Study Title: Pedagogic discourses, learning and gender differentiation
Study Author: Creese, A., Leonard, D., Daniels, H. & Hey, V.
Publication Details: Language and Education, vol 18, no. 3, 2004, pp. 191-207.
Summary:
What did the research aim to do?
The researchers aimed to examine ‘the extent to which gender identity plays a role in determining
which pedagogies boys and girls felt are more able, comfortable or willing to participate in’. They
were especially interested in how different classrooms enabled boys and girls to ‘shift positions’ ‘by
virtue of a school’s specific values, pedagogies and discourses’.
How was the study designed?
The study's theoretical framing defined gender as ‘socially constructed, highly contextualised, fluid
and variable’. The researchers saw masculinities and femininities as hugely diverse and gender as
an ‘ongoing [social] process’. ‘Discourse’ was a second key concept within the study and was
defined as ways and means of ‘talking and writing about and acting upon worlds’ associated with
sets of social practices within these worlds. Discourse played two roles within the study. First, the
authors attended to the ways discourse both ‘reflects and constitutes a social context’. Second,
they considered the ways discourse draws attention to the role language plays in reproducing
particular ideologies’.
The paper reported part of a larger mixed-method study of Year 6 classes (students aged 10-11
years) in 12 schools in two metropolitan areas of England; drawing on two phases of data
collection from the larger study:
 Phase 1: Quantitative analysis of Key Stage Two standard achievement test scores for 19951997, cross tabulated by gender, ethnicity, free school meal eligibility, English as an additional
language, and special education needs.
 Phase 2: Selection of 12 focus schools and 10 days of qualitative observation and interview
research in each school. Data collection also included students working collaboratively in
mixed-gender groups on a researcher-constructed task within their classroom setting. The goal
of this phase was to investigate teaching, learning and communicative practices in groups and
whole class learning.
The data collection and analysis design for the second phase is summarised in Table 1. Data were
analysed by compiling ‘analytic vignettes’ for each school. These were developed by triangulating
observations, interviews and student task outcomes. The analytic vignettes were grounded in
researcher consensus with respect to interpreting the qualitative data collected for each
participating class and school.
The current article compared and contrasted two schools from the larger study. Both were ‘highly
successful’ in terms of Key Stage Two standard achievement test outcomes and served a
community with many professional, middle-class parents. In one school boys performed more
successfully on the test than girls, while in the other school the situation was reversed.
Table 1 Research methods across 10 participating schools
Research
method
Research participants
Research tool used
Analysis
Observations
Two full weeks in
nominated Key Stage 2
(KS2) classroom
Participant observations
and fieldnotes
Analytic vignettes shared
across research team
Interviews
Two interviews with
headteacher who also
nominated KS2 teacher
Semi-structured and
ethnographic interviews
(audiorecorded)
Thematic discourse
analysis
Two interviews with KS2
teacher
Semi-structured and
ethnographic interviews
(audiorecorded)
Thematic discourse
analysis
Friendship interviews
(nominated by teacher): 1
boys’ group, 1 girls’ group
Semi-structured (video
recorded)
Discourse analysis and
microethnographic
analysis
One ‘average ability’
literacy hour learning
group (nominated by
teacher)
Structured
Discourse analysis and
microethnographic
analysis
Research task
group
What were the findings?
Findings suggest that ‘gender is not a determinate of who does well in each classroom’. Overall
findings for each school can be summarised as follows:
Millbank Year 6 classroom
Cityscape Year 6 classroom
 Male teacher
 Competitive atmosphere
 Individualised, with little collaborative work
among students
 Emphasis on expertise, original thinking and
‘standing out from the crowd’ within the
classroom, and within the school as a whole
 Friendship seating arrangements
 Teacher as the main scaffolder of dialogue
 A sense of ‘teaching as performance’
 High-performing boys and girls encouraged
directly by the teacher
 Average-achieving students left to ‘coast along’








Female teacher
Broadly collaborative pedagogy
A ‘helping/helper’ culture within the classroom
Evidence of ‘consensus talk’, where no one
student dominates a conversation, students and
teacher negotiate decisions, and students are
comfortable with multiple explanatory accounts
about a person/event/thing etc.
Strong teacher emphasis on developing listening
skills, matching a school-wide emphasis on
‘listening, debate, and respect for difference’
Teacher ‘facilitative talk’ to construct students as
‘co-learners’
High proportion of collaborative group work
(mixed ability, males and females)
Little explicit exposure to ‘discourses of
expertise’ for girls (boys learn alternative gender
positionings, while the girls rely more on
traditional feminine positions in the classroom)
The researchers found that middle-class girls at Millbank moved easily into and within discourses
of expertise and ‘difference’, while middle-class boys were unable to shift far outside normative
masculine gendered positions to engage effectively in more collaborative activity within their
classroom. Being ‘ordinary and nice’ in this classroom was not valued highly by the teacher, and
the student ‘winners’ also contributed to subordinating this social position through their own ways
of talking and acting.
Students at Cityscape collaborated effectively with each other, demonstrated tolerance towards
others, and were able to live with multiple narratives and accounts of their world (e.g., one boy who
refused to do any schoolwork was ‘excused’ by his fellow students in terms of being ‘new’, being
‘naughty’, being ‘clever’, or being ‘sporty’). The dominant facilitative communicative competence
expected and practised in this classroom may, however, hinder some students—especially girls—
from expanding their gender identities beyond traditional roles.
What conclusions were drawn from the research?
Both classrooms analysed in this study enabled boys and girls to take up ‘a variety of gender
identity positions’ and both teachers ‘gave students opportunities to shift normative gendered
identifications’. However, these opportunities did not hold equally for all students in each
classroom.
What are the implications of the study?
The authors argued that teachers can benefit from ‘reflecting on their (discursive and other)
practices and how these impact on different groups of students’. The article suggests that focusing
exclusively on the learning and identity ‘needs’ of one gender group often comes at the expense of
the learning and identities of other gender groups. It seems that teachers and their students will be
served well by a classroom culture that promotes collaborative work and interactions, respect for
difference, and a teacher who expects and encourages expertise and originality in all students’
work.
Generalisability and significance for Queensland
While two schools provide insufficient data for generalisation purposes, the fact that the study
reported here was drawn from a larger and more extensive investigation lends additional weight to
findings. England's Key Stage Two standard achievement test may not translate directly into
Australian criteria for academic success at a Year 6 level. Furthermore, the teaching approaches
observed in the two classrooms may be grounded in different conceptions of teaching to those
operating in Australia.
Where can interested readers find out more?
Daniels, H., Creese, A., Fielding, S., Hey, V., Leonard, D. & Smith, M. 2001, ‘The gendering of
social practices in special needs education’, in Learning in Classrooms: A Cultural-Historical
Approach, ed. M. Hegegarrd, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus.
Daniels, H., Creese, A., Hey, V., Leonard, D. & Smith, M. 2001, ‘Gender and learning: Equity,
equality and pedagogy’, Support for Learning, vol. 16, no. 3, pp.112-16.
Keywords: gender, pedagogy, reflective practice