Preface

As a teacher in the secondary schools, I chose to view a range of learning ages, from primary grades to the first-year college composition course. I researched gender issues in four journals from 1995 to current issues 1998. The journals were The Reading Teacher, English Journal, The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (formerly known as The Journal of Reading), and College Composition and Communication.  What I discovered was that each journal had few articles about gender.

Of the articles that did address gender issues, all proved that gender inequity is still very much an issue in the classroom--one which we as educators must all be aware of or  run the risk of the negative effects of complacency. I, for one, do not want to be the reason why female students do not succeed in my classroom or future classrooms. I do not want to think I already know it all about this subject, and forget to be self-reflexive about my own teaching practices. Keeping up with the theory and practice of gender and literacy (reading and writing) will be a welcome life-long process for me.

 
Annotated Bibliography

Alvermann, Donna E. "Peer-led Discussions: Whose Interests are Served?"  Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 39 (1995/96): 282-289.

This students-centered research focused on the nature of peer-led discussion in student chosen groups called 'talk-alike' groups. Four key terms, voice, gender, interruption, and empowerment, were used to examine the issues of student interaction, self-analysis, and perceptions of other group members. Three students, Laura, Brad, and Alice, were in a 'talk-alike' group of outspoken students. The three interacted in typical ways. Laura was a student who seemed through her self-imposed silences to remind the author of, "girls' loss of voice, resiliency, and self-esteem as they approach adolescence" (283), while Alice's position and understanding of argumentation shows her to have, "the notion of a self, or subjectivity, that is perpetually changing and often contradictory in nature" (285). Brad demonstrates the confrontational nature of argumentation, often speaking in interruption and sometimes being silenced by his two partners, but he had the most confidence of voice, "Nobody really silences me. . .I silence myself" (286). The implications of this research and observation are three-fold. First, quieter students prefer 'talk-alike' groups because they are given voice, sometimes for the first time. Second, we need to beaware of the gendered nature of peer-groups. And third, empowerment to have voice is by definition, "partial and inconsistent" (288).

This article points to the issue that there is still, in 1998, gender bias in the English classroom. Referring to the compilation by Myra and David Sadker, Benjamin and Irwin-DeVitis question, "the reader is left wondering: after three decades of rhetoric, Title IX, and an active women's movement, has anything really changed" (64)? Sadly, their research shows that, no, there has not been a great deal of change. They demonstrate through interview and example, that girls are participating in self-censorship, the devaluing of intelligence over beauty, and the privileging of male characters, though not necessarily by choice. The female model of speech summarized from Lakoff and Tannen are shown to be true by classroom observation. There is a call to action that as teachers we can make a difference in our classrooms and the world, and a list of ten strategies to, "promote gender equity and reduce stereotyping" (70).

This article was quite problematic. Its major premise is, "to motivate adolescent boys to read and to provide them with positive male role models" (4). However like the Rae Rosenthal essay about bilingual male and female discourse, this article makes claims such as the natural maleness, and its inherent archetypes. There are huge problems with terms thrown around like, "honored character traits," "authentic adult men," "traditional male interests," and "the psyche of all men" (my italics). Basically I look at this article as a mode to completely avoid. It really is important to know what not to do. Upholding patriarchy as a positive male image is more developmentally damaging to women and girls than it is positive to boys. And it is not a new idea to promote certain 'types' of literature for positive male identities. In the 19th C there were children's books filled with medieval stories of knights and damsels in distress. Some of these books even had introductions explaining how to use the book as a teaching tool for boys. When Brozo and Schmelzer said, "the course could be designed as an elective to be taken by interested boys and girls, since both genders could benefit from the outcomes" (8), I must wonder how females could benefit from such a course. Take for instance, D.H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner," recommended as positive for the magician archetype, has a maternal character who is obsessive-compulsive, greedy, and hysterical. So women and girls are taught to be more nurturing? Where is this model going, but back to the fifties? This truly is a bad idea all-around.

Cleary shows that motivation is drastically different for boys and girl s in a composition class, wherein praise is used. Although it sounds strange, praise is detrimental to the self-motivation of female students. Cleary cites Deci's research which found that, "males are prone to assume that positive feedback is indicative of their own confidence, that it is information about their accomplishments and skills" (51). Whereas, his research also, "concluded that positive response reduces intrinsic motivation in females, that females are more sensitive to feedback, and that they tend to experience praise as controlling of future efforts" (51). Basically, because females learn to please the teacher, they learn to not try to please themselves. Praise limits females then, because they have found the niche that will provide approval. While males will negotiate between the praise and their own ideas, choosing to please themselves first, and the teacher, just enough to get the grade. Cleary uses Sondra Perl's felt-sense term to describe the different approaches to discourse which male and females use. And Cleary shows the reader a process whereby the different approaches can be mutually beneficent.

Dixon uses her cultural studies to examine the gendering of the personal experience in what she considers to be a smaller portion of a larger study called either, "autoethnography, or a multi-voiced biography" (256). She explores the relationship of personal experience as an academically mistrusted subject, but one which is useful as a method of exploration. Her major contention is that the political nature of the self in the text becomes the observer rather than a participant. She discussed two students Elizabeth and Dave, and in her dialogue with and about the two students the relationships developed very differently. She finalizes her argument not with answers, but with questions. What do we do with her information? We are asked to study further the, "possible relations between expressive writing (and talking) and accepted forms of academic discourse," and consider our inquiry, "by increasing the practice of self- reflexive research, and the experimentation with alternative forms of discourse" (274).

This article expresses concerns of gender and literacy across the curriculum. They explore the issues of girls in physics and honors physics, and the dynamics of "true" discussion versus recitation type discussion. Their methodology included two years with one teacher's classrooms. The first year dealt solely with the observance of behaviors, and the second involved changes in the structure of the classroom. What occurred was that though the teacher attempted to use non-biased practices before the study began, the dynamics of male and female conversational skills still prevented equity in the science classroom. Grouping students by gender, calling on girls more often and with more positive feedback and elaboration, and examining science as questioning and exploration without the rigidity of the "right" answer, will all promote a holistic approach to science inquiry. These skills are not lost in the English/Composition classroom, because trial and error will show that such methodologies may be incorporated.

Hannan historicizes the issue of gender equity by quoting and citing extensively from Myra and David Sadker's Failing at Fairness and AAUW's The AAUW Report: How Schools Shortchange Girls. He continues by discussing all of the changes in history which have still offered no positive changes in the behavior of women and girls in terms of confidence and voice. Most importantly he calls to question basic assumptions later exlpored in detail by authors referenced here. Will collaborative groupings work? He cites Peter Elbow for the problems with such a model as the only model, explaining that, "discussion may never be the most productive methodology for some students" (106). And lastly, he questions how long it will take before we will, "seize the means at hand to help them live in a non-discriminatory world in which they exploit their true potential" (160)?

Haswell and Haswell used the key terms, gender identity, gender bias, gender neutrality, and gendership to explore the relationship between writer and reader in terms of criticism and 'miswriting' the writer. In other words they were concerned with how students evaluated, misread, and understood a piece of writing based upon four key terms. They define gender identity as the writer or reader's self-image of his or her sexuality (history, status, role); gender bias as preconceptions about gender based upon cultural practice; gender neutrality as method to de-activate gender identity and bias while either writing or reading; and gendership as the, "image of the writers sex interpretable from text and context" (226). Gendership they determined was very important in evaluative comments by others, and that its legitimacy in the essays is that it is not easily defined by formula. That as teachers the challenge is to, "act with both awareness and distance" (253).

Kates' text is quite different from the others in that pedagogically it is not discussing practices, but it does address concerns about gender and the history of rhetoric. When women are seen only as the site where male rhetoricians write their discourse there is the problematic issue of whose discourse is the more acceptable. Mary A. Jordan's conservative text which acts as a guide for good behavior has a place in the feminist rhetoric because its female voice acknowledges, "alternative language conventions and modes of communication" (502), at length. Jordan's text argues for a history behind the kinds of research going on in the other listed sources. She argues against the, "misdirected emphasis on grammatical issues by teachers whose 'bad grammar lessons' paralyze young writers' efforts to learn to write" (514). Kates explains that Jordan's discussion at this point was against the kind of frustration that women felt in formal classrooms, often being underprepared for the rigors of such a classroom. Truly a landmark, Jordan did not believe, necessarily, in any inherent worth of women as writers, but she gave voice to concerns that resonate today.

McAndrew's "Ecofeminism and the Teaching of Literacy" calls out to the issues not just of equity but of the comparison between the issues of environmentalism and feminism. His explanation of the central claims for ecofeminism are quite logical, although I am unsure if they are sound. He deleniates that: Nature and Women are both exploited by the masculine drive for dominance, objectified as 'others', dominated by science and technology which are "tools of patriarchal dominance" (371), diversified by the unnatural split among, "wo/man/nature" (373), and disenchanted by the lack of spirituality. Ecofeminism would center on the interconnectedness and with terms such as gender, class, and race we would add nature as a term for contextualization. Teaching as an ecofeminist changes our technology use, the structure in terms of assignment and organization, and spirituality. The article is a little touchy-feely, but it could offer some interesting leads for the discussion of gender and feminism without necessarily using those loaded political terms.