At the interface of talk and text: the social construction of gender in classroom interaction

One of the eight priorities which comprise the four main objectives of The Review of the National Policy for the Education of Girls in Australian Schools (1992) is to examine the construction of gender in schools. This study undertakes such an examination through a microsociological analysis of gender relations in one co-educational class over six months of Drama lessons and script production work. The female and male students in this class were all under the age of fifteen and came from a range of socio-cultural backgrounds. Given the task of collective script creation, discourses of gender, class, age and sexuality arose in student discussions about narrative structure and characterisation. At the same time, female and male students were engaged in the presentation of themselves as possessing viable feminine or masculine social identities. At the interface of talk and text, therefore, the students were actively involved in the construction of a "storyworld" and, simultaneously, the negotiated accomplishment of the gendered social world of interaction in which they were embedded. This study draws upon structuralist feminist and neo-Marxist modes of analysis as well as the Foucauldian notion of discourse. Insights generated through traditional sociological perspectives are included within the broad framework of poststructuralist feminism. Central to the microsociological analysis of talk and text here is the notion of the active subject, she or he who takes up and operates discourse, rather than the reverse. The intention of this study is to inform future gender equity policy, as well as feminist interventions in schooling, particularly those directed towards improved co-educational pedagogic practice.