Interrupting Gendered Discursive Practices in Classroom Talk about Texts: Easy to Think About, Difficult to Do

Abstract

This study focused on us -a group of university-and school-based teacher researchers and observers -as

Authorizing Students’ Perspectives: Toward Trust, Dialogue, and Change in Education

“…Addressing Orner's question -"Whose interests are served when students speak?" - Alverman et al (1997) discuss the ways in which it is easy to talk about but difficult to interrupt gendered discursive practices in classroom talk about texts. Both Alverman (1996) and Moje & Shepardson (1998) questioned and complicated assumptions that more student-centered pedagogical approaches necessarily empower all students, and their findings reveal a complex view of the role of power and status in discussions of literature.…”

Changing our minds, changing our bodies: Power as embodied in research relations

“…To achieve this``catalytic validity' ' (Lather, 1991, p. 68), many theorists and researchers have recommended the development of collaborative and close research relationships that depend on participant voice and closeness between research participants, as opposed to distanced and ostensibly objective stances taken in more traditional perspectives on research (Burowoy et al, 1992 ;Fine, 1992Fine, , 1994aSchensul & Schensul, 1992 ;Reason, 1994). Although a number of positive collaborative relationships between researchers and classroom teachers have been described in the literature (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993 ;Gitlin & Russell, 1994 ;Alvermann, Commeyras, Young, Randall, & Hinson, 1997), less has been written about rocky collaborations . In particular, very little is said about the processes of achieving closeness and collaboration.…”

Constructing Literacy: How Goals, Activity Systems, and Text Shape Classroom Practice

“…Research designs incorporating situative and CHAT frameworks would then concentrate on data and analyses that extend research on discourse, participation, and identity (cf., Rex, 2001) to include individual, interpersonal, and community/institutional structures operating in classroom contexts that mediate individuals' construction of identity. As Alvermann et al (1999) assert: "The role of context in shaping our varying and shifting identities provides a link to understanding how we are constituted in language and discourse" (p. 76). Another fertile arena for research focused on mutually constitutive relations between structure, activity and text involves investigating more thoroughly who gets what type of opportunity in terms of the day-to-day routines of the classroom.…”