Current Issues in Education > Volume 1, 1998 > Number 3

Citation Information

Wolfe, P. (1998, November 18). Best supporting actress: Gender and language across four secondary ESL/Bilingual classrooms. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 1 (3). Available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume1/number3/.

Best Supporting Actress: Gender and Language Across Four Secondary ESL/Bilingual Classrooms

Paula Wolfe
Arizona State University

Abstract

This paper argues that, for the ESL students discussed, offering sheltered content classes, and even offering content classes taught in their first language, did not seem to dramatically increase their access to academic language. When classes did offer more access to academic language this access was offered in inequitable ways.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Gender and Academic Discourse
• Gender in the ESL Classroom
• Problem Statement
• Method
• Classrooms
• Data Analysis
• Findings
• Teacher Directed ESL Classroom
• Bilingual Content Classroom
• Teacher Directed Sheltered Content Classrooms
• Student Centered ESL Classrooms
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
• End Notes
• Glossary

Introduction

A recent study published by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) (1998) offered an intriguing insight into the issue of gendered distribution of classroom language. This report argued that simply increasing the amount of time that girls talked in classrooms (by placing them in single sex classes) had little effect on their success in school. These findings seem to contradict a great deal of previous gender studies in school which connected boys domination of talk time in classrooms with girls overall lack of success in schools. Rather than simply countering the claims of the previous gender studies, the AAUW report provided a call to researchers to begin to frame the issue of gendered access to academic discourse in new ways.

The AAUW study implies that firstly, researchers must focus not only on the amount of talk of girls and boys, but also on the kinds of talk to which they are granted access in the classroom. In this sense it becomes important to distinguish between classroom language (what is said in the classroom) and academic discourse (that unique style of talking, thinking, acting etc. that distinguishes someone as "educated"). Secondly, it implies that researchers must consider what kinds of classrooms grant equitable access to academic discourse to both girls and boys. This is particularly important for language minority classrooms, as L2 research has traditionally focussed on questions of program type and has ignored the larger socio-cultural issues that can inform L2 teaching (Pennycook, 1990).

Gender and Academic Discourse

There is a growing body of research indicating that teachers provide variable access to academic discourse on the basis of gender. Classic studies such as Sadker and Sadker (1985) and Spender (1982) have shown that boys are given greater access to classroom language. Among early studies, Deem (1978), Byrne, (1978), Delamont (1980) and Spender (1982) have argued that teachers chose topics to maintain boys' interests; teachers gave boys greater attention; boys were more disruptive; and in terms of time speaking, turns taken, and engagement with the teacher, boys tended to dominate classroom talk. Sadker and Sadker (1985) found that boys spoke on average three times as much as girls; boys were eight times more likely than girls to call out answers; and, where teachers would chastise girls for calling out, it was accepted from boys. Other studies have shown that, at the college level, men speak twelve times more than women (Krupnick, 1985). These findings have been supported by others, such as Brophy (1985), Gabriel and Smithson, (1990), Redpath and Claire, (1989), and Jones (1989) which collectively led to the conclusion that boys dominate in the classroom and that in many English speaking classrooms, there is a "chilly climate" for girls (Kramaerae & Treichler, 1990; Sandler, 1982).

Likewise, researchers such as Ong (1981) have argued that traditional classroom structures are designed to prefer male learning styles. Boys are given expanded access to classroom language and are allowed to fulfill different roles in the classrooms (Sadker and Sadker, 1985; Spender, 1982). In a similar vein, Michael Apple (1990) has argued that schools sort by pre-establishing institutionally determined roles, such as "poor reader" or "behavior problem," and then find students to fill these roles. In almost every case according to Apple (1990), these types of roles are filled by ethnic minority and poor students. Clearly, there is ample evidence that schools unequally provide access to academic discourse not only on the basis of ethnicity and socioeconomic factors, but also on the basis of gender.

Gender in the ESL Classroom

It is important to note that most studies on the relationship of gender to the distribution of language in the classrooms have been conducted in English speaking classrooms, filled with native English speaking students. Studies pertaining to gender issues for ESL speakers are relatively rare and have focussed primarily on adult women in the workplace (Gal, 1979; Goldstein, 1992), in continuing education (Buchan, 1990; Pierce, 1994; Rigg, 1983), or within their own communities (Galindo & Gonzales Velasquez, 1992; Medicine, 1987; Zentella, 1987). In a recent article, Losey (1995) found that Mexican American women took up only half as much talk space as would be expected in an equitably distributed classroom language situation, but were more willing to speak in one-on-one tutoring sessions. More recently, researchers such as, Doherty (1992), Rockhill (1991) and Toohey & Schofield (1994) have offered more sociological views of gender in ESL classrooms. This work draws heavily from Pennycook's (1990) call to look at classrooms as sites of complex social interaction that always involve gender and class issues.

The portrayal of strict male dominance of classroom talk time tends to be overly simplistic, according to Walkerdine (1991). Rather, Walkerdine argues, access to academic discourse depends on the demands of content being talked about. Accordingly, boys tend to dominate talk time when the content is more "academic" or when the level of content difficulty is high, while girls tend to dominate talk time when academic content is less demanding. Expanding on Walkerdine's work, this research was designed to be a small scale exploratory study of how the factors of classroom organization, gender, student role, and access to academic language, intertwine within four classrooms designed to serve becoming bilingual students in an urban high school.

Problem Statement

This study began as an exploration of how specific program types and classroom organizations influence the amount and type of classroom language to which students have access. Four distinct approaches to second language teaching were studied: traditional ESL, bilingual content (world history), sheltered content (biology), and holistic ESL. Through the process of data collection the question became how these different approaches/philosophies of second language teaching allowed students to construct specific gendered roles in relation to their access to the amount and type of academic language. Based on the evidence offered by Walkerdine (1991), this research was designed to explore how four approaches to English instruction restricted or granted access to academic discourse, in gendered ways, to fourteen secondary students who were becoming bilingual.

Method

Over a period of four months for one day a week, I observed four classrooms in a large urban high school in Arizona. I took extensive field notes regarding the interactional patterns of the classrooms and audio taped teacher-student interactions. Each of these classes were made up of ninth and tenth grade students, the majority of whom were native Spanish speakers. These classrooms were chosen because they represented four different orientations to English instruction in the high school, English as a Second Language, ESL sheltered content (content classes taught in English but containing only non-native speakers), bilingual (Spanish and English) content, and holistic ESL. On average between six and seven of the fourteen targeted students were enrolled in each of the four classrooms studied.

Classrooms

The first classroom (ESL) discussed in this paper was taught by an experienced ESL teacher who had taught at the school for several years. Her classroom was strictly teacher directed and involved choral repetitions, reading aloud, and recall of information. The second classroom (bilingual social studies) was taught by a young bilingual Caucasian woman in her second year of teaching high school world history. The third classroom (sheltered content biology) was taught by an energetic middle aged man who had many years of teaching experience. In fact, he had won many national teaching awards and was considered the best the school has to offer. In fact, at the close of the school year, he learned that he was "too good of a teacher" to remain in the ESL program and so was instead pulled out to teach honors science. The fourth class (holistic ESL) was taught by an experienced teacher who had spent many years teaching mainstream English classes and had just recently switched to the ESL program. Her class was distinguished in that it was student directed and focused on students' written and oral interpretations of literature, and student produced writing. All of the teachers were Anglo and all but one (biology) were women. All of the classes were organized into 50 minute periods.

Data Analysis

To investigate not only the amount of language but also the nature of language use according to gender, I coded and developed a grounded typology of linguistic interaction. The development of this typology involved two different approaches to the data. The first was a basic quantitative analysis of gender specific access to classroom language across the four types of classrooms. This analysis consisted of counting several aspects of linguistic interaction including: amount of talk time of girls and boys, number and length of turns taken by boys and girls, amount of student initiated contributions by boys and girls, number of questions directed to boys and girls by the teacher, and amount of resistance talk by boys and girls. It is important to note that, because this paper is concerned with the acquisition of students into academic discourse by the ESL teacher, it does not include a discussion of talk time in peer-to-peer small groups, rather transcription was limited to events in which students were directly engaged with talking to the teacher. Only linguistic engagement with the teacher, regardless of the structure of student activity, was included in the data used for analysis. This type of analysis was chosen because, as Lucas (1992) argues, in most high schools with large numbers of Spanish speaking students, ESL teachers are primarily responsible for initiating these students into academic English discourse and to expand their proficiency in conventional English.

As it became clear that it was not simply the amount of language but also the nature of language that was distributed by gender, coding for a grounded typology of linguistic interaction became a part of the analysis process. This typology was designed to provide some indication of the level of linguistic and academic demand placed on the students in each of the classes. For example, when boys and girls are asked to participate, are they generally asked to label ("Ok, if this is the part that is going to grow up, what might you call this?") or to generate hypotheses ("What is your prediction?")?

Through the process of coding for student talk time and typology it became clear that three of the four classrooms were organized by a monologic teacher script. Gutierrez, Rymes, and Larson (1995) describe this model of education as one where the teacher plans and orchestrates classroom interaction (the teacher script) and the student's options are to comply (support the teacher's script) or resist (develop a counterscript).

Findings

This initial and exploratory research will argue that boys and girls in these secondary ESL classrooms were granted differential access to the amount and type of language they were allowed to produce based primarily on the theoretical orientation of the teacher and secondly to factors such as: the level of academic content, the teacher's use of student's first language, and the linguistic complexity expected of the students.

Teacher Directed ESL Classroom

This classroom, consisting of an average of 10 girls and 8 boys, was taught by an experienced ESL teacher who had a very vibrant personality, a slight Southern drawl, and often dressed in bright "Western" clothing. This teacher believed that "students learn English by repeating it" and therefore ran a very traditional, teacher-directed classroom. Students were not expect to generate ideas or produce novel language; they were not asked to draw conclusions or recognize relationships. Rather, they repeated dialogues written on the board and answered recall questions, completed choral repetitions and read aloud. Several male students in this class told me, "this class is useless" and "it's boring and stupid." However, the girls I interviewed although also "bored" by the class were more likely to voice opinions similar to Maria's, "Mrs. Sawyer really helps me because she forces us to repeat English."

This classroom, as with each of the three monologic script classrooms I visited, had as a defining feature the use of triadic dialogue, or the I-R-E (Initiation, Response, Evaluation) sequence (Mehan, 1979). IRE structure is a linguistic structure that requires a first move (initiation), a second move (response) (Coulthard, 1977; Richards, 1980) and a third (Evaluation). In the monologic script classrooms, students were expected not only to complete their slot (response) to support the teacher script but also were expected to follow several other rules of classroom interaction (for example, don't interrupt, don't offer irrelevant information, don't repeat information already established, and specifically for ESL classes, don't speak Spanish in a monolingual English classroom) (Lemke, 1990).

The frequency table below shows girls having a higher total of linguistic space in this classrooms than boys:

Boys* Girls* Avg. Number of Turns per Class 25 22 Avg. Length of Turns 1.3 2.3 Avg. Time Reading Aloud 39.5 82.5 Avg. Resistance Time** 16.3 0 Avg. Total Talk Time** (not including reading aloud) 32.6 51.3

Note:
*Avg of 10 Girls, 8 Boys
**Time in seconds

The most significant pattern in this classroom was student read alouds followed by a series of information recall questions asked by the teacher and usually directed to and answered by the girls in the class. The teacher used the girls in the class to keep the lesson moving through the IRE sequences. Following is a typical classroom interaction showing students reading aloud and the teacher quizzing them about what they have read. All direct quotations from transcripts are printed in bold. T: always indicates the teacher speaking and all names in this article are pseudonyms¹.

T: All right, Hector?   
why don't you read number three for us?...   
You got a problem?  
Hector: Headache   
T: Ok, Elizabeth, read number three.   
((looking at Hector)) I'll talk to YOU about it after class.   
Elizabeth: reads   
T: Ok, what do you think that means? that you show good manners.   
Who can give me an example of showing good manners in an interview?...   
Elizabeth: Positive attitude.   
T: Positive attitude, ok that's good, anything else?   
Ok, are you going to say "please" or "thank you" or something?   
If they give you something?   
Use mann::ers.   
Remember those words we learned in here? those five words?   
What are they?...   
Esperanza: Please.   
T: Ple::ase::   
Esperanza: Thank you?   
T: Thank you, what else?   
Guadalupe: I'm::...   
T: I'm what?   
Starts with an S::?   
Guadalupe: Sorry.   
T: I'm sorry.   
So if you make a mistake you can always say you're sorry and apologize.   

My other class did some interviews (we are going to do some dialogue today about interviews) and one person was late.    
They got there at 12:15 and it was supposed to be 12 o'clock, so they said "I'm sorry".   
So then the interviewer said to him, "you got the job" and she made the comment, "please be on time". 

This excerpt shows that the girls in this class were more willing to put simple recall information (established in previous classes) "on the table" so that the teacher could use this information to make her next point. Girls turns tended to be longer because they supplied this recalled information. This excerpt also shows, as does the previous table, that the teacher nominated girls to read aloud much more than boys. In fact, at times boys, completely refused to read aloud when asked by the teacher.

The boys in this class filled the role of resistor by refusing to read and by 'resistance talk' (what Gutierrez, et al (1995) call the "counterscript"). Even though the above table indicates that boys, in fact, did take more turns at talk than girls, much of this talk was not about the lesson at hand; in fact it was designed specifically to disrupt the teacher's script, what I have termed resistance talk. For example when the teacher asked a boy to turn in his homework the student raised out of his chair and said loudly, "I don't know if I have it, let me check my folder." He then pulled a large wad of crumpled paper out of the back pocket of his pants and showed it to the class. Clearly this move was designed to interrupt the flow of the lesson and was not a serious answer to the teachers request. I have also included in this category cross-talk or calling out between students that is overt and has the potential to disrupt the flow of the class.

As the above table indicates, girls never filled the role of resistor in this class. Instead the girls ensured that the teacher's script was supported and maintained. It was, however, not only the amount of linguistic space that differentiated male and female student's access to language in this classroom. Boys and girls were allowed to produce different types of language as well (See the Table below).

Table 2: Type of Student Language Production ESL Classroom
(Avg. Number of Turns Per Class)

Even though the girls participated more than boys, it is clear that there was a limited variety of linguistic production available to all students. As such, the boys seemed to refuse to support the teacher's script. Instead they withdrew from participation in classroom discourse and began to resist through silence or through disrupting the teacher's script. The boys' willingness to fill the role of resistors in this class must be taken into account when looking at the typology above. For example, even though it seems that boys were more likely to ask for directions from the teacher, this may have been yet another attempt to resist by pleading ignorance of "what we are supposed to do" and therefore interrupting the flow of the teacher's lesson. In fact, all cases of resistance talk in this ESL classroom were done by boys and it is interesting to note, about 25% of the resistance talk was done in Spanish. There was never a time when a girl spoke Spanish aloud in this class.

Bilingual Content Classroom

This World History class (studying World War II) was taught by a young bilingual Anglo woman who seemed, at times, to struggle with her Spanish. I had expected that the level of linguistic interaction between the teacher and students in a bilingual classroom would be much higher than in monolingual English classes, as the students are working in their first language. In fact, this classroom produced the lowest amount of linguistic engagement with the teacher for both boys and girls (see the Table below):

Table 3: Linguistic Space in Bilingual Content Classroom

Note:
*Avg. of 10 Girls, 11-12 Boys 
**Time in seconds 

Even though this class was taught in the students' first language, the amount of linguistic production by students was very low. These findings may reflect the fact that in this classroom the students were more likely to do seat work and group projects while spending less time interacting with their teacher. Teacher talk was less dominant in the sense that collaborative work was allowed and there were periods of peer-to-peer interaction. However, if it is true as argued earlier, that it is largely teachers who provide ESL students with access to academic language, it is important to note that the chances for meaningful dialogue with this teacher about the content of the lesson were rare. In the small group scenario, teacher-student interaction was generally restricted to questions of "where does this go?' or "How do I do this?"

While the teacher did not discuss the content of the lesson with students in small groups, she did attempt to establish some basic content knowledge in a whole group setting. Often in Spanish/English code-switching, the teacher would begin each class with a series of recall questions. However, the academic demands in these questions was so low, and so little linguistic complexity was expected from students, that even though (or perhaps because) they were being taught in their native language, students began to resist fiercely. For example:

T:  Okay::, quién sabe de los, de los LEADERS?  [okay who knows about the leaders?]  
Manuel:  Hitler  
Fabiola: Hitler y ... ah:: Mussolini [Hitler and ah Mussolini]  
T:  ((looking at Esperanza)) Where, where:: ... where was Mussolini?  
Where was he from?  
Ricardo:     de Alemania, qué no? [from Germany, right?]  
Esperanza:        de ITALIA?! [from Italy]  
T:  ((teacher ignores Ricardo's call out)) Yup?! From Italy.  
Qué más?  [what else?]  
Hector:  Hitler?!  
T:  Hitler. Mussolini. And who ELSE?  
Maria: Roosevelt.  
T:  ((directed to Maria)) OK, Roosevelt, for who?  
Manuel:  De los united estaches. [from the united states], (using a slang term united estaches)  
T:  ((ignores Manuel)) From the United States.  
Anna:  Stalin.  
T:  HE was from Russia?!  
Hector:  Hitler?!  
Several:  ((Laugh))

Many of the tapes of this classroom were untranscribable as there were many students shouting out and talking at once. In one particularly telling incident, the teacher left the room to discipline a student and the other students actually became quieter. The student resistance is clear from the table below in that resistance turns by boys outnumber any other kind of turn:

Table 4: Type of Student Language Production Bilingual Content Classroom
(Avg. Number of Turns Per Class)

Note: Where typography tables do not match with their corresponding quantitative tables it is generally because students made two or more types of contributions within one turn at talk.

In this class, student talk was more dominant but the academic level was so low that the boys in this class almost completely disregarded the teacher's script and dominated linguistic space by resisting. In fact almost 70% of the boys' talk time was used to resist. Girls were still more likely to answer questions and be nominated, but this was the only class where the girls also actively resisted. Even though boys and girls produced a similar amount of unsolicited recall turns, boys often used these recall opportunities for resistance to the teacher's lesson as shown by the previous discourse excerpt. The male student who called out "Hitler" after that answer had already been placed "on the table" was clearly violating the rules of triadic dialogue. One of these rules states that students do not repeat answers that have already been given and accepted by the teacher; thus, this type of unsolicited recall turn was actually a resistance move.

The most striking feature of this classroom was the amount of resistance by the students. This same group of students who were relatively compliant and docile in other classes constantly and consistently resisted in this bilingual classroom; perhaps because this was a class taught (for the most part) in Spanish by a teacher whose Spanish ability restricted the conversation to such a low level of linguistic complexity that the students recognized the low level of expectations more easily than they did in English classes and found it demeaning.

What became clear through the analysis was that simply offering these students classes in their first language did not ensure them more access to academic language. Also, it seems that this bilingual content class did nothing to offer the female students more equitable roles. While some female students did take on a role (resistor) largely reserved for boys, this new role actually limited the girls' access to academic language as the teacher spent most of her time dealing with discipline problems.

Teacher Directed Sheltered Content Classrooms

This Biology class was taught by an energetic middle-aged man who was well known in the school and the area as a highly praised teacher. He has won several teaching awards and has done presentations regarding his classroom methodology at several national conferences. Over the period of observation, the class was exploring several questions about plants and plant growth. This classroom had the highest level of academic demand of any of the three traditional classrooms (as shown in the typology below). Students made hypotheses, wrote predictions, and conducted real experiments. The class was conducted mostly as whole class discussion but there were many opportunities for students to work in small groups. During these small group experiments, the teacher discussed the content of the lesson with the students.

As with the classrooms discussed previously, this teacher's classroom was dominated by a monologic teacher script; as such, girls interaction patterns did not significantly change in this classroom, as they fulfilled the role of supporter of the teacher's script. However the boys' roles did change as they seemed to abandon the role of resistor and began to take over the role of supporting the teacher's script:

Table 5: Linguistic Space in Sheltered Content Classroom

Note:
*Avg. 8 girls, 2-3 boys
**Time in seconds

Boys were much more linguistically active in this class. Different from the two classrooms previously discussed, students were allowed more linguistic complexity as they were asked to offer hypotheses, "what do you think...is the function of the embryo?" and complete if/then statements, "so, if it was in the soil then . . .?" In this class, where students were asked to produce more complex linguistic structures, boy's talk dominated. It seems that in exchanges requiring more complex linguistic interactions, the boys abandoned their role as resistor and were more willing to support the teacher's script:

T: I wasn't sure if you would think of that.  
I know you've heard the word, but you may not realize what it means, we call THIS the embryo.  
And what do you think, so what is the function of the embryo?  
Hector: To grow.  
T: To grow, all right.  
But we have to test these ideas, this is a hypothesis so far.   
So we are going to have a hypothesis that, the embryo in the seed will?  
Ricardo: Will grow.  
T: Will grow.  
Now we are going to have to think of some ways to test this tomorrow, to see if that hypothesis is correct.  
What do you think the idea, what about the starchy part?  
What is the function of the starchy part?  
Hector: It will go the other, the starchy=  
Ricardo:        the starchy part? the starchy.  
Hector: =turns into the root   
T: Turns into the root?  
Hector: Yeah, root.  
T: Ok, you are saying if the embryo is going to be the top part, the starchy part is going to be the bottom part?  
Hector: Yeah.  
T: Ok:: that's an idea::  
Any other ideas? ...(2.0)  
What is the question we are tying to solve?  
What's the major question?  
Ricardo: How to does the:: ... how to get the  
Maria:      How does the seed get energy.   
T: ((ignoring Maria)) What might be another hypothesis for the starchy part?   
What is another hypothesis for the starchy part?  
Hector: The starchy could be like:: the en:ergy.

The model of teacher-student linguistic interaction in this high school classroom seemed to be that when the type of linguistic production expected by the teacher was more complex the boys occupied more talk space, as argued by Walkerdine (1991). In fact, even though girls outnumbered boys 4 to 1 in this content class, they took up only 25% of the classroom talk time. As well, even though girls turns were longer, boys shorter turns occurred because the boys tended to interact more directly with the teacher and have ongoing conversations while the girls typically answered questions (see Table below).

Table 6: Type of Student Language Production Sheltered Content Classroom
(Avg. Number of Turns Per Class)

In their role of supporter to the teacher's script, the boys in this classrooms were allowed much more linguistic complexity. Boys predicted, finished if/then statements, and made hypotheses, while girls rarely if ever used these linguistic constructions. When girls generated answers they were more likely to whisper them to each other rather than direct them toward the teacher.

The girls and boys seemed to produce a relatively equal number of instances of certain types of language. For example, the girls were more likely to ask for clarification of directions, and answer simple yes/no answers or recall questions. Both of these categories require almost no thinking and almost no language. The girls in the class were aware of the inequity but assumed that it was something that was inherent in their gender. One girl told me during an interview, "The girls do better in everything, girls finish faster than the boys in everything except in Science, I guess that's where the boys get ahead of the girls."

The pattern which emerged from the monologic classrooms indicated that the boys in this study had two roles open to them - resistor to or supporter of the teacher's script. The boys chose the role of resistor when the academic demands of the classroom were low and the role of supporter when the level of linguistic complexity increased. The girls, on the other hand, had only one role (supporter) but that role was not necessary as academic demands were higher.

Student Centered ESL Classrooms

This class was taught by a regular (non-ESL) English teacher who had an interest in working with ESL students. The classroom's main activities were literature study groups and writing workshops. During my observations, students met in small groups with the teacher to discuss several books including Sarah, Plain and Tall, produced artistic interpretations of the novels they were reading, wrote independently, and conferred with their peers and their teacher. The teacher spent most of her time meeting with students individually or in groups.

The following data is based on recordings of several types of student-teacher linguistic interactions including: revision and editing conferences, small group literature discussions, a large group "share your artistic interpretation of the novel" session, and large group vocabulary, or "interpret the announcements" meetings (see Table below).

Table 7: Linguistic Space in Student Centered ESL Classroom

Note:
*Avg. 10 girls, 8 boys
**Time in seconds

This classroom produced the greatest amount of student language. The students took much longer turns than they did in the other types of classrooms. While not evident from the above table, during whole group lessons, the girls were still more likely to be nominated and answer recall questions. However, the whole group structure was used rarely and generally consisted of teacher monologue rather than triadic dialogue. As well, the content of the lesson was never discussed in the whole group. Instead the group was used for introducing vocabulary, or giving directions. The content of the class (reading, discussing literature, sharing responses, writing, revising, editing, etc.) was enacted between the teacher and individual students or between the teacher and a small group of students. The slight gender differentiation in turn-taking during whole group sessions was less significant because girls did not lack access to the production of meaningful language in other types of classroom situations. It was important to note that this was the only classroom where both the amount and type of student language was distributed fairly equitably among genders.

As stated earlier, the most common linguistic enactment of content in this classroom occurred between the teacher and individual or small groups of students. Following is a sample of classroom discourse between the teacher and a student which occurred as part of a one-on-one editing conference:

Serina: Mrs. Aimes says that there's some editing.  
T: Ok, like what?  
Serina: Here. ((points))  
T: Ok: [reads] "Just then she sees the bird and knew it a sign for her"....  
Tell me what's going on, what you're trying to do.  
Serina: It's my story?  
Well, the girl...ran away, away from home?...  
But then she saw...saw a bird and like, thought it was like her grandma (Miss), or whatever to say, to tell her to go home.  
T: Uh huh. I:: you said "SAW a bird" right?  
I think the:: your story switches tense a few times.  
Like this needs to be in past tense.((pointing at paper))  
I think it should be, "she SAW the bird and KNEW it was a sign".  
Serina:              Yeah but...  
Yeah but I thought that, cause it's happening now to her, not before, we use::... like the bird is there now.  
T: It is...(1.0) I don't know if I can even explain it to you, let me see a minute...Ok, I know it is happening to the CHARACTER right now but YOU have to keep the same tense all the way through.  
Authors usually use the past tense to tell stories.  
Serina: Uh huh.  
But for HER it's not past.  
T: Well that's true, ju-...  
What book are you reading right now?  
Serina: That one. ((points))  
T: Go get it and let's see how the author does it.

This class offered longer and more complex linguistic interactions for both girls and boys. This teacher, rather than invoking a monologic teacher script, used many of the student's own ideas and work as the content of the class. This disrupted the traditional role of "student" and therefore allowed the students to participate not as supporters or resistors of the teacher's script but as co-creators of knowledge. There was, in this classroom, a valuing of disparate perspectives as the quest was not for correct answers to teacher questions but for ever increasing mastery of literacy skills for both students and the teacher. The characteristic interaction in this classroom was not response to a teacher's script or development of a student counterscript but a "third space" (Gutierrez et al, 1995) where the role of teacher and student are significantly different from traditional classrooms. As Gutierrez et al (1995) write, "It is precisely this tension - the relationship between script and counterscript or this juxtaposition of relative perspectives involving struggle among competing voices--that creates and maintains the third space" (p. 28). The contact of student and teacher scripts created real points of connection between teachers and students. The lack of resistance in the context of an equitable distribution of language seems to indicate that students in this class were truly engaged with the language of literacy in this classroom. It is possible that when the student's possible roles were expanded and the tension between student and teacher script in the third space allowed them to make their ideas known, they were more willing to appropriate teacher academic discourse in order to make their ideas comprehensible and defendable against a more expert other.

As well as allowing for the largest amount of student language production, this classroom also allowed for the most complex typology (see the Table below). Many of the categories of semantic relations listed below were first noted by Lemke (1990). For those that are less common, I have included an example taken from classroom transcripts.

Table 8: Type of Student Language Production in Student Centered ESL Classroom (Avg. Number of Turns Per Class)

Although (or perhaps because) this classroom was not designed as a monologic teacher script, there existed almost no resistance talk. Perhaps this was true because the activities normally considered outside of the rules of the classroom (talking to peers, expressing your own ideas) were normal and sanctioned parts of the this classroom. As the student counterscript is likely to be resistance to teacher authority rather than resistance to ideas (Lemke, 1990), when the teacher does not claim complete authority and instead establishes herself as a mentor into a discourse community, a co-learner, there becomes less to resist.

It seems then, that the provision of access to academic language has less to do with the program type (bilingual vs. ESL vs. Content) and more to do with the linguistic enactment of the theoretical approach to curriculum held by the teacher.

In classrooms where student understanding and language guides the curriculum rather than where students are expected to master specific content, gendered participation levels off, and equally as important, the possibilities for linguistic production for both boys and girls become greatly expanded.

Discussion

Much of the effort of researchers concerned with becoming bilingual students in the secondary school have been focused on the issues of choice of program type (ESL vs sheltered content vs bilingual content) and how this can increase student's access to academic language. The research reported in this paper seems to show, however, that the type of program has little effect on increasing access for either girls or boys, but that girls suffer from more restrictions in the amount of access to classroom discourse than boys. In other words, for these students, offering sheltered content classes, and perhaps more surprisingly even offering content classes taught in their first language, did not seem to dramatically increase their access to academic language. When classes did offer more access to academic language (in the case of the sheltered content class) this access was offered in inequitable ways.

Girls were very aware of the boys' roles as resisting participation in less linguistically complex classroom interactions. When interviewing one girl about the traditional ESL class used in this analysis, she told me, "They [boys] don't want to do anything, they want to talk, they want to be the center of attention of the class, that's what they do, that's what they always do, that's why they are always talking and then the teacher has to talk to them. The girls do the work and then they [the boys] act like they did something when they really didn't." This student proved very perceptive because it was indeed the girls who did most of the academic "work" in these traditional classrooms (DeFrancisco, 1991). It became necessary, over the course of this research, to examine the institutional culpability - how traditional notions of teaching and learning (as enacted by specific teachers in specific classrooms) restricted student roles and therefore restricted their access, in gendered ways, to academic language.

It was the teacher's ideological stance on schooling that seemed to have the greatest effect on access to language. As mentioned earlier, secondary students gain access to academic language primarily through their teacher, and so how the teacher conceptualizes her role and the roles of the students has serious consequences on the amount and type of language students are exposed to. Gutierrez et al (1995) write, "The monologic script, the primary script in the classroom...appears to be exclusively in the control of the teacher, whose own socialization reflects the dominant cultural values invoked in schools" (p. 3). Clearly then, inequitable and restricted access to academic language is invoked by schools, implemented by teachers, and reproduced by students enacting their allotted roles.

When there was, however, an ideological shift on the part of the teacher, students did seem to be offered expanded and equitable access to academic language. The holistic classroom offered significantly different roles to both girls and boys. Gutierrez et al (1995) similarly describe classrooms where the teacher and student scripts interact through an exploration of academic content and argue that these classrooms are, "more than reform-oriented classrooms that boast new methods and materials. Instead, these are classrooms in which there has been a dramatic shift in the identity, roles and scripts offered in the classroom" (p. 29). The position implied by this research, that program design or even use of the student's first language has less to do with providing equitable access to academic language than does an ideologically different stance on the part of the teacher, can also be related to the report released by the AAUW (1998). This report showed that simply increasing girls talk time had little effect on their success in school and instead argued for effective teaching practices which produce greater success for both girls and boys.

This exploratory study in ESL/Bilingual classrooms supports the claims of a myriad of researchers who have shown that traditional monologic teacher scripted classrooms grant boys greater access to academic language, allowing boys to either resist or "squeeze out" girls depending on the level of academic demand. As well, it supports critical theorist arguments that schools are culpable in the maintenance of the status quo by establishing institutionalized roles with grant or restrict access to the capital of schooling (Apple, 1990).

If educators are concerned with ensuring maximum access to academic discourse for all students, it seems essential to focus not only on program type considerations but also on how a traditional ideology of teaching restricts students from full participation. By focusing on how to provide access to academic language to girls in traditionally organized classrooms, educators are, as Apple (1990) writes, "freed from the more difficult task of examining the institutional and economic context that caused these [inequitable roles]...in the first place" (p.139).

For the students in this exploratory study, the teacher who operated on a non-traditional ideological ground offered not only gender equitable access to academic language, but significantly expanded access for both girls and boys. As well, this was the one classroom context in which the amount and type of language production levels off between genders. By contrast, the monologic teacher-scripted classrooms were not more suited to males and less suited to females; moreover this structure restricted access for all students, though boys were more likely to act as resistors.

Conclusion

Girls in ESL classrooms are often doubly shut out of the opportunity to participate in the academic community because not only are they offered restricted access to academic language but are also labeled in research literature as somehow deviant (i.e., as silenced, as shy, or as lacking self esteem; Losey, 1995). Perhaps the most important question educators can ask on behalf of these girls is not who talks and who doesn't, but what kind of classroom discourse structures are built from and enact a more equitable approach to classroom language production. Even though non-traditional linguistic structures alone cannot assure a more equitable distribution of language (Gore, 1994; Sommers & Lawrence, 1992) it seems that gender can be linguistically enacted quite differently in classrooms.

Clearly there remains much work to be done in this area. Examination of linguistic interaction in ESL classrooms requires a much larger study in order to fully understand the complexities of academic content, theoretical orientation to curriculum, linguistic interaction, and gender. This study provides initial information about how access to academic discourse is granted differentially to boys and girls in ESL classrooms. It also provides a glimpse not only into the differential access offered in traditional approaches to second language teaching, but also into the possibility of a different kind of classroom discourse structure that may prove more effective and more equitable in the process of admitting ESL students into the academic discourse community.

Author

Paula Wolfe is a Ph.D. candidate in Language and Literacy at Arizona State University. She serves as Editorial Assistant on the Educational Research Journal. She was selected as the G. Richard Tucker Fellow to conduct research during the summer of 1996 at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC. Prior to starting her doctoral studies, she was a high school teacher of language minority students as well as a lecturer at the University of Regina in Canada. Her first co-edited book, with Christian Faltis, So Much to Say: Adolescents, Bilingualism, and ESL in the Secondary School (Teachers College Press) will be released in November 1998.

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End Notes

1.  Transcription conventions have been adapted from Tannen (1989) and are as follows:

Glossary

Bilingual Content — High school level subject area classes (e.g., biology, world history, etc.) that are taught in both Spanish and English. For more complete explanation see Faltis, C., & Wolfe, P. (in press). So much to say: Adolescents, bilingualism and ESL in the secondary school. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Resistance Talk — Any talk from students designed to interrupt the flow of the teacher's lesson or which violates the rules of classroom interaction as identified by Lemke (1990).

Sheltered Content — High school level subject area classes that are taught in English by teachers trained in adapting content for non-native English speakers. For more complete explanation see Faltis, C., & Wolfe, P. (in press). So much to say: Adolescents, bilingualism and ESL in the secondary school. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Talk Space — A term used to identify the relative amount of time members of either gender spend (per capita) talking in the classroom.

Teacher Generated vs Student Generated — Teacher Generated contributions are student comments which occurred when they were requested by the teacher, (e.g., T: "Who were the leaders in WWII?" S: "Hitler") while student generated comments were those not requested by the teacher but which emerged out of a student's need to understand something, (e.g., S: "I don't get why the author said she looked at the wheels and not at the whole wagon?" T: Maybe she couldn't stand to look up at the people in the wagon, so she just concentrated on the wheels.").