Adolescent Girls and Classroom Discourse

Heather A. Blair, Agnes Rolheiser & Susan Reschny

Three teachers study the middle years experience of girls, in particular how they construct their gender identity through both talk and text. They believe it is important to find out what constitutes success in learning and literacy from the girls' perspective, in order to find ways of acknowledging and validating them in our classrooms and schools.

The formal topic of this study is the construction of gender in the face to face communication of middle years girls in multicultural urban classrooms. The two main research questions are:

How do early adolescent girls in a multicultural urban Saskatchewan school construct their gender identity through their talk?

How do early adolescent girls in a multicultural urban Saskatchewan school construct their gender identity through their writing?

The following statement provides the purpose of the research in the authors' own words, and at the same time summarizes their assumptions about the construction of gender and social identities:

In our middle years classrooms we believed that the girls were continually negotiating the relations and experiences of adolescence. Their lives were multiply connected to a multicultural urban life and the realities affecting them as girls. We wondered if and how this related to their literacy, in particular how their written discourse reflected these multiple social realities. We hoped that our research might shed some light on the implications of gender in schools and provide a view of discourse from the perspective of these young women.

The study took place at St. M, a multicultural urban school in Saskatoon during the 1994-95 school year. The focus was two Grade Eight classrooms. The study was based on qualitative field research, in the classroom and school, and included the following:

classroom observations of both boys and girls;

observation of girls during creative and free writing;

collection of writing samples;

tape recordings of talk;

informal interviews with the teachers and other school personnel; and

observation and recording of school wide events, staff meetings, middle teachers' committee meetings, student council meetings and Aboriginal youth group meetings.

Selected study findings are presented below as themes, described with excerpts from the report.

Classroom Talk

Girl talk in the classroom:

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. Discussion of relationships... was also prominent. The girls' public discourse frequently included talk about family... siblings or parents. Sherry's teen sister's baby, for example, was a common topic of discussion.

There was less public discourse among the girls in Room A and their talk was extremely low key. The girls in Room B, however, kept their discourse more obviously public. They bantered comments back and forth and often included the boys.

In both classrooms, the girls' private talk was very intense.

The social networks for talk were very important for the girls. One level of discussion included girls from both classrooms as they socialized at recess, lunch and lingered in the hallways and each others' classrooms after the bell went.

Boys dominate the talk in the classroom:

[During the 10 minutes of sharing time every morning in Room A...] The students talked about their families, themselves, and their accomplishments. The teachers 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.

The boys' public discourse took up a great deal of space in both these classrooms. They often spoke to each other in loud voices from their own desks, which could be as far as three or four rows apart...

Boy talk in relationship to girls:

Discrediting and belittling the girls was a common occurrence and most often it was done in such a way that the teachers would not hear.

The boys' public discourse included a great number of references to sex and sexuality... Explicit sexual references... were directed at almost all the girls. In both classes there were one or two of the girls who appeared to be targeted by the boys' comments, and one or two who were spared. References to the sexual act, and comments on the girls' body parts were also common, as were terms like "slut", "bitch", "tightass", and "pussy."

Boy talk in relationship to each other:

In one of the classrooms the boys' discourse also seemed to be part of a one-upmanship and it was sort of a game to see who could "out-talk" or "outlip" the next. There was, among some of these boys, a constant search for the next laugh from the largest crowd and often this discourse had someone from the class as the scapegoat.

...There were a number of boys in both rooms who were very conspicuous and if absent the difference in class talk was noticeable. Even those less verbal participated in the public "boy talk" by listening, watching and laughing...

There were a couple of small groups of boys who hung out together, talked privately, but didn't verbally participate in the larger public boy talk of the class.

The less public "boy talk" tended to feature topics such as bikes, cars, money, gadgets, professional, local and school sports, as well as more general talk about what they were going to do and when.

Included in this [boys' sexual references] were many homophobic references. Phrases like this is so "gay" and "faggot" were common. This discourse was usually delivered to an audience and seldom responded to. The ultimate put down was a sexual one.

Multicultural and racial aspects of talk:

All 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 said that they didn't use it in the classroom or at school. This was evident as well as the TANSI potluck and social held one evening at the school. The drummer gave a prayer in Cree and everyone listened attentively; however, none of the girls used the Cree language publicly throughout the evening.

The term "nanabush" was also used in both rooms by boys in reference to the Aboriginal girls. One such incident was when one of the boys said to two Aboriginal girls across the aisle from his, "Shut up Nanabush." He then more quietly said, "Nanabush you get...", and one of the girls responded, "You don't have a bush." He responded with, "Who knows a bush!", in a suggestive tone and manner. The girls averted their eyes and said nothing further... He repeated these terms several times over the morning and the girls kept silent.

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, commented back to him. He quickly backtracked and said directly to her, "Oh, you won't look like that!" There were no further responses.

View of the problem:

The level of verbal abuse became an issue in one classroom during the time the students were immersed in a Social Studies unit on "personal and social issues for adolescents." When the girls started to talk out loud 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 that they didn't think that the girls would take these seriously. The boys saw it as joking and teasing.

Classroom Writing

The girls' writing:

For the most part the girls in these classrooms liked to write.

The girls wrote about a wide variety of topics but in a limited number of genre.

There was a great deal of writing that took place in both these classrooms that was not curricular. The girls wrote on their desk, binders, jeans, jackets, running shoes and skin. Another very common aspect of their classroom writing was notes... When asked, all the girls admitted to passing notes in class... The boys sometimes tried to intercept the notes but did not write them.

The diary was very popular in the out of school writing. All (the girls) had written a diary at some point.

Response to writing:

Response to their work played an important role for these writers. Most were comfortable with their girlfriends as audience and valued their friends' responses...

They also were very conscious of the teachers as their audience and valued their teachers' feedback. The girls believed that some people were a better audience for a writer than others. They felt that there were some teachers, for example, who were more active as an audience and really read and thought about the student's work. Some felt that they had had some teachers in the past who just skimmed over their writing and did not engage in it in any way that was particularly meaningful or helpful to them as writers

Most were extremely cautious about having their work read to the entire class. The girls in these classrooms made it very clear that they were not comfortable with the boys as their audience. They did not want the boys reading their work.

Classroom Conflict

The disclosure of the extent of conflict between boys and girls came about after an adult witnessed five Grade Eight boys surround and hit one of the girls. The girl pleaded with the perpetrators to stop. They didn't stop until they realized there was an adult present. This incident provided the teacher with the opportunity to inquire with both the girls and boys into the nature of the verbal and physical abuse in the classroom and the school and 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 their male classmates. These two realities were a conflict for the girls.

Recommendations

The researchers draw out implications from this study for teachers and administrators:

Overall we encourage classroom teachers to find ways to support talk for girls and find ways to ensure that they too have ample opportunity to explore both public and private talk in both large and small groupings.

they were given the choice of ways to respond to a novel they had just read, several groups of girls did video presentations for the class. During the filming of these videos, their talk changed. Some tried out TV language, several girls took on a talk show character for their role... This process... seemed to give them new freedoms to explore new varieties of language. They did not use this kind of language with a live audience.

Perhaps, we need to look for ways to support all kinds of writing in our classrooms and take care not privilege only some. For example, teachers could recognize note writing as a valid classroom communication, let the girls write, and set up mail boxes to facilitate the exchange.

We need to find ways to open the doors to all genre, give choices to our students and welcome alternatives... such 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 was essential for these girls.

We found when they wrote, the girls relied heavily on fiction they had read... 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' and providing continual feedback throughout the writing process came out clearly. Providing real and non-threatening responses to their writing proved to be extremely important.

As teachers, we need to surface issues of gender and ethnicity in our classrooms and talk with the students about these things. We need to find ways to validate and value girls in our classrooms.

Perhaps we need to follow what the girls already do in these classes, read each others' stories and not share with the boys... It could mean two separate authors' circles in a classroom.

Perhaps we need to look at all subjects and find out where girls are most non-involved and look at alternative groupings, such as single sex classes.

The classroom composition and gender balance was very important and teachers and administrators need to be aware of these issues as they select students for classrooms.

It is essential that teachers think carefully about how to demonstrate and build a truly supportive caring relationship between adolescent girls and boys in classrooms.

Staffing for middle years classrooms is also very important in regard to girls. Administrators may need to look at finding more women teachers for middle years and find ways to assist them in addressing the issues of equity, harassment and violence that permeates these classrooms. It is important for girls at this age to have women teachers that they can identify with.