Formation of Gendered Identities in the Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to examine ways in which classroom discourses and practices are implicated in the construction and maintenance of a conventional gender order where each gender is formed as opposite to the other, with male identity ascendant and female identity subordinate. This gender order has been contested and also to some degree changed during the last decades and so have the theoretical understandings of gender and identity. The shifting images of gender in classroom research reflect these changes. The new “what about the boys?” research that appeared in the 90s can be seen, for example, as a major reaction against what was seen to be an unacceptable rise in girls’ educational success, a rise that destabilized boys’ position as members of the dominant gender. Whereas the early research tends to blame the teachers for gender difference, showing how they interact differently with boys and girls, the later research focuses more on the part young children, and then students, play through the desire to be, and indeed the social necessity of being, “normal.” Over time the research has demonstrated that gender and identity are more multiple and mobile than was originally thought, being different across cultures (with many children being bi- or multicultural), across social and political contexts and across historical times, with each space-time demanding something quite different, even contradictory, of each child and student. We argue for future gender research that makes the processes of gender construction more visible to both teachers and students, making classroom text and talk more readily accessible to critique.