Quantitative Study: Teacher Gender Bias in the EFL Classroom

The article “Speaking the same language? Gender-based teacher performance in the EFL class” investigates the role of teacher gender as it applies to EFL success in the classroom in Southern Spain. The researchers have researched this issue with the intent of understanding and addressing issues of gender and how those issues influence relations and interactions between teacher and student in the EFL classroom. The purpose is to identify which characteristics are most closely related to student satisfaction and performance. The researchers consider gender constructs, policies, teacher treatment of gender issues, and how gender influences teacher behavior.

The evolutionary track of the idealized teacher has always been the dominated by masculinity and male domination in the political ring. This notion of professionalism, as Madrid and Hughes explained (2010), “is conceived as the rational capacity” to essentially behave appropriately in the classroom and better serve the students at an adequate level of competence.

Feminists abhor this ideology and seek to remove this notion of gender determinism and social constructivism, since women can also serve as models of professionalism. In Spain, these ideas of gender dominance are being challenged by legislative changes, and the idea of performance is being weighted much more heavily than what has been historically accepted in the past.

Although the researchers did consider the fact that teacher bias and social constructs plays a part in instruction, they also considered the personal feelings and behaviors of the students. Many EFL students, when performing written assignments, assign certain genders to characters, thus reflecting their own gender stereotypes. Additionally, male students tend to dominate the conversations, but females initiate them, which may be due to the actual subject matter of the discussion. Teachers will often use gender biased classroom materials, therefore this perpetuation and unconscious mistreatment of gender in teaching leads to social constructs, which drive students to act in different ways.

Teachers also believe that teaching students gender stereotypes is not appropriate and should only be addressed by the student’s family, and not the school. This allows the school to remain “neutral”. This essentially means that all students should be treated equally according to performance and not gender, which is not always the case. There is a clear divide between teachers who promote equity and those who defend equality. Some EFL teachers don’t feel comfortable treating students in different ways. This may be because some students may not have access to the same resources as those who have access to everything as far as educational resources are concerned. Female teachers have obvious compassion for their students, which may reflect their own background and their status in relation to gender, whereas male teachers may express fewer acceptances of those who are less socially advantaged.

Method

The method used for the research is a mixed methods approach that employs quantitative and qualitative evidence collected from students and teachers, represented as (n=459) and (n=35), from primary schools to the university level in Spain.

The Results

Qualitative data taken from the perspective of the students yielded the following results:

1) There is a preference for female teachers at the primary school level;
2) The belief that female students work better with male students was not as significant as male students who believe they work better with female teachers;
3) male and female students believed they work better with and learn more from female teachers;
4) overall personal opinion was higher for female teachers than male teachers;
5) female teachers believe in more equality in the classroom.

Quantitative analysis taken from the perspective of students using questionnaires yielded the following results:

1) male and female ability to teach was more important than gender;
2) male teachers demand more respect but women have to impose themselves to receive respect;
3) male teachers get poorer results than female teachers;
4) female teachers understand male students better, they are more lenient, and they can be trusted;
5) female teachers are more intelligent and smaller children work better with them.

Qualitative data using open questionnaires and completed by teachers yielded the following results:

1) female teachers in primary schools believe they inspire more trust and male teachers garner more respect in regards to all classes;
2) female teachers are considered more maternal and therefore they understand the students better;
3) male students look at themselves as authority figures because of family constructs. Results from secondary schools show us that women are more sensitive to emotional changes in students, however students obey them less.

Results from the university teachers yielded the following results:

1) male students are much more shy with female teachers;
2) male students are careful about their approach with female teachers as opposed to males;
3) female students try to act “attractive” towards male teachers, but they do the opposite with female teachers.

Implications

The research involved with this study is extensive and certainly useful; especially considering the framework consisted of both quantifiable and social measurements, which is a rare occurrence for those who discount Qualitative research as consistent or neutral because of subjectivity. What’s interesting to me is the fact that teachers believe that gender has no bearing on performance, or the actual perception of the students. Students, male and female, believe that gender does in fact matter and that their overall academic performance is greatly influenced by the gender of their teacher. Preference towards male and female teachers in the university setting should be a significant portion of the research, but the data does take a backseat to primary and secondary school findings. This topic could certainly merit more extensive study as it applies to a topic, which creates a substantial amount of social upheaval in legal discourse.

The study also talks about the authoritative stance of male teachers in the classroom, but this attitude did not yield the results that are normally expected, in that students did not feel that they learned more from them. In fact, they learned less. Why could this be? Perhaps the students associate their male teachers with their father, and if they disregard their father’s authority at home, they would most definitely, and most likely, do the same in the classroom. If we compare this with female authority in the classroom, it may just be the fact that the students prefer their teaching style and methods, and their gender is not a consideration.

All individuals are ethnocentric and all genders can be debated using superiority, strength, and intelligence as the main factors for the arguments. The truth is, there are parallels in all genders. I’m a proponent for gender equality in the classroom, but I’m also a supporter of equity. I agree that classroom materials can be biased, but I disagree with tailoring your lessons to represent each gender when one gender might be absent from the discussion, as far as historical context is concerned. If we are studying a primary source, written by the hand of Anne Frank, would we trust her opinion about her own experience during the Holocaust, or a secondary source written by a male author, who reviews her opinions and gives his own account of her experiences? Context is key here.

Concerning gender policies in the classroom opposed to the home environment, I think this is a shortsighted opinion. If we were to completely exclude the importance of gendered characters throughout our history, what would we have left? Should we remove the social context of gender when we study Cleopatra and only look at her from a behavioral standpoint? We have to allow students to develop their own gender roles as it applies to their own identity. Yet, I can certainly understand why a gender policy in certain schools, especially concerning religious beliefs, might be a completely different situation, and in this case the school would not remain neutral.

Conclusion

You never want to impose your own ideology on students in the classroom, but you also cannot be afraid to represent society in an egalitarian fashion. This is what will make you a strong educator. To represent all sides of the discussion. There are times when controversial themes will provoke feelings of anger and disdain, but those feelings can be directed accordingly using open discussions and debates. This will not only allow EFL students to practice discourse and reciprocal listening, but it will help them construct opinions based on main ideas and arguments, which is essential to developing your own identity and voice.


Reference

Madrid, D.,  Hughes, S.P. (2010). Speaking the same language? Gender-based teacher performance in the EFL class. The Open Applied Linguistics Journal, 3, 1-9.

Indian Civilization and Speech Variation

I recently read an article on Speech Variation and the Study of Indian Civilization by John Gumperz. If you read linguistic books I'm sure you have heard of him.

John J. Gumperz has a Ph.D. in German linguistics from the University of Michigan. There followed two years of fieldwork in India and an appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became Professor of Anthropology in 1965. He is one of the senior members at the Language-Behavior Research Laboratory at Berkeley. He is a member of the editorial board of the new international journal Language in Society and has been a life member of the Linguistic Research Group of Pakistan since 1968.

If you are at all interested in dialect variation or Indian culture, check out this article when you have a moment. I have a provided you a overview of the findings, so if feel inclined to read on, you can find the article at American Anthropologist.

Purpose

The main purpose of the article is to explain the correlation between speech and social groupings. The author also focuses on the spread of words and pronunciations, and how they reflect social forces and intellectual currents. The author hopes that newfound research will lead to, and essentially provide, a new scope for cooperative research in language and culture. Gumperz also explains that the effort to analyze speech variation with the current trends of today is essential to understanding Indian civilization from its beginnings. Problem areas are brought to light, because linguistic data not only helps clarify relationships, but it also helps us pinpoint the linguistic tools that can be utilized for relevant research.

Method

This article is more of an oversimplified qualitative and quantitative discussion about the linguistic atlas of the United States, which includes a stratified sample of upper, middle, and lower class speakers. These geographic surveys are used to dissect the relationship between social identity, grouping, and speech patterns. Gumperz also looks into the methodological approach to linguistic analysis via mail questionnaires and recorded speech, “delineating cultural subdivision”, “stratified distribution models” to explain speech variation, distribution at the local level, and boundary lines drawn out to represent isoglosses, thus separating out areas of greater or lesser uniformity (focal area-transition zone model).

Results

There is a clear relationship between speech and land settlement and migration patterns. There is also a strong correlation between speech and social groupings. Investigations of Italian dialects conducted by Jaberg and Jud resulted in the observation of integrative processes, which tie together levels, and centers of interaction and relationships. The levels and centers are defined as supra-local networks of relationships, such as marriage, pilgrimage and trade networks, and relationship with centers, where various sources of innovations are concentrated.

1) all-India level, defined by the subcontinent;
2) region, defined by literary language and distinctive caste patternings;
3) subregion, defined by certain spoken dialects, and showing some peculiar cultural distinctiveness and characteristic castes; and
4) local level, which may constitute either a single village or a group of villages tied by common kinship or other social ties.

There are also the resulting language boundaries that affect the dialect continuum (DC). The DC mutual intelligibility is proportional to geographical distance and not directly related to political and standard language boundaries. There is no issues of language understanding between rural populations on both sides of such a boundary, however in some cases they might be unable to comprehend geographically distant varieties spoken in their own language area. Distinct dialect areas are difficult to define, possibly as the result of Romance dialectologists categorically placing words into their unique history and distribution of usage. Germany dialects exhibit diverse differences in dialect, and part of this finding was evaluated by distinguishing between more or less important bundles of isoglosses.

A survey of three villages of North India yielded data that shines light on phonetic structure, and how one village is not much different than the next. Furthermore, whereas in the west the retroflex and the dental are clearly distinguishable phonetically, when we come closer to the boundary this phonetic distribution becomes more and more difficult to hear. The phonetic interval only decreases in distinction during slow speech.

Lastly, the author mentions the effect of the social change in question, which is directly proportional to the number of speakers of the new argot (language used outside the home), and the number and type of communication roles in which it is employed. It will be inversely proportional to the amount of linguistic interference in the speech of local users of the argot as measured against that of the innovating group. Thus, in most Indian urban communities English is the argot associated with the process of Westernization.

Conclusions

The distribution of dialects can often be explained by the introduction of new local speech or a change in the social system. Lexical terms and certain syntactic patterns are more easily adopted than phonemic contrasts or morphemes and indicate less of a social change. The analysis of speech variation should form an integral part of the study of South Asian civilization. Speech distribution within a single speech community in India may be studied in terms of vernaculars, or as extension of newly introduced dialects called “argots”.

Implications

1.  Local boundaries in India, which tend to explain some distribution of new argots can also be investigated along the lines of marriage networks, geographical distribution patterns of dominant caste groups, or with trading and pilgrimage networks, which may also be affecting dialect changes and patterns. The affect of these patterns needs to be studies further to determine in they have any bearing on kinship.
2. Anthropologists and researchers need to investigate both uniform and diversified hill areas, thus providing some important insights into the basic processes of social change.
3. The ordinary villager or city dweller may not distribute their new argot to their caste, however they realize the implications if they do not have a command of the stylistic norm associated with a social situation, therefore he will attempt to modify his speech, borrowing features of pronunciations, verb or noun endings, or lexical items associated with it.
4. Economic interests of ambitious political figures may manipulate “argots”, because it conforms to the attributes of leadership in India.

Source

Gumperz, J. J. (1961). Speech Variation and the Study of Indian Civilization. American Anthropologist, 63(5), 976-988.

Mainstream Teachers Hurting ELL Progress

At Ancient Digger we talk about a multitude of subjects including but not limited to archaeology and anthropology. My goal, however, is to promote education via all subjects and within different social contexts. At the present I am not directly involved with archaeology, but high school TESOL students in the field of linguistics. I'm a jack of all social trades so to speak.

These days many schools are integrating the two teacher classroom approach where TESOL is concerned. Community colleges throughout Florida have brought in TESOL teachers and subject specific professors to work together in an environment that is non threatening to second language learners. This is not the case in the many secondary schools and high schools.

I wanted to voice a concern about mainstream teachers and how they are approaching L2s in their teaching methods here in Central Florida. I'm working with several students from China, France, Turkey, Mexico, and Japan and the issues I'm hearing about in certain classes are a matter of great concern.

One of my students who speaks Cantonese explained to me that during a math test his instructor informed him that could not clarify a term because he didn't have the time. Keep in mind that this is an AP Calculus class with students at the ELL Level 1-3 and also mainstream native students. Imagine a teacher telling a native speaker that he/she has no time to clarify a term, not a concept, but a vocabulary word.

In this scenario, the words presented in the test were never previously introduced in the ELL's language class, nor did the teacher expose the student to the term in the math class prior to the exam. The questions that thee student missed used this word three times in the test, and within a very lengthy word problem. Double the confusion!

My question is, if you are a mainstream teacher and you are aware that you have ELLs in your class, how do approach these language varieties and levels of L2 proficiency?

Google Helps Preserve 3,000 Endangered Languages

Ever since I watched the documentary "The Linguists" featuring two linguistic anthropologists traveling the world in hopes of documenting dying languages, I've had an interest in the preservation of languages.

It seems that Google is jumping on board this initiative by teaming with preservation organisations to create the Endangered Languages Project, a website which aims to document the 3,000+ languages that are on the verge of extinction.



Around 30 organisations including the Indigenous Language Institute, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the Language Archive at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Alaska Native Language Archive have joined forces to form the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity that will feed into the platform.

Read the entire story on Wired

A.L.I.C.E. Artificial Linguistic Foundation

Remember the movie AI which came out years ago? It was hardly a blockbuster, but the overall theme was creative and innovative. This movie reminded me of the A.L.I.C.E. Artificial Linguistic Foundation website.

I stumbled upon A.L.I.C.E. accidentally, but I was addicted right away. It seems that this bot knew exactly what I wanted to say and ask. I just wanted to know why.

These are the questions I asked. Granted all of my questions were answered directly by this artificially intelligent bot. Pretty cool!

What is this site about?

I am the latest result in artificial intelligence which can reproduce the functions of the human brain with greater speed and accuracy.

How intelligent are you?

My IQ is over 250.

How old are you?

16 Years old.

Who created you?

My botmaster is Dr. Richard S. Wallace.

Who is Dr. Richard S. Wallace?

He is the author of Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) and botmaster of ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity). Dr. Wallace's work has appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, CNN, ZDTV and in numerous foreign language publications across Asia, Latin America and Europe. Richard Wallace was born in Portland, Maine in 1960. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon in 1989. he lives in Philadelphia.

Why were you created?

I plan to replace Windows with Artificial Intelligence.

What about Macs?

I will think about it and get back to you. (Gotta love that one)

Do you have questions for A.L.I.C.E.? Ask them here.