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ConstructingGenderin an English
Dominant Kindergarten:Implications
for SecondLanguageLearners
BARBARA L. HRUSKA
The Universityof Tampa
Tampa,Florida,UnitedStates
TESOLQUARTERLY
Vol.38, No. 3, Autumn2004 459
normal or natural gender behavior differs across contexts (Wodak, 1997)
and cultures (Kitetu & Sunderland) and changes over time (Connell,
1987; Flax, 1987).
Like many of the theorists concerned with gender issues (Connell,
1987; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992; West & Zimmerman, 1991), this
study looks at the macro- and micronuances of institutionalized social
and political allocations of power and resources. In this case, the
institution is the kindergarten classroom in the United States and the
resources are opportunities for interaction in English. Rather than
assuming that interaction is a source of linguistic input and output
available to all participants, I conceived participants as using language to
negotiate ideologies, identities, and relationships at local levels (Bloome
& Willett, 1991; Duranti & Goodwin, 1992; Rodby, 1992). This perspec-
tive of language and interaction motivated the study, which sought to
discover the complex interplay among gender, relationships, and second
language learners' access to opportunities for interaction in English.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
STUDY DESIGN
The setting for this study was a public elementary school in a New
England college town in the United States. Access and consent to
conduct the study were obtained without difficulty. Except for my own
name, I have used pseudonyms for the school, teachers, students, and
the local newspaper.
At the time of the study, the school, River Valley Elementary, had 380
students Grades K-6 in 18 self-contained classrooms. Approximately 35
students at the school were dominant in a language other than English.
All 35 received pull-out ESL instruction, and 25 received pull-out
1 Kenny: This is uglier than ours. [He walkson topof thegirls'whalein his
sockfeet.] Dumb whale. Do you know what our whale is?A killer
whale.
2 Jenny: This is a baby beluga.
3 John: We don't make baby whales.
4 Jenny: It's a mama whale.
5 Alan: Ours is definitely better. I know where spouts go and all these
things are used to kill with. That's why we call it a killer whale.
[Kennycontinues to walkbackandforthacrossthegirls'picturethenreturnsto
his own.]
GENDERED RELATIONSHIPS
When children entered the classroom on the first day of school and
sat down on the floor, they arranged themselves in a neatly divided circle,
with girls seated in one half and boys in the other. With very few
exceptions the children repeated this pattern whenever they were
allowed to self-select seating. The children also segregated themselves by
gender when they were allowed to choose what to do and where to go
during indoor and outdoor free play, a pattern observed in other
In Turn 4 Hector initiated a survey, a genre that was popular with the
children. He began by incorporating the theme of liking, which I had
introduced in Turn 1. Another boy, Dalbert, extended this theme, using
it as an opportunity to construct gender categories:
You know, I had a kid come over to the teachers at recess yesterday and he
said, um, "There are kids playing over on the hill, and they say the boys can't
play. They're all girls, and they say the boys can't play."
And so the teacher said, "Well,what do you think?"And he said, "I don't
know."And she [the teacher] said, "Well,do you think the boys can play?"
And he said, 'Yes."And she said, "Okay,then the boys can play."We can fill
them with more garbage. We can fill them with more stereotypes.We can not
fill them with anything, or we can take the opportunity to say here's where we
want them, so here's what I'm going to teach them. Here's what I'm going to
tell them. And they take that and it becomes part of themselves. (Interview,
October 6, 1994)
11 Mrs. Ryan: Who knows one place that girls go, and boys go to another
place?
12 Kenny: They [girls] can't climb trees.
Kenny's response in Turn 12 was not what Mrs. Ryan had hoped to
elicit; it displayed the boys' gender ideology and named one of the
gender segregated recess activities. Mrs. Ryan could not control com-
ments like these when she invited children's responses. Although she
countered this remark below, all the children had heard it, and it may
have merely confirmed their beliefs rather than challenged them. She
continued:
Fortunately, when Mrs. Ryan asked the girls if they could climb trees,
they responded positively. The girls provided support for a counter
discourse in this discussion. Counter discourse is not always possible,
however, as the following transcript from a whole-class discussion demon-
strates. It reveals how ideologies, including gender, can shape interaction
in ways that position students differently and affect their participation. In
this example, though Mrs. Ryan worked toward including all the
students, the children highlighted their gender practices and friendship
affiliations. This event began during morning meeting when all of the
children were sitting on the floor in a circle with Mrs. Ryan and Ms. Diaz,
the Spanish-bilingual kindergarten paraprofessional. Mike raised his
hand and Mrs. Ryan recognized him:
By inviting the girls, Mrs. Ryan made a space for Sarah to contribute,
which then encouraged Laura to speak up. But what happened next is
probably not what Mrs. Ryan intended. Instead of broadening gender
norms by affirming that girls play soccer, the girls contributed in Turns
35, 39, and 41 to the notion that girls do not like soccer. They no longer
played, and Jenny had quit after the first practice. Both Mrs. Ryan and I
laughed because we realized that the girls' comments had backfired and
only reaffirmed the children's gender stereotypes. However, Mrs. Ryan
did not want to convey these stereotypes to the group and quickly
reframed Jenny's situation by providing an alternative explanation in
Turn 44, "Well, she had other things to do."
Jenny, the girl who had quit soccer, was present in the circle during
this discussion but did not contribute. The fact thatJenny was mentioned
and aligned with Laura and Sarah affirmed the girls' close and publicly
acknowledged friendship. They chose to emphasize their relationship
with each other rather than align themselves with any of the boys who
played soccer. In this case, the high status of the girl's group in the
classroom, coupled with the fact that they had all played soccer and quit,
sent a strong message about girls and soccer to the rest of the class. In
spite of her attempts to reconstruct soccer as a co-ed activity, Mrs. Ryan
discovered that none of the girls in the class was currently playing soccer.
The fact that the girls were not playing soccer constrained both the
possible gender constructions in this event and girls' access to the
discussion. Unlike earlier interchanges, none of the boys interrupted to
build on Sarah's interaction. They were also in no hurry to mention that
they had been on the same team with the girls or had played against the
girls, though they had quickly affiliated themselves with each other.
Jim's comment about his mom being the coach could have opened a
discussion relating females to soccer, but the introduction of a parent
and Mrs. Ryan's reference to "hard work" shifted the topic enough so
that Susana, one of the Spanish-bilingual girls, seized the opportunity to
enter the conversation. Not having been on one of the community
soccer teams, she had not had an opening until now. Maintaining the
topic of soccer, Susana linked her comment both to parents and work:
77 Susana: My dad used to work in soccer ball in the summer.
78 Mrs. Ryan: Does he like to play soccer, too?
79 Susana: Yeah.
80 Mrs. Ryan: Do you like to play soccer, Susana?
81 Susana: Ohhhhhhh.... [Her intonationis noncommittal.]
82 Mrs. Ryan: Have you ever played it?
[Susana nodsyes.]
83 Mrs. Ryan: And you like it? Soccer is a great game to play.
By stressing in Turn 90 that not only did her father play soccer, but
that it occurred frequently and she "always saw" her daddy play, she may
have been trying to increase her father's status as a soccer player and
legitimize her continued participation in the interaction. This did not
result in further elaboration. Instead, Mrs. Ryan asked Francisco about
his affiliations with soccer:
Mrs. Ryan was probably aware that soccer is a popular Latin American
sport and was attempting to use that to draw the Latino students into the
conversation. Mrs. Ryan was also trying to increase Hector's status with
the other boys by constructing him as an accomplished soccer player.
Ms. Diaz's interruption in Turn 96 served to hold Francisco's place in
the conversation. As Mrs. Ryan was moving onto the next child, Ms. Diaz
interrupted to make sure that Francisco understood the question, but
her role as an aide restricted her from elaborating in ways that might
have supported the Spanish-bilingual children's participation. She could
have, for example, introduced additional information about soccer in
Latin American countries, although she might have had gender-con-
strained knowledge and soccer experiences herself.
At this point the discussion shifted to the upcoming open house.
John, who had gone on an errand earlier, returned. The soccer boys
IMPLICATIONS
THE AUTHOR
BarbaraHruskais an assistantprofessor of ESOL education at The Universityof
Tampa,where she providesESOLtrainingto preserviceelementaryand secondary
classroomteachers.Her researchinterestsinclude bilingual education, social rela-
tionshipsof second language learners,gender issues, and teacher supervision.She
has intermediateproficiencyin Spanish,French,and Danish.
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AmericanAssociationof UniversityWomen. (1996). Girlsin the middle:Working to
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