A New Transformative Pedagogy: Making a Difference

A New Transformative Pedagogy: Making a Difference
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Feminised and Masculinised Pedagogies
While the subject of transmission pedagogies, where the teacher is dominant and authoritarian, might be a masculinised one, so too the subject of a personal response pedagogy is a masculinised one, in that the dominant, the resistant, takes up most of the space in the current English classroom. In many English classrooms the feminine position is a compliant one. A pedagogy which endorses personal response at the expense of a critical reading can leave the readers at the mercy of the ideology of the text and maintain the gender ideology which confirms the power of the boys and effectively disempowers the girls. A critically transformative pedagogy has the potential to offer methods of deconstruction which potentially lead to an opening of spaces for both boys and girls. Critically transformative pedagogies, focus on critique of texts and their social and political implications and interrogates the power relations which exist in the classroom. Teachers’ resistance to change, especially to the pedagogy implied in a transformative pedagogies, reproduces a masculinist hegemony which is ultimately disempowering for all students.

A Transformative Pedagogy

A transformative pedagogy aims to encourage sharper understandings of masculinity and femininity, especially as they impact on the teaching of narrative texts in the classroom. It works through pedagogical positioning rather than providing a set of teaching practices. Current discourses of masculinity and femininity do not advantage either boys or girls in their engagement with narrative texts. Existing pedagogies do not take sufficient account of the gendered construction of the students, have not attempted to engage with the gendered subjectivities that students bring with them nor have they sufficiently critically reflected on the ways in which pedagogy conflicts with social constructions of gender.

A transformative pedagogy, one which makes visible to both teachers and students how power operates to privilege certain kinds of texts, both those produced and those consumed, is empowering. One of the aims of such a pedagogy is to examine the binaries that currently exist in the teaching of English and attempt to reconfigure them. To break the power of the binaries is to locate the excluded middle between the polar opposites, allowing proliferation of discursive possibilities and subject positions. Currently, many teachers and students accept hegemonic or dominant meanings without question. For example, in accepting that narrative texts are mimetic, reproducing a world that is assumed to be real, both students and teachers reproduce hegemonic meanings of texts. The unequal relations reproduced in a romance text like Looking for Alibrandi (Marchetta, 1992) are accepted as real and ‘true’ and the way things are. These dominant meanings freely circulate in ways which exclude the individual subject from the generation of counter-hegemonic meaning. A personal response discourse, such as the one which is dominant in many English classrooms, reproduces the meanings that the students bring with them from engagement with popular culture. Many students in this research see the popular cultural texts they read as real, ‘mimetic’, so that a boy who sees the photograph on the front cover of Looking for Alibrandi as the character, Josephine, does not make a distinction between texts as constructions of reality and texts as ‘real’. He does not want to read the text if his idea was threatened. In a personal response discourse such a meaning might not be questioned unless by one of the other students.

The invisibility of how meanings are constructed, both in texts and through pedagogical practices, means that both teachers and students can easily accept them uncritically and do not interrogate them. They are so embedded in hegemonic meanings that sometimes it is difficult for the individual subject to know what is meant and how those meanings have been generated from already available meanings in the culture. Uninterrogated responses to hegemonic masculinity, as represented in the three narrative texts used, leaves this version of masculinity intact, does not question it. If interrogated as part of a Personal Response Pedagogical Discourse, the students, mostly male, are surprised and reject alternative views. What an alternative pedagogy, one with a critical perspective offers, is a new set of discourses, a politicised frame on pedagogy to help teachers reflect on current pedagogical practices in the teaching of English to ask what it is that the students are learning, what are the purposes of the learning and how the learning informs subjectivity. The aim of such critical reflection is to be liberatory

The discourses taken up by the majority of the boys are more likely to be associated with objectivity, rationality, denial of emotions and resistance, while the discourses more likely to be taken up by the girls are associated with emotions, acceptance of diversity and complicity. A transformative pedagogy can make visible the constructedness of the discursive positions taken up by both boys and girls and can contribute to the remaking of subject English and the role of narrative texts in it, in order to resituate student subject and subject narrative texts within the resituated transformative pedagogy. Using processes connected with critical literacy discourses, a transformative pedagogy asks questions which situate the students and teachers differently towards texts; it sees that texts can be read differently depending on the purposes for reading them and that meanings are multiple depending on the contexts in which they are made.

The process of transformation can work to deconstruct personal writing and talk in order to reveal the constructed nature of all texts. This process disrupts personal response discourses as teachers who are operating in them are not achieving the aims of the discourse because the personal response is not personal, but constructed from publicly available discourses. There is a sense is which the responses of the students are formulaic and clichéd rather than personal, in ways that the students often do not realise. To ask students to deconstruct personal writing or talk and to dislodge a connection between language as a representation of a true self can be threatening but also liberating. Reading the personal as constructed in a transformative pedagogy can question the sense of a true self, represented in so-called personal writing. To question the hegemony of the liberal humanist view of the subject is simultaneously liberating and confronting, yet the site of potential agency.

Processes of transformation expose the complex ways cultural values are encoded in reading and writing and make them visible for discussion. Such processes recognise the difficulty of discarding the gendered discourses in which the students are embedded. For example, most of the students bring both gendered responses to the selection of narrative texts and gendered patterns of response learned through engagement with popular cultural texts and socially produced and accepted ways of talking about narrative texts. An empathetic response, which is the dominant response of many girls in English classrooms, is very difficult to question and to shift. Processes of transformation are generative and produce alternative subject positionings for students, so that the girls might see that it is possible to see gender as discursively produced in a narrative text and limiting to women, while at the same time engaging empathically with the characters.

Teachers and Explicit Meaning
Teachers’ meanings are often not articulated to the students because either they do not know what they are or they are deliberately withheld in the belief that this frees the students to make their own meanings. To withhold explicit meanings and purposes from the students is also to maintain power over them. In critical literacy discourses many teachers believe that there are certain issues which cannot be discussed with students. This prohibits teachers from openly engaging in discussions of power with the students as this would hold the possibility of disruption. The hegemony of certain meanings is maintained by specific relations of power and disrupted by others. Critical theory has not been used widely in English classrooms in Australia to inform literary pedagogy. A transformative pedagogy contributes to linking the best of critical theory and critical literacy in transforming the lived relations of gender and power in the teaching of narrative texts. It recognises teacher and student partiality as the teacher and pedagogy are aspects of the complex relationships of the classroom which can be subjected to the processes of estrangement and subversion.

Reading Narrative Texts and Enjoyment
A transformative pedagogy does not seek to destroy or threaten the enjoyment of narrative at the expense of analysis, it endorses enjoyment of the text while at the same time questioning the ways in which texts can coerce. Any theory that excludes the subject’s desires and emotions, fails to take into account the centrality of desire in contemporary accounts of subjectivity. In a transformative pedagogy, one of the aims is to relocate the text in the realm of desire and pleasure in different ways. This pedagogy disrupts emotional investment, shifting it but not displacing it. What is recognised is that emotions vary historically, cross-culturally and geographically. If emotions can be interrogated and invested with different meanings, then we can reinscribe ourselves in ways that liberate us from the constraints of the discourses in which we were previously embedded. This leads to a constant interrogation of the discourses in which individual subjects are embedded in order to estrange and open them, making available more subject positions to be taken up. It is recognition that every discourse has its limits and by moving into a new discourse, the discourse can be interrogated with the aim to move towards a proliferation of discourses rather than a closure of discourse. This process is infinite; there is never an end to the process nor a closure of meaning. The aim of such an alternative pedagogy is to have effect on the discursive positioning of the students both in the classroom and beyond it.

Reading, Self-Reflexivity and Agency
A transformative pedagogy is self-reflexive and action oriented. It requires of critical pedagogy theorists an application of a self-reflexive awareness in teachers, to deconstruct the ideology and radical theorising embodied in their own texts. It enables teachers to question their pedagogies in order to see how groups are marginalised on the basis of race, class and gender and investigate what currently is silenced.
A transformative pedagogy makes visible to both students and teachers the discourses in which they are embedded and provides them with deconstructive strategies to unpack those discourses. Such a pedagogy would include an explicit teaching of a metalinguistic knowledge of the construction of texts and narrative devices which structure texts and enable the students to see how narrative structures operate. In the same way, an explicit knowledge of discourse, genre and written conventions helps students to deconstruct the texts they read and to write their own. Explicit knowledge about the range of discursive forms of writing is helpful to the students in constructing their own writing. Students are often asked to complete writing tasks without teachers making explicit the aspects of writing which are valued. An important starting point is the deconstruction of the texts that the students privilege, not to destroy the pleasure of the text but to question its potential coercion.

Narrative, Knowledge and Visibility of Pedagogy
In a transformative pedagogy an understanding of narrative texts shows how texts construct ways of knowing and ways of organising knowledge that are endorsed by the culture. It demonstrates how narrative texts work, how texts are constructed and how they work to support the powerful ideologies of society. While individual interpretations appear diverse, they are actually culturally constrained so it is useful for students to investigate how responses are influenced by discourses currently operating and powerful. Acts of reading are never truly individual. Readers use interpretative frames they have available, the interpretative strategies agreed upon by the cultural. In order to question or disrupt these interpretations, the interpretations themselves need to be made available for interrogation. The process of estrangement will enable the personal response of the students and the invisible pedagogical strategies of the teachers available for public scrutiny.

While a transformative pedagogy aims to make available for scrutiny all conventions of meaning-making, especially in narrative texts, it recognises the difficulties of doing this, given the partial and interim formulations of these and their locations within privilege and power. It supports analysis of narrative texts and sees that narrow prescribed versions of analysis do not achieve the critical awareness that is necessary for discursive repositioning and empowerment. Whatever method of textual analysis is used the method needs to be seen as discursively produced and open to the processes of transformation. While explicitness and teacher intervention are important, there is a danger that a limited analytical frame may stop both teachers and students from asking the questions they want to ask. For example, if teachers make explicit a range of questions to be asked of a text, then such a process, while initially helpful, might restrict and confine; it will not provide a normative, free engagement with and evaluation of narrative texts unless the process is constantly open to question.

A transformational pedagogy problematises difference. In contrast to conceptions of a universal learner, this pedagogy makes visible difference, such as gender, a part of the process of understanding the complexities of student negotiations of subjectivity. For example, when some of the boys in this study refused to read the romance text because it was a ‘girls’ book’ in which ‘nothing happened’, one of the girls objected, saying that the girls always had to read books that boys wanted to read so why should not the boys read a so-called ‘girls’ book’. This is a moment of possible transformation when issues of gender, narrative texts and pedagogy can be open to scrutiny explicitly by the teacher, but also by students.

A transformative pedagogy argues that the implication for gender is that the discourses available in the classroom not only shape student interpretations of narrative texts but also provide interpretative frames for lived experience. To provide tools to analyse narrative texts is not enough. It is argued that analysis must be a simultaneous estranging of the movement between text and life. It is the teacher and the pedagogy who mediates the text and lived experience in the classroom. It is argued that the estrangement of the teacher from both pedagogy and narrative text is important in order to find new interpretative frames for both the students and themselves.


The Future
I argue that in order to address some of the inequities which exist in English classrooms and which inhibit the learning of both girls and boys, the effects and workings of dominant discourses of femininity and masculinity, especially in response to narrative texts, need to be examined in an attempt to move beyond an oppressive gender bind.

I see that there is a relationship between pedagogy, gendered subjectivities in the reading of narrative texts. In examining this complex relationship, I see that certain versions of pedagogy construct a gendered view of the world and position students to limited versions of gender in their interaction with narrative texts. I see that pedagogy can position students in oppositional gendered binaries which are oppressive to both females and males.
I suggest that an explicit pedagogy, a transformative pedagogy, designed to make available to students critical skills and alternative ways of viewing knowledge and power not tied to the reproduction of oppressive gender binaries, can open liberatory possibilities for both students and teachers. This thesis has suggested that it is just as important now to interrogate current and powerful discourses of gender in order to make visible how they limit opportunities for both girls and boys and to open spaces for the rewriting of the possibilities of gender.

The multiplicity I seek is not random, unmotivated or neutral. Rather, it is situated within the context of active struggles for meaning. Further, it is situated within discourses which make the apprehension and articulation of choices and struggles possible and capable of conscious action. It sees the combination of theory and action in terms of a praxis which allows for liberation and change.

I see that the effects and contradictions are the result of discursive positioning and not individual failure. This suggests the need to make visible the complexity of the discourses of the English classroom, teachers, students and texts. The performances of the discourses made visible are thus open to change and re-making and alternative discourses are made available. Gender, as one of the discursive positionings which constitute students and teachers differently, is central to the transformative project of this thesis. In so doing, I identify and contest the boundaries that limit understandings of the possibilities for pedagogic positioning and educational transformation beyond those currently available and I suggest new lines of inquiry and pedagogic development.

Old Pedagogies: The Need to Make a Difference

Old Pedagogies: The Need to Make a Difference
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I argue that the discursive positionings of students and teachers cannot be understood outside of the pedagogical discourses which frame classroom practices. Teachers have enormous power in classrooms despite difficulties with classroom management to constrain and control discursive positions open to students. In many classrooms the students take up a limited set of gendered discourses in response to narrative texts and are constrained by the pedagogy.

I would like to suggest alternative approaches to pedagogy. I would like to suggest an elaboration of an emancipatory pedagogy which has the capacity to disrupt essentialist categories which re-inforce binary oppositional terms. I would like to open up counter-hegemonic spaces for both teachers and students. A transformative pedagogy, in its advocacy of the acceptance of difference and assertion of multiplicity, addresses the relationships of teachers, pedagogy, students and narrative texts and is concerned with renegotiating those relationships in order to transform the lived relationships of teachers and students in the English classroom.
My research suggests that there are two dominant overarching discursive positions, one in which the boys prefer to be located and one in which the girls prefer to be located. It does not suggest that these positions are uncomplicated, nor that they are only available to either gender, rather it suggests that because the power structures of the class and the dominant views of femininity and masculinity which are unmediated by pedagogy, girls and boys still prefer to be located within the feminised and masculinised discursive positions available.

I intend to problematise the binary, masculine/feminine, to complexify it, to reconfigure it, to oppose it and to find ways of disrupting it. My aim is to deconstruct the initial binary, masculine/feminine, and to reconstruct it to reveal the complexities in ways not obvious in the initial binary. It is to read against the text, to deconstruct it, to question the assumptions which shape it. It does not intend to destroy, rather it is to examine the limits of what we think we cannot think without. The interrogation of complexities of classroom discourses, is to show the power and stability of initial binary thinking, the power relations within it and its capacity to close down alternative possibilities. The initial binary, masculine/feminine, is contested from within, to work against it, disrupting it, yet recognising that a binary system informs all discourses.


Binary Oppositions
The binary opposition of gender is central to the methodological and theoretical approach. The masculine/feminine binary, is elaborated in terms of the discourses produced and reproduced, recognising the complexity and contradictoriness that exist within them. The constitution of complex gender regimes in English classrooms are produced and reproduced through the dominant pedagogy operating. Through the interaction of narrative texts, pedagogical discourses and existing gendered subject positions, the research demonstrates how the pedagogical discourses produce and position students in complex, gendered ways.

The discourses of the students are listed as a set of binary oppositions

detection/speculation
confirmation/reflection
resistance/empathy

Students take up the discursive positions because they are available within the pedagogical discourses operating in the classroom. This suggests that pedagogy determines gendered positions in some direct senses. These discursive positions are organised around the strong binary distinction masculine/feminine. The gender relation is one of a masculine surface understanding of the world and feminine empathetic understanding of the world. This binary opposition demonstrates relations of gender and power which suggest issues for a theory of gender, pedagogy and texts in ways which question and do not reproduce the binaries.
Detection/Speculation
The first two binaries, detection/speculation, like the other binaries, show the gendering processes at work. Students take up different positions to narrative texts which can be understood in terms of this binary. Most of the boys seek for surface features of narrative texts and look for facts. It is not that the girls cannot respond in this way, it is that they choose to locate themselves differently. The boys’ oral demonstration of the detection discourse is recognised by the teachers as competence. Whatever the boys do is constructed by many teachers as better than what it is that girls do. In this binary, for instance, the attention of the boys to surface facts in narrative texts is endorsed as least as much as the speculative attempts of the girls which are often regarded as weaker, less focused and more uncertain than those of the boys. Most of the boys locate themselves on the surface of the narrative text whereas most of the girls prefer to operate in-depth, below the surface of the narrative. The surface facts of the narrative texts are contextualised by the real life experience of the boys and not within the text. The internal coherence of the text is not an issue for boys operating within this discourse. For the girls, the world of the narrative text is important. In the discourse of speculation they can hold at least two worlds, speculating that the world of narrative texts exists outside and other than what might be a real life experience for them. This discourse is a less powerful position for the girls because it relocates them in positions which values multiplicity and diversity.
Confirmation/Reflection
The second binary is confirmation/reflection. The boys take up a strong position to the narrative text in the discourse of confirmation. They use the facts to confirm their view of the world. The discourse of reflection is much more relational. Facts, for many of the girls, are much more relational and open to contestation. Where confirmation seeks closure and singularity of meaning, it rapidly includes and excludes what will be accepted or not as confirmation of a world view. The discourse of confirmation is aimed at including only that which affirms a particular world view. In the discourse of reflection the girls use narrative texts to construct world views and reflect upon them. The confirmation discourse is external to the text, whereas the discourse of reflection is about constructing open and changing meaning and is internal to the text.

Resistance/Empathy
The third binary is resistance/empathy. The boys detect the facts, confirm them and take up a position of resistance to contradict positions that they find unacceptable. The girls, because of their discourses of speculation and reflection, are open to a position of empathy. The discourses of detection and confirmation fix the boys more rigidly to the text and to the world, especially in terms of hegemonic masculinity. In the discourse of resistance the boys refuse to accept readings of the text that do not confirm their reading of the text and the world. They are resistant readers. They resist the text itself, they dismiss it if it does not represent their world view. Their resistant readings are often a refusal to engage. The discourse of resistance often ends with a position external to the text. This position confers on boys power in the classroom and power to act upon the world. It does not open to them the possibility of multiple discourses which might be valid or the possibility of multiple positionings which might open spaces for alternative agency.

For the girls, the discourse of empathy enables them to relocate themselves in alternative positions from which they can be empathetic even if they reject the position offered. This discourse does not have a singular position in which power is located. It is multiple, not single and it is about understanding and accepting multiple positions. It is relational and non-linear. It includes the notion of complexity and ambiguity. For girls who locate themselves in this discourse they accept a position of less power. This is a discourse of inclusion as opposed to a discourse of exclusion. The discourse of resistance places boys, who take it up, in a powerful position to speak, a position which silences the girls who take up the oppositional position of empathy, placing them in empathetic silence with the position of resistance.


Apprehension and Insertion
Inside/Outside
The three discourses used by the boys and the girls reveal their mutuality and interconnections. Detection, confirmation and resistance show ways of looking at the world which have processes in common. They are exterior, surface, powerful, combining the already known with the new, affirming what is known and resisting that which is not easily recognisable. Reflection, empathy and speculation are likewise closely interconnected. They are interior, reflective, tentative, passive and emphasise the importance of feeling. These two sets of discourses reproduce the public/private, inside/outside binaries. This thesis has explored how the role of various institutional practices, especially the pedagogical discourses of the teachers, are implicated in the formation of gendered subjectivities and their relationship to narrative texts around an inside/outside, public/private binary. These oppositional discourses see girls and boys as two disparate groups who are disadvantaged in different but related ways within a specific institutional structure. The positioning of girls and boys within the pedagogical practices of an English classroom has different effects and consequences for girls and boys. Students are positioned to produce different discourses which exacerbate already existing inequalities for girls. It is acknowledged that particular subjects have become feminised and masculinised in the structuring of the curriculum around the public/private binary and that the consequent devaluing of the subject English as a feminised subject has an influence on the boys’ positioning to narrative texts valued in the English classroom.

In seeking to find the binaries which capture the discursive positioning in English classrooms, a metabinary pair has been identified to demonstrate the oppositional and gendered responses of the students. These oppositional discourses are apprehension and insertion.

Discourse of Apprehension
The word apprehension is ambiguous and appealing, capturing the active acts used in implying might and right, a process of viewing the world from the outside, seeing the world as fixed and able to be recognised and comprehended with almost immediate closure. The alternative meaning of apprehension, which is about hesitancy and fear, captures the fragility within which male hegemony is constructed in that boys work hard to maintain an appropriate masculinity and are fearful of its imminent shattering. There is something about the intensity with which the boys hold their positions that suggests their vulnerability. Many of the boys reveal that response to narrative texts requires them to reveal emotions which are not considered by them to be appropriate masculine behaviour. The construction of masculinity and the discursive positioning of the boys indicates how subjectivity is implicated in subject learning. They see masculinity in terms of a specific set of traits such as a capacity for strength, rational thought, sexuality and power. This version of masculinity is in opposition to what it is to be feminine, it is not to feel or to need.

A deeply ingrained aspect of this version of this form of masculinity can be a contempt for women or those attributes constructed to be feminine. Women are defined as inferior and in opposition. Men are constructed as the competitors, against themselves and against women. The competitive curriculum of the school endorses a view of competition which is to the detriment of many boys. Boys who learn to compete, who are resistant to authority and to others, learn that to show emotion is not an acceptable part of the discourse of masculinity. What they do not recognise is that this discourse functions to maintain the power structures. To inflict pain on others and to not be affected by it works in the interest of the existing patriarchal order but it is limiting to those who take up that discursive positioning.

Boys, while sometimes inserting themselves into the text, are much more concerned with apprehension; firstly, with the text and the story, and secondly, via the text, the world. This behaviour involves knowing the world, fixing it and acting upon it in ways that may potentially change it. They are concerned with facts and with right/wrong answers, a position which confirms a masculine model of rationality and superiority. Fact-finding is often equated with superior performance by teachers who confirm a narrow definition of school success. For the boys this appears to be a position of power and resistance. Some of the resistance can be seen in terms of a response to perceived failure and a means of achieving an alternative status which is in opposition to anything which the boys consider as feminine. Boys demonstrate the need to compete with each other, to assert their masculinity and to deride those boys who position themselves differently.

Most boys do not want to question or make visible masculine constructions of gender because they do not want to acknowledge that assumptions about masculinity contribute to inequitable positions for boys and girls or that these assumptions might cause them problems. They resist interrogations of homophobia because the fear of being labelled gay puts great pressure on males to prove their heterosexual credentials by conforming to a narrow range of masculine expectations. Overt homophobia works to silence those, male and female, who are not prepared because of the consequences, to position themselves as other. This is a particularly oppressive version of masculinity as it is one which involves violence, competition and sexual virility at the expense of expressing emotions and valuing intimacy (Martino, 1994a,b).

Discourse of Insertion
Girls are much more likely to insert themselves into the text. The process of insertion involves identification with plot, character and world as if they are real and as if they, the reader, are part of the story. Girls investigate the world of the text and the real world from the inside, they can speculate about alternative possibilities and accept multiplicity and diversity. Their subjectivity is inside the story. While they accept the possibility and the necessity of change, they do not see themselves as acting upon the world easily. This thesis argues that this act of maintaining the narrative, especially that of the romance, is endorsed by girls. Such reproduction of femininity endorses discourses which locate girls in discursive positions of learned helplessness. Dominant forms of masculinity serve to limit ways in which girls can behave and understand themselves. Girls often do not want to engage with issues of gender formation because they are positioned as victims, or the problem, and they do not want to acknowledge this position.

Insertion includes much interaction with the text. Most of the girls are very good at apprehension but are much more willing to move on to less literal readings. They immerse themselves in the text; they participate both in the reading and in the discussions with a willingness that the boys do not show. Their responses show flexibility and mobility towards the texts. Their responses include explorations of readings, the acceptance that more that one meaning is possible. They elaborate and speculate far more readily and frequently than boys. They are more concerned with generating their own meanings than are the boys. Perhaps the boys see themselves as powerful, but when their position is questioned boys resist new meanings. The discursive positioning of the girls indicates that it is in opposition to that of the boys. The girls reveal their preference for nurturance, caring, understanding, emotionality and receptivity to the needs of others. The empathy and understanding which is demonstrated by the girls does not necessarily position them as successful learners. Their apparent compliance can mask a failure to succeed as learners, can disrupt the learning of girls and can marginalise them as valued participants in the learning process. In this study, if a girl demonstrates any of the characteristics which are considered as masculine – independence, overt resistance or assertive intelligence – then her femininity is open to question by the boys in the class, by some of the girls and many of the teachers in the school, although not the teachers who participated in this study. For instance, two girls in this class frequently challenged the boys’ responses. They were sworn at by the boys, called names like ‘dogs’ and told to ‘shut up’. Many of the other teachers in the school expressed their contempt for the two girls and apologised to the researcher for their presence in the class. So their assertiveness, independence and resistance worked against them in a way that it did not for the boys. The position which the boys take up is the most powerful. For boys and girls the meanings they make which are taken as the reflection of an objective reality are both different and gendered.

Processes of Insertion and Apprehension
The discourses of insertion and apprehension are understood as processes which are brought into play according to context and they are not seen as fixed. It is through different pedagogical practices that students can be offered a range of alternative positions.

In many classrooms the discourses in which the girls are embedded are often interpreted as suggesting that the girls are better readers, who use a wider and more flexible range of discourses to respond to fictional texts. Yet while girls demonstrate the capacity to be good students of school literature, the discourses they acquire and prefer do not fit them well for success in the world of work. Narrative, if uninterrogated, can act as a powerful means of coercion which fixes individuals into particular subject positions. Being a good girl reader, rather than leading to empowerment, actually leads to the greater manipulation and coercion of the girls. They readily insert themselves into the possible worlds of the texts and embrace the textual ideologies by which they are seduced.

Unmasking Classroom Discourses: Why?

Unmasking Classroom Discourses

Why Do This?


The intention of this writing is to examine the relationship between gendered subjectivity, pedagogy and the reading of narrative texts in literature classrooms. Through a process of engagement with students and their reading of narrative texts dominant discourses are constructed. They are discourses of detection, confirmation, resistance, reflection, speculation and empathy. Each of the discourses can be represented both by the original data and by narrative texts, each in a genre which represents the features of the main discourses. Six narrative texts representing six different genres are constructed to represent each of the six discourses. There might be more. At the moment the narratives are the detective story, action/adventure, horror, romance, the third person centre of consciousness novel and science fiction novel. These narrative texts are constructed to demonstrate the ways in which subjectivities are discursively produced and to show how gendered subjectivities are constructed through gendered narratives which are read as real. The juxtaposition of the different text types is to make visible the seamless webs of power structures which are often invisible both within and among texts. This work is most highly constructed, its constructedness aims to demonstrate ways in which discourses are culturally produced and reproduced within the relations of power in a particular site.

The construction of the narrative texts, each to represent the dominant discourses of a classroom in response to literature, attempts to break down the distinction between the subject and the text. The purpose is to show how the de-centering of the author via intertextuality is a demonstration of how the author is inevitably inscribed in discourses created by others, preceded and surrounded by other texts, some of which are evoked, some not.

The status quo of research products is challenged by textually juxtaposing a range of genres. In acknowledging that subject and text are interdependent, mutually informing and cross referential it is suggested that they are contiguous. The text is the subject and the subject is the text. The purpose of the constructed narrative texts is to foreground the connections between the subject and the text which have been rendered invisible so naturalised are they. By making such connections visible they can be interrogated. The narratives are constructed from the transcripts produced in the classroom using dominant popular cultural narrative genres. This fabrication demonstrates ways in which student and teachers responses to text are not personal. They are ritualised responses based on subject positions both students and teachers take up. The purpose of the narratives is to unsettle received definitions, multiplying subject positions, unlearning our own privileges. Texts produced whether collected in a classroom or produced from them are similarly constructed as they are based on the discourses which are publicly available and reproduced in classrooms.

The narrative texts are a further demonstration of the socially constructed production of all texts and are part of the process which demonstrates how texts are not representations of events but part of the continuing process of knowledge production which in the process use the socially and culturally available discourses and genres. The narrative texts are constructions which dislocate the text from personal experience. Their constructions aim to render visible the constructedness of the texts culturally shaped by discourses rather than representations of true experience.

The narrative texts speak to larger social and cultural issues. They are constructed by to demonstrate how in a pedagogy of personal response student responses are accepted unproblematically as original expressions of the unique self and experienced by the students as personal. By taking the responses out of context and reproducing them in a range of other genres, the texts illuminate ways in which the responses are cultural constructions produced from a limited range of discourses. The appropriation of the student responses in each of the genres, while they read as real and reproductions of naturalised classroom talk, render visible, in a way which is not obvious in the transcripts, operations of power.

In linking discourse and genre the attempt is to demonstrate how subjectivity is habitually produced and reproduced in a limited range of socially produced texts. The discourses and the ideologies they support are taken up as if they are personal and not social. They are limited discourses that are highly stylised, formalised and ritualised. These discourses are produced and reproduced as ritualised performances of subject positions. This thesis seeks to demonstrate the social and cultural dimension of dominant discourses and to open spaces for their interrogation and for the disruption of binary oppositions.

The aim of this is to map relations between these discourses and subjectivity using discursively produced texts of classroom interaction, transcripts of the lessons, written responses of the students, transcripts of the teacher interviews, the researcher’s personal journal and constructed narrative stories which represent the genres of the discourses. Each of these narratives are juxtaposed with the texts collected in the classroom to show multiple discursive possibilities through which meanings can be constructed, to bring into question the authority of a dominant reading and to invite the reader to engage with textual interplay through which alternative and resistant readings might be produced. The readings produced in this text are recognised as those of the researcher from a poststructural position and are partial, perspectival and open to contestation.

The following writing first examines each of the dominant discourses that are possible to construct from classroom transcripts and which are subsequently informed by three novels read in one literature classroom. Links are made with discourses of literacy, language, literature, gender and pedagogy. These links aim to illuminate the relationship between discourse and subjectivity, the subject positions available to students in literature classrooms and the possibility of disrupting and extending these positions. Each of the discourses is illuminated with a narrative of a classroom told in a genre which best reflects the discursive positioning of the students.

The discourses and the narratives which are constructed form them are not seen as fixed or universal categories. It is recognised that they do not adequately capture the complexities and ambiguities that comprise response to fictional texts in the classroom. It is also recognised that both girls and boys have access to all of the discourses but that they use them differently and that other researchers might organise and describe the discourses differently. The constructed narratives can be read differently by different readers and that the students read them very differently.

How Girls and boys Read Science Fiction

Speculating with the Speculator: A Science Fiction Story

The Discourse of Speculation

A discourse of speculation reveals the readiness of the students to elaborate, to think about possibilities and speculate, to note the theoretical and ideological implications of the text and life, to be provisional and tentative and to make speculative comparisons with other genres, including TV and literature. Science fiction genre, though not usually associated with girls but which has been used with success by feminist writers as Utopian, is used to reconstruct this discourse.

The issues of otherness best illustrate the discourse of speculation. Using this discourse the girls, in particular, are able to discuss issues of otherness, which includes those of aboriginality, ethnicity, illegitimacy, class, race, religion, homosexuality, life style, alcohol and suicide. The discourse of speculation allows them to accept multiplicity, to acknowledge that nothing is absolute, and that everything can be disrupted.

The discourse of speculation allows the students to find multiple possibilities in texts. Some research suggests that many girls find things in the book which enable them to read it differently from boys. They exploit, in other words, the plurality of the text. Girls are able to read against the ideological closure of certain texts. There are texts, and readings, where the girls do not so much read different parts of the texts from the boys, as read the same parts with quite contrary effects. It is significant that many girls can read a text as an exploration of possible sexuality. They see action in some texts that boys refuse to admit and they are sympathetic to the issues of aboriginality in texts in ways that the boys refuse to be. The discourse of speculation positions the girls to get very different meanings from the boys from the same text. It can be speculated that many of not most texts position girl and boy readers very differently and these dominant reading positions are taken up by boy and girl readers differently.

While most girls are able to read for multiple possibilities, to be tentative and to speculate, they are deeply embedded in the ideology of the romance and they look to the romance story line for their speculative attempts. Girls are increasingly aligned to the spheres of romance and heterosexuality for their logic, causality and sequence. When girls speculate their logic and causality often is informed by romance ideology and the trajectory of the romance narrative.

The girls are able to speculate within the discourse of the romance and yet are limited by it. The romance is very seductive for girls and within it they are able to accept otherness, to be tolerant and understanding, as these are qualities appropriate for the emphasised femininity of the romance heroine. The fantasy in romance fiction connects with aspects of female desire to offer girls an escape from the apparent contradictions of growing up female. The acquisition of the prince provides an escape from the tensions and contradictions of lived gender relations in a patriarchal society. The fantasy does this by positioning girls discursively, so that they are prepared to accept romance as a solution to the contradiction. The insertion into the romance is not passive, it may be struggled over, but in the end most girls adopt a shaky and partial version of femininity as a result of the struggle.

The predisposition of the girls to accept the discourse of the romance is part of the value that the girls place on individuality which is endorses in the discourse of speculation. They do not see that their embeddedness in the romance is part of a larger social context, rather they see it as individual choice. When they see others acting differently they see it in terms of individual choice rather than opening up alternative positions which they might be able to take up. It is a version of femininity which accepts difference yet endorses the inevitability of the happily ever after ending of the romance.


A Science Fiction Story

The Girl from Nowhere

A strange girl with a laser. I'm telling this story from when she first appeared. She was strange because of how she looked and what she said-and because nobody else could see her.

It was one of those hot, boring school afternoons that go on forever. Everybody was half asleep, even Ms Kelly, and I didn't hear the classroom door open. As I found out later, this girl didn't use doors sometimes. She was just there, standing by the blackboard, looking at me.

She had on a grubby silver-grey track suit and a silver-grey headband over long, thick, dark-blonde hair, streaked with red. There was a little headset thing clipped on this. She had a strong face and one of those wide, smiling mouths. But she wasn't smiling. Slung over one shoulder was a long purple metal tube with a hand-grip in the middle and flattened at one end into a set of controls. She looked tired and pale.

She just stood there, one hand on the strap of the metal tube.

I glanced at the kid next to me. Josh wants to be a basketballer and reckons he'll make a million bucks in sponsorship deals. He was yawning. I was about to nudge him and point to the girl when her hand touched my shoulder. Close up she had smudges under her eyes like Mum gets from too much overtime and one big silver earring. There was a name printed in black letters over the pocket of her track suit: in capital letters, YOONA. Why was nobody taking any notice of her? Josh was pretending to read his book, Ms Kelly was looking out of the window and then, right then, I realised that nobody else could see her.

And right then I should have jumped up and freaked out and even yelled my head off because all this was too weird! But something inside stopped me. And she must have read my thoughts because her hand rested on my shoulder like she understood. She was urgent, tired and desperate, and she was trying to tell me something.

She said the words 'Gen and us, poor and unity, op and unity'.

I thought to myself that this was just another bad memory trip and that I must try and pull myself together because somehow I sensed I was needed. This time my memory didn't click off and I didn't freak out either. Her voice fast forwarded in my mind...need you...need you.

I should have been scared-I should have been climbing up the wall! I wasn't on medication or anything and strange girls in grey tracksuits don't just appear out of thin air. And I still had this deep down feeling that al this was OK that it should be happening.

Light came from six interlocking circles overhead, and on one of the walls was a metal grill. It had been plastered over with iron bars, welded into place. Now the bars were bulging outwards with the pressure of something behind. One by one the bars snapped. A shower of thick globs splattered into the room. I saw a vision of the past and of the future.

In the past the red drops were hovering thickly in the air. They turned black, and frizzled like frying bacon. A thick spout of solid muddy red followed and moved like a huge square snake. I saw hostility, aggression, violence, intolerance, hatred, inequality, punishment, pain. I saw bodies writhing in desperation. I saw fear. The muddy red snake poured and poured. I thought to myself, 'This is so cruel. It just is!'

Suddenly two brilliant circles of light appeared and wiped away the desolate darkness. Through glass which was so clear I could almost reach out and touch the twinkling black mass of the deep space of the future. I felt suspended in space and time, I couldn't recognise anything, a million years had passed, continents and countries had changed, there was just one land mass at the bottom of the southern ocean. I could now see a vision of the future. Then the voices came, soft, insistent, as the darkness became light. I floated for a moment as I listened.

'There are different groups'.

'They do not put down people all the time'.

'Harmony'.

'Changes form harmony'.

'From harmony to-oh, I do not know'.

'It's a sympathetic view of different kinds of reality'.

'Take it slow'.

'She worries about him'.

'He wants the problem handled'.

'It would not matter'.

'Doesn't know what to do'.

'You cannot pay for affection'.

'You can talk to her. She is caring'.

'A person who loves and cares for you no matter what you say and do'.

'One who is understanding, who you can talk to'.

'To be happy, that is all'.

'Just happiness'.

'They just want you to be happy'.

'I do not think it makes any difference who you are'.

'Yes, I don't think it makes any difference'.

'You feel sorry for him'.

'You can't make a generalisation. It's too much of a wide span'.

'It's more equal now'.

'They have become more alike'.

'More opportunities'.

'Everybody has problems'.

'Everyone is different'.

'It's about difficulties. I can't quite explain'.

'It did not explain the feelings in depth. It just stopped'.

'There is nothing wrong with holding a person of the same sex'.

'Friendship'.

'Doesn't believe in violence'.

'Calm, civilised, kind, generous'.

'Girls can do anything these days. For instance some guys stay home and look after the children. It is more equal now'.

The voices swirled and whirled in my head. I could breathe but only just. I recalled those soft, insistent voices. I knew that I had been chosen, that somehow it was up to me, that the future was in my hands, that I could transform the world.

Yoona returned. I wanted to go over to her and hug her tight. She wanted to hug me too but that was wrong. Too much like saying goodbye-and we weren't saying goodbye, just goodnight. She paused, looking out of the window into the black space of the future. I felt a bit proud. She smiled and began to disappear. I knew I had a lonely task ahead of me but I had a good picture in my mind to keep me going-Yoona sitting at the controls of her spaceship, turning it outwards on its second journey to the stars.

Comments

This version of the science fiction story has a hero who is deliberately ambiguous, one who is neither male nor female but who has the capacity to make changes in a deconstructed world where there exists a range of possibilities for choice currently not available. The story offers the opportunity to speculate about what these multiple possibilities might look like, what a different kind of world could offer in terms of human relationships. The story suggests that the world as we know it is ideologically corrupt and unsound but that there are preferred options. Such options include the possibility to see what might be possible and to have a vision for change, a vision which includes the freedom to speculate, the freedom to escape from already established inequities which privilege some and marginalise others. Science fiction narrative plays with reality and offers different versions of it. It acknowledges that not everybody perceives the same reality and suggests that realities are made and not fixed. It can be an optimistic genre in its vision of change, its vision of commitment which can mobilise change. It sees the world in a different way, through a different lens. It shows that different discourses can transform reality as we know it. In subverting conventional reality it can challenge traditional discourses and ideologies and the possibility for change is acknowledged. The Girl from Nowhere attempts to suggest some of these possibilities.

Through the discourse of speculation girls demonstrate an intellectual awareness that many families break up and many others live in poverty, yet they are certain that things will be different for them. There is a contradiction between their intellectual awareness of the trends of society and their hopes and dreams for themselves. The discourse of speculation is the most potentially optimistic discourse of the six. On the surface it reveals mobility, flexibility and a belief in transformative capacity of change. However, for many girls, the discourse of speculation is shaped by romance ideology and the expectation of the romantic resolution. Perhaps the girls see that transformation is possible but that transformation is bound by the romance which teaches how to be appropriately feminine. Ultimately for the girls the discourse of speculation may not be about proliferation of meaning but about the constraint which is imposed by the other discourses. The discourse of speculation may not have the material effect of the male discourses. While it might look enabling it can be curiously limiting if only because as female the girls are acting from positions of powerlessness. The discourse of speculation potentially positions the girls who prefer to use it as vulnerable and fragile because the deferral of action, the deferral of closure and the deferral of certainty can look like a surrender of control.

Classroom Narrative: Why?

Classrooms Narratives: Why?

Many readers of recently constructed narratives based on what happens in literature classrooms have asked what their purpose is, especially as a research project into teaching and a transformational pedagogy. The stories, the ones already published on this site, are alternative constructions in narrative of classroom discourses. They are based on what the students said as part of their responses to the narrative texts they read. They are intertextual and aim to illuminate the relationship between discourse and subjectivity, the subject positions available to students in literature classrooms and the discursive positions they take up in relation to the texts they read. Intertextuality for the readers confirms and naturalises the subject positions they take up. The purpose of the constructed narrative stories is to foreground the connections between the subject and the texts they are reading. These connections have been rendered invisible so naturalised are they. By making such connections visible they can be interrogated and perhaps transformed. It is as if in their reading of popular cultural texts the students take up the language and the discourses without knowing and think that they are natural, true, right and guide them in how they think and behave.

While it is misleading to talk about girls and boys as homogenous groups this classroom research demonstrates that there are differences in language and response to text which appear to be significant. In this study some of the identified discourses were predominantly used by the girls while others were used by the boys. While the students have available to them all the range of possible discourses in response to texts they learn the forms of desire and power and powerlessness that are embedded in and made possible by the various discursive practices through which they position themselves and are positioned not only in the literature classroom but also outside it. Students in this study spend considerable time acquiring the discourses available to them in literature classrooms and in their lives and they learn a gendered preference for ways of reading, ways of engaging with and responding to the narrative texts they read and share. Their repeated practice of the discourses, which they prefer, both naturalise the discourses for the teachers and the students and further embeds them in those discourses. All participants are so deeply embedded in these discourse that they appear natural and true.

It is important to the students in most literature classrooms to maintain the positions of maleness and femaleness that are identifiable and privileged in that setting and which are, more than likely, replicated elsewhere. In learning the discursive practices of their society children learn that they must be socially identifiable as male or female, even though there is very little if any observable physical difference in most social situations. There are, however, considerable differences in bodily ascription in the way that boys and girls are dressed. It is easy to tell in most classrooms even in those where there is a dress code who is identifiably male and who is female. It needs to be recognised, however, that taking up a position as male or female is not a unitary process. How one does one's masculinity or femininity with one's parents, say, may differ profoundly from how one does one's masculinity with one's friends, or from one friend to another. As the students interact with each other, with the teacher and with the texts they learn the appropriate discursive practices in which bipolar maleness and femaleness are embedded and they do this very well. Correct positioning within the discourses seems to be very important to the students, especially to the boys. The fragility of masculinity seems to require that the boys work hard to maintain the hegemony of masculinity. These processes are observable in university literature classes.

In taking up the discourses of masculinity and femininity the students learn the emotions and the bodily inscriptions which are relevant to male and female subject positionings. Central to the understanding of themselves as male or female is the knowledge of their place in the narrative structures of the culture and through their experience of the subject positionings made available in interactions with others. Students work hard to achieve and sustain their gendered identity through the discourses they use to respond to fictional texts. The discourses used by the students establish and maintain their gendered subjectivities and the practices have material force. To the extent that the dualism is taken to be true, it is very real and true to many groups of students, university or school. It is taken to be true because it is understood as given, an innate capacity, despite the vast amount of work that goes into its achievement.

Most classrooms reveal an oppositional binary which is a gendered one. The purpose of any engagement with classroom practice is not to maintain gender in binary ways but to investigate them, render them visible and de-stabilise them. The gendered binaries, which emerge in the oppositional discourses, are a reading of what happens in classrooms which reveal that gendered discourses can be easily reproduced in the intersection of pedagogy and narrative texts.

How Readers Empathise


A discourse of empathy is closely related to discourses of reflection and romance. Central to the discourse is the recognition of the importance of feelings both of the characters in the text and the students' feelings when engaged and interacting with the text. It is a discourse of sympathy and understanding. It endorses individual difference, is willing to understand the point of view of others and to discuss alternative suggestions. It is a discourse which accepts complexity and multiple possibilities to the extent that it is impossible and unnecessary to adjudicate among diversity or to adopt a position of power towards the world and try to change it. This is a discourse of compliance, deferral and the acceptance of authority. It positions students to respond to the text to the extent that the teacher or the authority expects and to discuss any issues raised.

The issue of family illustrates well how the girls demonstrate an empathetic response. In the discussion of family there is the opportunity to examine the nature of mothering and fathering and to explore how families can replicate models of hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity.

Both in talk and writing the girls overwhelming prefer to operate in the discourse of empathy, especially when this response is invited and endorsed and when the text is viewed as representative of real life. It is unusual for the boys to use the discourse. Other research shows that both the boys and the girls use the discourse of feeling and the discourse of action. But the girls are more inclined to use the discourse of feeling, while the boys are more inclined to use the discourse of action .The girls are embedded in a range of empathetic discourses, which inform their attitudes towards relationships, supporting a have and to hold discourse. In the main the discourse endorsed by the girls in the class is one of tolerance, acceptance, awareness of multiplicity, the right of individual choice, sympathy and understanding.

The discourse of empathy is used by girls to discuss the characters in the texts and to discuss their own experiences. It is their preferred way of responding. The girls tend to respond through a discourse of human connections or a discourse of feeling which is a way of talking about literature, a way of signifying, through language, a concern with the feelings both of the reader of the text and of the characters portrayed in the text in question. Girls use the discourse of feeling to name emotional states of the characters or to analyse certain characters and describe what they might be feeling. In the main girls feel sorry for a character who is in a predicament. They see that it is a situation in the text that has precipitated a dilemma for the character and discuss both the event and the character as if they are real. The discourse of feeling uses the particular details of the plot to throw light on certain characters and their motivations.

The discourse of empathy allows girls to discuss relationships as if they are discussing relationships in real life. They enjoy such discussion, even to the point of making comments like, 'it's true, it's real, it's what will be happening to us in a couple of years at HSC'.

Many girls show similar empathy to both the characters in the text and their classmates. They show consideration and understanding, accepting the points of view of others with tolerance. They show respect for relationships both in the classroom and in the texts. They recognise the importance of human connections, respecting their importance often to the detriment of their own views. The girls tend to respond in classroom discussion through a discourse of human connections, a discourse of feeling or a discourse of empathy, which is a way of talking about literature, a way of signifying, through language, a concern with the feelings both of the reader of the text and of the characters portrayed in the text in question. The girls use the discourse of feeling to name emotional states of the characters or to analyse certain characters and describe what they might be feeling.

It is not that the girls cannot recognise that the characters are constructions, they are able to see how the characters might be formed by the language of the text. They can see that some events might be exaggerated but they much prefer to use a discourse of empathy in discussion, a discourse which has to accept that the characters might be real. Girls described= the events and characters...as 'exaggerated' but are still able to relate to them and identify with the character's feelings and actions.

A Third Person Centre of Consciousness Novel

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Five of them were sitting with their desks pushed together. Problem solving, Ms Kelly called it. She'd told Rebecca and Sarah to go with them, James, Josh and Meredith. They'd read the chapter and then looked over the top of their books at each other, sitting silently, awaiting instructions.

'What type of father would Peter have?'

She tucked a piece of her long dark hair behind her ear and grinned at them warmly. Rebecca and Sarah looked up and grinned a bit back. She wore dangly gold earrings and a chunky gold chain on her wrist.

At least she was better than Mr Hunt, Rebecca thought.

'You need to think what the role is and how to read it. What is Peter's father like?'

She sat down on the edge of the desk and folded her arms. She didn't actually fold them; each hand cupped an elbow and held it as if she were posing.

'What would your father do about that?'

She waited for that to sink in. She walked between the tables to the back of the classroom and spun around. An actor playing her part.

She told them to discuss the questions she had asked in their groups. Talk and find out as much as they could in five minutes, to make notes, to find out everything.

James thought about his dad, how he had dropped in unexpectedly the night before, right on dinner time. It hadn't thrown his mum, she just steamed up more vegies to make the casserole go further. He had worn his latest Le Coq T-shirt and the light above the table had cast half-moon shadows under his biceps and pectorals.

'On himself', muttered James disparagingly.

Sarah pondered and then suggested, 'A macho father who would want him to do boys' things, not be a girl'.

Rebecca agreed, 'He does not care about his son, he only cares about himself'.

'The father does not want his name brandished around the neighbourhood', Meredith added.

Josh challenged, 'If my father thought I was gay he might be worried about it'.

'My mum would understand. But I do not care what my dad would say because I do not like him. I never have. He always goes off about everything', Rebecca said.

‘My father is the same', Sarah agreed.

'My father is just weird', Meredith commented in agreement.

Ms Kelly leaned on the wall at the back of the room and wondered how she could get Josh to engage more sympathetically with the text and use the creative talent that she knew he had. She thought of Mr Smith who had tried to bully Josh into working, using every method in his disciplinary repertoire short of corporal punishment: sarcasm, abuse, lines and detentions, but all failed to achieve what she considered to be a favourable response; indeed they seemed to be making matters worse. According to her Josh was even less engaged than he had been the year before.

She looked vacantly from the window over the school yard, silent now that classes had resumed. She turned back to the classroom with its clamour, disorder and buzzing chatter. She wondered how many students she had taught in that room and if she had actually achieved anything. Will the students remember her, the chalky leavings of yesterday's lesson still ghosted under today's?

She returned her gaze to the class, asked for their attention and said, 'Do you find that mothers heal breaches?'

She instructed them to continue their group discussion for a few more minutes and asked them to think about the character of Peter's mother and consider what a normal mother is like.

She walked over and stood behind Josh. He looked at her with eyes so strikingly blue. She realised that recently his face had matured: the cheekbones and jaw more structured, the nose straight, the eyebrows curved and elegant. He waited for her to respond but she stepped back, looking at him amazed. Gone was the adolescent non-entity, before her was a youth who showed all the signs of becoming a remarkably good looking young man. Josh turned to the group and murmured, almost under his breath, 'That's a stupid question!'

'Josh thinks it's a stupid question. Why?' responded Ms Kelly.

'Because maybe he thinks there is no such thing', Rebecca speculated.

Rebecca caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. Her face was paler than the light brown waves that curled almost to her shoulders. Medium length hair. Medium height. Medium weight. Next to Meredith she was all medium. Sweat began to glisten on her forehead. A bead of makeup trickled down the white skin in the V of her T-shirt. She dabbed at it with a tissue. She wondered why people had to be so cruel, why they didn't understand.

'There's not one kind of normal mother, everyone is different but she seems nice, normal'.

The girls engaged vigorously in the discussion, empathising with the characters and each other, sorry for the teacher who tried so hard to engage the sympathy and interest of the boys, attempting to involve and interest them in group discussion.

'You can talk to her, she is caring'.

'A person who loves and cares for you no matter what you say and do'.

'She's calm, she's civilised, she's kind, she's generous'.

Ms Kelly was impressed with the knowledge of the text and their sympathy and understanding. If only Josh and James could be encouraged to be a little more understanding. She intervened, 'What is a good mother?'

'One who is understanding who you can talk to', Rebecca answered.

'What is a good father?'

'One who does not yell at you'.

'Well the same as the mother, one who understands'.

'Would you be able to tell your mother if you were gay?'

James stirred himself to respond, 'Yes, Mum, not Dad, Dad would shoot me, he would hurt me'.

Rebecca challenged, 'You do not have to tell them. It is up to you. It is your choice!'

'Would your father be like that? What if you told your father you were a lesbian?'

'He'd kill me'.

'I think it's different for girls because you do not think of girls being gay. It's more associated with guys even though it's probably even in numbers'.

'There's a street called Oxford Street where gay guys are normal'.

'I don't think fathers worry so much about girls and lesbians'.

'But my father worried about my overalls and called me a butch lesbian'.

The teacher appalled, questioned, 'What did you say to him?'

Defiantly Rebecca answered, 'Oh, good one, I said and I walked away'.

Ms Kelly thought of her own father, and the character of the father in the book they were reading in class. She speculated about the sort of fathers that Josh and James would make and hoped they would be different. They appeared to dislike the behaviour of their own fathers and wished that their fathers had more of the qualities that their mothers had and yet they did not treat the girls in the class with understanding and respect. Yet the girls showed such empathy and understanding. Somehow she doubted that Josh and James would be different. Their distance, reluctance to share their thoughts and feelings, their lack of empathy offered little sign of encouragement. She looked from one to the other, blinked behind her glasses and sighed.

Comment

This reflective narrative shows the girls as empathetic, empathetic with the characters in the novel but also with the teacher. They are complicit with the teacher, co-operative, obedient, cheerful and try hard to please. In a sense they try desperately to compensate for the rudeness of the boys. This narrative shows the struggle that the girls have to maintain their position of empathetic understanding as they are constantly rejected by the boys who act from a hegemonic position. The discourse of empathy in which the girls are embedded because of its emphasis on feelings of kindness, consideration, understanding and deferral to others positions them much less powerfully than the boys.

How Girls Read the Romance: A Beginning

How Girls Read the Romance: A Beginning

The story which follows is a reconstruction of classroom transcripts within the romance genre, is both representation and realisation of a naturalised discourse deeply embedded in the subjectivities of many students. As a genre the romance follows a very predictable pattern. The story begins with the romantic/feminine novice and it turns on her transformation. The typical novice does not think that she needs a boyfriend or she does not attract a boyfriend. She thinks that she is different from other girls. By the end of the story she is transformed and so, too, is the hero, who capitulates to the lure of attraction offered by the heroine but is captivated by her submission and beauty. He does not have to relinquish his position in the world but her world is transformed.

Romance ideology emphasises inscriptions of the body which conform to the current cultural ideals. In this case for the girls it is slimness, long blonde hair, physical beauty, goodness and sexual attraction, all enhanced by clothing which modestly conceals yet subtly reveals the contours of the attractive body and its potential sexiness. For the boys the physique, which is strong and muscular, the skin tanned, the jaw line square and firm, intelligence oozing from the eyes is shown to advantage by the careless bagginess of the highly fashionable clothes. He oozes a brash and obvious sexuality which contrasts with the passive modesty of hers. For her the ideals are love, capitulation, dependence, emotional responsibility of the relationship, wealth, the ability to consume material possessions, domesticity and beauty. For him the ideals are strength, independence, intelligence, ambition, wealth and sexual availability. The success of the ideology lies in the transformation of the male who suddenly, miraculously realises the worth of the female. Her capitulation to the desirable position offered by his love inevitably leads to her oppression.

The romance stories read by the students have many of the seductive elements of the romance, while at the same time attempting to address contemporary issues such as adolescent sexuality, ethnicity, illegitimacy, youth suicide, religion and class. The heroine is intelligent and ambitious in one of the novels. She does not feel that she is accepted by the rich girls at the private school she attends as a scholarship student. 'I felt disadvantaged from the beginning' (Marchetta, 1992:7). This is Josephine Alibrandi, who is different because she is a scholarship girl, an Italian, illegitimate, not beautiful and intelligent. In the romance sometimes the mothers are elderly and not understanding. Josephine's grandmother would take up this role. Mothers are usually understanding and Josephine's mother is caring and wants the best for her daughter. The novice is transformed. Josephine dreams of 'being successful and of falling in love with somebody with money. Of someone loving me. Of having two children, one boy and one girl' (Marchetta, 1992:71). In this case Josephine's transformation is not quite typical. 'My emancipation did not happen as I expected it to' (Marchetta, 1992:258). Although she is re-united with her father, she loses the one great love of her life. Eventually she realises her 'place in life' (Marchetta, 1992:258). She wavers in her desire to become a barrister and she still feels in her heart, however, that 'one day I'll be with Jacob Coote again' (Marchetta, 1992:260). There is a lot of time spent in conversation with friends, there is conflict with teachers, friends, her boyfriend. Many of the girls who read this novel read it as a romance. They are convinced that Josephine will either marry Jacob, her true love, or someone even more attractive and acceptable. Most of them do not see the potential in the novel for a disruption of the romance story line, the novel becomes the romance story line despite the inconclusiveness of the ending.

The girls reading the romance see the tensions in pursuing independence and achieving the ultimate in the romance. For many of the young women the struggle appears to be too difficult and there is recognition that the easier solution is to capitulate to subordination, which is reconstructed as achievement and individual choice. The reconstruction is not easily achieved, nor is the capitulation; however, the choice between what appears to be potentially a supportive and satisfactory relationship with a man and that of struggling alone with a career in a male dominated profession becomes easily obvious. The career can be postponed for love, for family, for relationship with the aim that all this can be retrieved at some postponed time. 'Becoming feminine-becoming romantic means recognising that there will be inevitable tension in pursuing independence, and that it might be best to find a good guy who'll give you the best options within this framework, so that lost opportunities and forsaken goals are less keenly felt.

Many girls are not prepared to accept that the romance ideology is not a discourse intended for her. They do not accept that it is potentially a discourse which locks women into passive and submissive responses rather than active and independent action; a discourse which cannot construct a future for women without men; a discourse which necessitates the humiliating and crippling romantic inscription of the body. Most of the girls see romance ideology as an individual choice and one which is liberatory rather than potentially oppressive. Many of them do not accept that it operates to oppress.

Engagement in the romance story masks the ways in which the romance text positions girls to accept that beauty, humility, passivity and kindness are desirable 'feminine', 'romantic' aspects of being a woman who will find love and be loved. Nor is it obvious to the girls that the romance fiction also inserts girls into discursive networks within which such constructions become plausible, 'natural', commonsensical'. The girls are immersed in a seductive story which appears to them to be a reflection of life and which offers the opportunity to reflect on the story and on life itself.

A Romance Story

The Romance Story

Romancing the Book

'I love this book,' Rebecca purred, excitedly twisting a lock of her cornsilk hair. 'I have read seven chapters'.

'I don't like it much and I don't want to talk about it,' Josh grimaced.

He frowned at her, a very good looking young man of sixteen with the fashionably short hair cut of his contemporaries, dark hazel coloured eyes, dressed casually in baggy shorts, a loose T shirt and basketball boots.

'He's just saying he hasn't read it,' Rebecca scorned, sitting opposite him in the crowded classroom whilst Meredith, looking antagonistically at Rebecca yet at the same time admiring Josh's powerful, athletic physique, wide shoulders, flat hardened stomach, muscular thighs and long legs all shown to advantage in his baggy shorts, a physique befitting the captain of the schools' Australian Rules football team. 'So what books do you like?'

Josh began to smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his teeth white against the dark skin, his gaze rapier sharp. 'I don't know,' he answered nonchalantly, her nervously aggressive tone not escaping his attention, as his gaze lingered on her longer than usual.

She blushed as that same enigmatic gaze lingered on her whilst the noisy class settled down.

Rebecca found the conversation daunting despite her confident demeanour. She was feeling really good dressed as she was in her new denims and light blue fluffy jumper that hugged her body and just touched the top of her denims, riding up a little if she should raise her arms and although the jumper had shrunk in the wash it was a pretty colour and made her hair look like gold. It also emphasised the dark blue of her eyes. She was pleased that this was a day when casual dress could be worn to school instead of the drab uniform which was their usual attire.

She thought about the book they were discussing and knew how much she had loved it. Though a little wary about romantic relationships, remembering her own parents and the bitter break up of their marriage, she knew that the story consumed her, that she could not resist the spark of excitement that surged through her as she devoured the pages.

'Did you like the opening, Josh ?' Meredith's conciliatory voice rebuked Rebecca, her hand possessively touching Josh's arm, her eyes narrowing vindictively at her rival. Meredith, as dux of the class, was a stunning and popular raven haired beauty. Her elegant and classy couture dress contrasted with the unsophisticated casualness of Rebecca's freshly washed, carefully ironed, cherished but worn hand me downs. Meredith and Josh had been friends ever since that summer when their parents had moored their yachts alongside each other, and spent blissful summer days sailing the D'Entrecasteau Channel

Josh sat forward in his seat and replied, 'I thought it was quite clever!' His hazel eyes flickered over Rebecca with a keen intelligence, his brows lifting slightly in amusement. His voice was deep and much to her surprise sent shivers of awareness down her spine.

Embarrassed and flushed, Rebecca averted her gaze and returned her attention to the novel opened before her on the desk. her thoughts returned to the story which now so thoroughly consumed her. How real the characters seemed! How beautiful the setting! She thought how wonderful it would be to be the wife of a character like Jacob with his wealth, good looks and business acumen. How happy she would be living in the beautiful house that Jacob had acquired in the country. She could fill it with flowers, exquisite food, children and love. She reflected on Jacob's looks and felt again that same shiver of awareness that had sent her back to the book for solace, his face was tanned a dark teak colour, his eyes were the colour of emeralds, the nose long and hawkish, the top lip thin and uncompromising, the lower lip fuller, sensually so, his jaw firm and strong.

She quivered and trembled, hope rising in her breast. Perhaps life for her could hold a man like this, a man who would look after her, admire her, love her body, keep her safe and secure from the disappointments and dangers of the world. With a man like Jacob all doubts would be erased from her mind. It would be different for her. She would make it different. She would not make the same mistakes as her mother. 'It's real, it's true,' she thought, 'It's what we will be going through in a couple of years at HSC'.

Her reverie was shattered when James vigorously and contemptuously slammed his book down on the desk and shouted disgustedly, 'The book sucks. I just didn't like it at all. I didn't like the way it was written. I want to go to the library for once'. As he strode out the door Rebecca gazed around the room.

It was a large room, almost running the entire length of the new wing of the school. The whole room had an air of untidy and comfortable elegance, its simplicity marked by the carefully chosen yellow modular plastic chairs which contrasted so stylishly with the warm orange of the carpet and the dark wood of the simple desks. The only relief to the smooth white walls was the elegantly large and rectangular dark green board across which was written a summary of the plot of the novel the class was reading which ended in the consummation of the relationship she had begun to think possible for herself.

She was dizzy with the engrossed and excited comments of the happy girls sitting near to her.

'It's interesting'.

'It's about life'.

'It's interesting. It's the story. She does not have a dad. She meets him unexpectedly. Her Mum is a single mum. She falls in love'.

Suddenly the mood of the conversation was transformed. When Sarah empathically said, 'Life is not happily ever after. Everything does not end happily ever after,' an uneasy tension filled the air. Rebecca was stunned. She welled with compassion for Sarah, knowing that happy endings were possible after all and that she, too, could have one if only she believed in the magic of love. She had decided what she wanted. She found the courage to allow her nervous gaze to rest on Josh, who was very relaxed like a sleek jungle cat, with the ability to pounce if it became necessary. How much she hoped that she was the only victim in sight. His intelligence, his ambition, his abilities, his drive could provide her with everything she wanted. She could provide him with the safe and secure environment from which he could seek the adventures that he so desired. She would be available to give him the love which he needed and craved. How wonderful it could be! She would become the type of girl that he liked, cool, clever and pretty. She would become dux of the class, working hard to achieve her aim. But she would not let this interfere with her devotion to Josh. His cool gaze held her mesmerised, the blandness of his expression telling her nothing that he did not want her to know.

She thought 'I want money. I do want money. I'm going to marry someone who has a lot of money and I'm going to live in a small beautiful house. I am going to be happy'.

She ran the edge of her tongue lightly along the edge of her mouth, an unconsciously provocative gesture that darkened the colour of Josh's eyes, then blushed as she realised his gaze was fixed upon her. What would happen next?

Resisting the Resister: A Horror Story

Resisting the Resister: A Horror Story

The school stood alone at the edge of the town, a flat grim structure of worn, faded, red brick, sparsely covered with wilting ivy. It glowered menacingly over the courtyard. The bottom row of bricks was mildewed a grimy greenish-black around the base shielded by the sun's drying heat by a ragged row of hedges. Visitors entering by the wide stone steps puzzled over the thick odour of mould and mildew. They did not realise that the building itself was gradually decaying from the dampness that began at its base and slowly but steadily made its way up the bricks.

An eerie July mist swirled and eddied around the school, sometimes swirling high, sometimes low, as if a sightless grey spectre were planting his feet in the uneven grass and boldly inviting strangers to approach...if they dared.

In a room in the far wing of the desolate school Josh struggled to keep awake. His dazed eyes swept around the high ceilinged rectangular room. The walls, road mapped here and there with small cracks, were a dingy white, the windows high in the walls and narrow, were shielded by dingy blackout curtains. The floor had worn, dingy, faded, orange carpet and he had already memorised every spidery vein in the yellowed ceiling overhead.

Josh was alone in the bare detention room. It began to drizzle, the mist forming into dirty droplets of water, a cold drizzle for July. The sky turned dark, it was as black as the night now, despite the fact that it was not long since the final bell had tolled. A cold wind whistled down the empty corridors and violently banged shut the door of the classroom.

Suddenly startled, he turned to see who was there.

No-one there.

Strange.

Come on , Josh, don't start thinking things. Don't let your imagination start running away with you.

The rain came down even harder. He heard footsteps. They were hurrying, keeping pace with his thumping heart. A familiar fear gripped his chest.

The door opened and a hand grabbed his shoulder roughly. He opened his mouth to protest but no sound came out.

The steady rain continued to fall, whipped by sudden, cold gusts of wind. Small puddles of water glistened across the courtyard like hundreds of glowing eyes. The endless stretch of asphalt seemed to shimmer and gleam.

To Josh's eyes the rain seemed to have transformed the school, washed away its solid reality, turned it into a dark and menacing presence. He let his eyes blur until everything seemed to come together as one glistening dark light. Then he brought it all back into focus and turned around to face Miss Kelly.

She circled around him viciously listing his misdemeanours, his refusal to read what she had asked him to read, his refusal to participate fairly in class discussions, too often dominating loudly and aggressively, his subversion of serious discussion, his dismissal of the opinions of others, especially the girls, his belligerence and his homophobia. Josh's eyes blurred and her voice became one with the wind and the rain beating mercilessly against the windows.

She turned to him. Her face was all twisted, all distorted and covered with blood. She staggered towards him, like Frankenstein, only covered with blood, her clothes all torn, her skin was all torn too, chunks of it were falling off her body. She had a skull instead of a head, a bleeding skull. He was paralysed.

He became aware of a deadly silence that pervaded the room. The book lay unopened in front of him.

'I don't read books about poofters. I read books about sports. I do not think poofters are right. It's disgusting'.

'What do you like?'

Josh shifted uneasily in his seat.

'My Dad says they should all be shot'.

'Do you have any questions about anything I have raised?'

'I don't know...I don't know. Oh, I am not sure, it's not about the book. Don't ask me, I don't want to know', he uttered aggressively, viciously adding 'Todd Smith called me a wanker'.

Josh shuddered as he said the words. He heard the whispering voice once again in his ear. And he felt the fear all over again. His hands felt cold and clammy. He wiped them on his jeans.

'I would beat him up, but he's a bit big. I would like to beat him up. Yes, I would beat him up and if it made no difference I would beat him up again'.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Just joking!'

'What happened? Josh?'

'I don't want to know'.

'I saw you reacting'.

I don't know. I felt it was poofy!'

'What do you think happened?'

'Don't know!' Had he really heard the voice echoing in his ear or was his mind playing tricks on him? All he knew was that he was fighting to stay alert in the dreamy blackness.

Even in the darkness he could see her hands moving towards him.

Two hands from the pit. Two hands from down below.

Spattered with blood they dug hard into his flesh.

The head seemed to rise up like a pulpy blood stained moon. Like a dark-eyed lop sided moon rising over a canyon.

'Where does most of our knowledge of sex come from?' she snarled insidiously, suspiciously.

'I'm good at it already', defiantly, arrogantly.

'What did you say?'

'I'm good at it already'.

'There seems to be some reluctance to discuss this'.

'I don't care'.

'Are you saying it doesn't matter?'

'No, I'm just saying I don't care'.

'Are you saying it does not matter how much respect you have for other people, what their sexuality is?'

He remained silent.

'So you won't tell me because I am the teacher? I wouldn't care what you said. I was hoping for a more open answer. You seem to feel inhibited. Is that fair? You won't say?'

She looked close into his eyes. Part of the flesh had been torn away, revealing curved bone under her cheeks. The rest of her flesh hung loosely about her fixed grin.

Her eyes never left his.

She laughed, the sound was nothing but wind. Dry, dry wind. The sound of ashes. She staggered towards him, her arms outstretched, bone protruding from the elbow of one arm.

He tried to run, his legs wouldn't move, he couldn't even turn away from her, couldn't even look away. He started to yell, even though his voice was coming from his mouth it sounded far away.

She was holding him. She had her broken arm around him. She brought her flesh torn face close.

No!

The door burst open. The room came into focus. Ms Kelly looking so much older all of a sudden, so much more real, Ms Kelly looking so worried, so...concerned. The dream, the horror of the dream faded slowly.

'I'm going to ask you to finish this for homework'.

An action/adventure story

The Action/Adventure Story

Confirming the Contest

Josh was always a trouble maker. Everyone thought he would come to no good and they couldn't be blamed for thinking like that. He was always getting into trouble. At school the teachers always hassled him, and the principal was always threatening to kick him out. He never listened to them though. Perhaps he should have.

If he had he wouldn't be where he is now, sitting alone in the cold tomb of a classroom. The worst thing was that everything appeared grey-floors, walls, doors, uniforms. He nearly went stir crazy with the same colour staring back at him, day in, day out, for what seemed like every day of the year. There was a window through which he could see blue skies and white clouds but this made him feel even more depressed because he felt trapped inside when he had hoped to be free. Josh had a story, a good story, about his innocence, a story which would protect people like him. If they knew his story, if they knew the lies, it would save them a whole lot of trouble.

He hadn't been at the school long and he still felt like an outsider. He still hadn't managed to gain control of one of the gangs like he had at his other school. Here, each gang controlled two or three areas. Graffiti and fights were two ways of staking their claim; kind of like how dogs left scents. One gang focused more on the graffiti and vandalism side of gang life than fighting. They were good at it too. Some of their best pieces were on the beach wall, anywhere in the town their signatures were visible on posters, walls, shops, windows or even road signs.

He didn't even see the blow until it knocked him off is feet.

'Don't be a faggot', a shadow said.

'I'm just sitting here', Josh spat, tasting blood.

'I hope you know, Josh, this is very serious'. James pretended to shake with fear, hamming it up to the five guys he had brought with him into the classroom.

'I'd smash his balls if it were me'.

Josh was still on the ground. Vulnerable.

He was surprised with a fast punch to the chest. He reeled back, let his defences down and exposed himself to another attack. James didn't knock back the opportunity. He swung his fist again and hit low. Josh dodged it once but not a second time. The fist jabbed his guts and he fell forwards. The ground greeted him hard.

The five guys urged James on.

'I would like to beat him up'.

'I would like to beat him up but he's a bit big'.

'Yes, I would beat him up and if it made no difference I'd beat him up again'.

'I don't think poofters are right. It's disgusting. You shoot them'.

'It's not right', said Josh.

James moved in to finish Josh. Playing possum, Josh rolled his eyes back and let his head sink. James lowered his defences to gloat long enough to the other guys for Josh to kick his kegs out from under him. Josh sprang, steel fists pistoning into James's stomach. Left. Right. Left. Right. Josh needed to knock James's second wind out before he turned on him again. A knee to the groin and James was on the ground again holding the pain. Josh had won.

'Don't cry, boys don't cry!'
This action/adventure narrative demonstrates the need of the boys to constantly struggle for and prove their hegemony and the extent to which violence or the threat of violence is integral to this struggle. They are striving for a masculinity which is competitive, combative and violent. Through violence they believe that they can act upon the world and change it and come to see violence as a legitimate often necessary solution to problems. This view of violence as a way of solving problems is endorsed by popular cultural texts, especially those of the action/adventure genre that boys find so appealing.

Boys confirm the contest

Confirming the Contest

An important discourse in the reading of narrative texts is the discourse of confirmation. The discourse of confirmation is based on sameness and cannot tolerate difference. This discourse includes the use of the text by the students to find unambiguous confirmation of their world view. In taking up this discourse the students made judgements about the text which are based on how far it endorses the view of reality they expect. Whether it is a 'good' book or not depends on whether it reflects their world view. They also make judgements about the characters and their actions as well as issues about events and people raised by the text and highlighted by the teacher. For many students this discourse includes the assumption that they can act upon the world and change it. It is a discourse which is used predominantly by the boys. The action/adventure genre is used to reconstruct this discourse.

Many of the boys are embedded in a discourse which reveals their attitudes to power and their ability to act upon the world. Not only do they state firmly that they have the power to change the world but they also believe that violence is the chief way of solving problems. Once the text has been probed for the facts then the boys use the facts in the text as confirmation of their world view. They are much more comfortable in the discourse of confirmation than that of speculation or empathy which is much more typical of the girls. The girls use discourses which exclude the use of violence and the certainty that they can act upon the world and change it.

The issue which illustrates best how the students use the discourse of confirmation is that of power, the version of power in which violence and implied violence is central. The issue includes the view that violence is the remedy that boys act from an assumed position of male power and female powerlessness, passiveness, complicity. The discourse of confirmation seeks to confirm versions of hegemonic masculinity through encounters with texts or experiences in the world and the version of femininity which supports this, emphasised femininity.

Power is central to the social relations of gender. Research suggests that both boys and girls operate from a position of subordination to adults; age relations, like those of class and race, alter the dynamics of gender. However, boys, who control more space, more often violate girls’ activities, and treat girls as contaminating-participate in larger structures of male dominance. Girls often contest boys' exertions of power, and other lines of inequality add to the complexity. The dynamics of power, like those of gender, are fluid and contextual. In classrooms it is the boys who control the space and the time. They show contempt for the girls who retaliate and contest their opinions but ultimately do not transform the gender relations already firmly in place.

In many English classrooms the girls make more responses to the narrative texts and in fact respond more than most boys. This is despite research findings that talking in class is a male prerogative with teachers urging and valuing male participation. Female silence and passivity in class can be partly attributed to various discriminatory patterns of teacher talk. The girls, however, appear to be more passive in this context because they are quieter, more agreeable, less assertive, more helpful and more polite than are the boys. The quantity of their responses appears to be due to their complicity as good students who respond to the wishes of the teacher and who see themselves as good students of literature.

Although girls respond more in many classrooms in response to narrative texts the frequency of their responses do not position them powerfully. What the boys say and how they say it accrues more power for them. Girls can demonstrate some gender specific superiority in language skills yet this superiority has not brought changes in the power structure which controls the canon of literary acceptability in this country and it has not brought with it any corresponding access to academic jobs. Girls as speaking subjects can rarely claim the power that the boys claim as their right.

Not only are the speaking discourses of the girls and the boys different, so too is their writing. Much research demonstrates that girls and boys write differently, they write about different topics and in different ways. There is evidence to suggest that girls are better at school writing than are boys and yet their success still does not translate into success in the job market.

Boys often write to confirm hegemonic male positions. Girls write about feelings, about helping, sharing and empathising. Boys write about aggression both physical and verbal while girls write the romance. Girls often write about connection while boys write about achievement and separation. The hegemony and the violence demonstrated by the boys in talk and writing are rarely contested except by a minority of girls and then not effectually. The acceptance of violent writing on the part of the boys and aggressive talk directed at the teacher, the girls and at some boys indicates to the girls]] that misogynistic, violent attacks like this are seen to be acceptable and that boys have the right to take up speaking positions of authority, to tease and abuse the girls and other boys and to silence them.

The discourse of confirmation which prioritises violence and violent solutions is one which is endorsed by classroom practices, the texts used in the study of literature, the talk encouraged and accepted by the teacher, the writing produced and rarely interrogated by anyone. Such unspoken affirmation maintains and supports the hegemony which already exists in the classroom and in society. The reality of much classroom life-a reality partially constructed by and continually reinforced by many textual practices, including the production, selection and use of classroom reading materials-is that the failure to identify with a stereotypical gendered subjectivity can lead to humiliation and mockery from the other students, and indirect (sometimes direct) pressure from teachers to conform. The literature classroom often does not posit reading and writing positions of authority for young women. Nor does the subject matter chosen for the classroom generally offer opportunities to challenge the stereotypes and posit speaking positions of more authority for young women. The dominant hegemonic view remains intact and there is no position for the girls to contest it.

A Classroom Detective

It was getting on for eleven o'clock on a cold Monday morning in June. The pale blue neon lights of the dreary classroom threw an almost translucent glow over the lethargic and slouching students strewn casually at their desks. The flickering of the television screen, sitting up on a plank platform at the south east corner of the room blended haphazardly with the garish neon light and added a distinct touch of surrealism to the whole scene.

Josh gnawed an apple while James chewed on a cherry ripe bar. Josh checked his watch for the fifth time in the last hour, a look of mild concern on his face. He looked at the old television, a cord running from it and through a gasket-circled hole in the cinder block wall behind the television. Irritably he strode towards the switch and pulled the plug.

Josh threw himself back onto his hair and reluctantly resumed reading the class novel. After a few minutes, his attention exhausted, he muttered,

'I do not think poofters are right. It's disgusting!'

Josh stood six feet tall. He wasn't all willowy like the television basketballers, though-he was broad in the shoulders and deep through the chest, laced over with muscle in every direction. He was wearing his newest denims and still the cuffs of the pants rode half way up on his bruised and scarred calves. The sleeves of his shirt stopped somewhere on his forearms. He was holding his dog-eared book in one hand whilst the other dangled loose and lifeless by his side.

The teacher was a skinny faced woman, her dark hair drawn back pristinely into a bun wearing glasses with rhinestones at the corners. She'd spent the last ten years of her life as a teacher and librarian in the school. She'd rescued the library pretty much single handed and had a big hand in running the school community. Only the eyes, wide and blazing behind the glasses with the rhinestones at the corners revealed her contempt for the bigotry and rudeness of some of the boys.

'Has your opinion changed since you have been reading the book?' she challenged.

James shifted in his seat and responded,

‘You shoot them!'

As far as looks go James wasn't ugly, but he was no Robert Redford either. His scrubby red hair topped a pair of dark brooding eyes set in a wide square face. His one outstanding feature was the broken nose that sat crookedly in the middle of the face. The word had got around that if you wanted a shirtful of broken bones and you fancied eating your meals through a straw for a few weeks just go up and call him Alice.

'I would beat him up and if it made no difference I'd beat him up again'.

Josh's eyebrows knitted and beads of sweat started to form on his forehead as he struggled to respond.

'Yes, I'd smash his balls in if it were me. Even if it was my brother'.

The teacher wanted the mystery of the story to be solved.

'What does it mean to be a male in this book?' she probed.

The boys hammered their fists on their wooden desks and shouted their answers over the top of each other.

'Tough, ride a motor bike, spit and piss on trees'.

'Piss on trees'.

'Suicidal mania'.

The teacher, alarmed, was determined to provoke response. 'How does a macho bloke run?' She echoed their language, awkwardly, violently, savagely, determined to probe, to question.

The replies were aggressive, harsh, cruel, relentless.

'They flex their muscles and tense their bodies and look strong'.

'Like a poofy person', James leered.

Exhausted, the teacher pursued,

'How do poofy people run?'

Smugly, James rejoined, 'Like macho men'.

His mates laughed and stamped their feet with amused agreement. She persisted, 'How do you feel about Peter's torment?'

Josh sighed with disgust, 'He's wallowing in self pity even if he does not know it'.

A feeling of extreme trepidation swept over her. She stood, staring at Josh, transfixed with contempt and frustration. 'He thinks he is going to lose everything. I feel concerned for him. He thinks he is going to lose all his friends, to lose everything he is going to be'.

'What about if he is gay?'

The questioned stunned and shattered the class. They squirmed and shifted uneasily in their seats unwilling to change their attitudes, to show sympathy for something so abhorrent.

'My dad says they should all be shot'.

'You shoot them!'

'Is Peter gay?' The questioned hovered tremulously in the air, threateningly, uneasily, aggressively.

Josh and James ignored the teacher’s questions, they had seen the writing on the wall from almost the first page.

How Girls and Boys Read

While it is misleading to talk about girls and boys as homogenous groups my visits to contemporary classrooms show that there are ways of talking and engaging with texts that are preferred by either boys or girls. Most students reveal a gendered preference for ways of reading, ways of engaging with and responding to the fictional texts they read and share. Their repeated practice of the discourses both naturalise the discourses for the teachers and the students and further embeds them in those discourses.

These observations show that it seems to be important to the students in classrooms to maintain the positions of maleness and femaleness that are identifiable and privileged in that setting and which are, more than likely, replicated elsewhere. Correct positioning within the discourses seems to be very important to the students, especially to the boys. It seems to be more important to the boys than to the girls and the reasons for this are a mystery.

In taking up the discourses of masculinity and femininity students learn the emotions and the bodily inscriptions which are relevant to being male and female. Central to the understanding of themselves as male or female is the knowledge of their place in the stories of their culture especially the popular cultural stories.

In their reading of narrative texts students use the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to them. The issues the students prefer to discuss are not necessarily those which are constructed as central to the texts. The issues are more student generated than text generated. The students bring to the texts their own subjectivities and use their experiences of masculinity and femininity to read the texts. The students generally prefer to read texts to inform their already established subject positions and resist the texts that do not.

The boys prefer ways of talking about texts and so do girls. The boys like to read for the literal, to make judgements, and to resist texts they do not like while the girls are prepared to be more empathetic, tentative and speculative.

An example of one discourse could be named the detective discourse. This discourse emerges from the importance for many of the students to detect and discuss facts in the text, making deductions and finding solutions. It is combined with a predisposition to discuss surface events and the action that takes place in texts. It is information seeking and prioritises surface action. The discourse allows the reader to skim the surface, in a detached way, to look for clues and to find answers. Both boys and girls read for the information but they respond to the information in different ways and they do different things with it. The detective story reconstructs this discourse.

An issue from the transcripts which best demonstrates the extent to which the boys are embedded in a discourse of detection is that of homosexuality. The issue of homosexuality is the intentional and unresolved mystery of the book, Peter (Walker, 1993). The responses of the boys to the issue differ from that of the girls. Both boys and girls are willing to talk about the issue but they use very different discourses to do so. Both boys and girls are willing to talk about opposite sex homosexuality, but the boys refuse to discuss male homosexuality while the girls are more equivocal and more prepared to discuss the issue. Both boys and girls tended to see explicit description of sexuality as pornographic especially if they were homosexual descriptions. Boys quickly reveal a closed attitude to homosexuality whereas the girls are much more willing to be empathetic and understanding. The boys detect that the character, Peter, in Peter, (Walker, 1993) is homosexual in contradiction to the way the character is positioned unresolvedly in the text, and proceed to read for confirmation of the facts and for the action.

This is one of the discourses used in current secondary classrooms in response to narrative texts. There are more to come