Legitimate subjects: diverse pedagogical practices and gendered subjectivities in high school classrooms

Abstract

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of a progressive high school programme that privileges critical thinking amongst its students. Drawing upon feminist poststructuralist educational research, we propose an analysis of classroom discourse in order to highlight the diverse legitimation processes that enable gendered subjectivities in one high school setting. Our findings indicate that pedagogic styles alter the pattern of legitimation for gendered subject positions in the three classroom settings studied, and create different possibilities for the interrogation of normative gender scripts in the classroom. While appeals to teacher authority are the basis for the legitimation of alternative gendered subject positions in all three classrooms, agential student-led interactions are more apparent in challenging normative gender scripts. Our study demonstrates the need to consider the diverse sources of discursive authority for gendered claims in schools and seeks nuance in understanding pedagogical authority and gendered knowledge construction.

Keywords:

• Gender
• high school
• poststructural feminist
• pedagogy
• discourse
• critical

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge our research team members, Eliel Gebru and Kyle Sweeney, as well as the teachers and students who collaborated with us on this study. We thank Cynthia Lewis and Fran Vavrus for feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. The authors obtained clearance to conduct this research from their university institutional review board (IRB) after a full review from the social and behavioural review panel. That process required approval by the city district’s research, assessment and evaluation office, as well as by the school principal prior to data collection.  All of these approvals were obtained prior to our ethnographic work in the school and interviews with participants.  Teachers consented to be observed and provided written consent for interviews. Active written consent was obtained from participants’ parents and written assent was sought from the participants themselves.

2. All names are psuedonymns.

3. The authors recognize the problems associated with use of the word ‘tolerance’ but this is a matter for more in-depth discussion in other papers.