Note passing and gendered discipline in Vietnamese schools

Abstract

While researchers agree that note passing is predominantly an activity engaged in by girls, there has been relatively little consideration of why this is the case. In this article, I argue that gendered expectations about the appropriate characters of boys and girls in Vietnam are incorporated into the disciplinary framework of schools, and that note passing provides the means for girls to adjust to the gendered disciplinary techniques to which they are subjected. The article is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork conducted within two ninth-grade classes at two lower secondary schools in the northern Vietnamese port city of Haiphong.

Keywords:

• note passing
• gender
• school
• Vietnam
• discipline
• resistance

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the British Journal of Sociology of Education for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. I would also like to thank Helle Rydstrom and the people at the Viet Nam Institute of Educational Sciences in Hanoi for supporting my research. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who helped me during my fieldwork in Haiphong, most notably my research assistant, Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, and in particular the students who shared their experiences of note passing with me. The research for this article was generously funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)/ Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC).