great insight into the role of literature in the lives of adolescent girls and offers ideas for consideration. We found that when the girls wrote, they relied heavily on fiction they had read. The two experience of reading and writing were closely related. It is, therefore, helpful for teachers to have an in-depth understanding of the literature adolescent girls read and like. The importance of teachers being an "active audience", providing continual feedback throughout the writing process, emerged clearly from the study. Giving real and non-threatening responses to the girls' writing proved to be extremely important. Because of the relationships between girls and boys in school today, this may not be a simple or easy task. However, it is essential that middle years teachers think carefully about how to demonstrate and build a truly supportive caring relationship between the adolescent girls and boys in their classrooms. If this sort of relationship does not seem to exist, they should not hesitate to look for alternative arrangements in terms of providing an audience for girls' writing. Perhaps we need to follow the girls' lead in and formalize what they do already in these classes, i.e., read each other's stories without sharing them with the boys. Perhaps we need to think about ways to separate the audiences by gender. Two separate "Author's Circles" in a classroom might be a reasonable solution. As teachers, we need to surface issues of gender and ethnicity in our classrooms and talk with our students about these issues. We need to find ways to let our students know that their life experiences, although they may not be mainstream, are valuable, providing a rich resource that they can draw on as writers. We also need to find ways to validate and value who our female students are as girls, validating and valuing how their writing represents them. There are also a number of administrative issues that emerge from our study. Administrators need to look for ways to provide equitable learning opportunities for girls. Such opportunities may include equity workshops, discussions of violence and harassment, and perhaps even splitting some classes by gender. We found that in the Physical Education classes, it was common for many girls not to participate. This leads us to ask where else in the school program they are not participating. Perhaps we need to look at other classes, find out where girls are not involved, and then look at alternative groupings. There are numerous programs for girls in Mathematics and Science in middle and high schools in other cities and countries that could be used as models. Classroom composition and gender balance was very important in the classrooms in the study. Teachers and administrators need to be aware of the effect these factors can have on girls as they select students for classrooms. Staffing of middle years classrooms is also very important in its implications for the learning of girls. Administrators may need to look at finding more women teachers for middle years and assisting them in addressing the issues of equity, harassment, and violence that permeate classrooms at this level. It is important for girls at this age to have women teachers with whom they can identify. Since the middle years are a very crucial time for adolescents, good programs that address gender issues will not only benefit the girls in the classrooms; they will also benefit the boys. Boys need to understand the experiences of the other sex and to come to an understanding of the issues in the lives of their mothers, sisters, female friends, lovers, and future spouses and mothers of their children. We believe that in this day and age, schools are doing boys no service by perpetuating the practice of privileging one sex, and we need to search for ways to help all young adults to understand the inequities. As yet, no theory of adolescent discourse forgers provides a complete explanation of how their gender is constructed, maintained and expressed. As women educators and researchers, the authors hope to contribute to the field a clearer picture from this study and do some of what bell hook (1992) suggests:
Classroom Recommendations
Administrative Recommendations
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