What would you want to see in a feminist classroom?

I'm going to come back to this thread and read it properly (leaping in at the end, not read it all, bad form!) but before I get on the train and while I still have a keyboard:
In university/humanities setting: FIRST DAY

(1) My classroom reads and discusses extracts from the harvard study about % of men and women speaking, and how once women speak for more than 30% of the time they are perceived to 'dominate the conversation' and 'talk too much.'

(2) I explain that, as class participation is part of their grade (and a way I see fi they've done the reading!), I will call on people to speak. I explain that this in an invitation which, like all invitations, can be politely declined with no need for any excuse or embarrassment.

(3) I explain the ratio of men to women in my class (often about even in a class of 22, but not always) and ask people to suggest ways that high schools do and do not prepare them to speak out in a university classroom (EG: private schools have more debate, public speaking, etc practice, and often smaller classrooms that encourage question-and-answer teaching, public school students are often NOT prepared in this manner but of course, that doesn't mean what they have to say isn't of immense value to the class.

(4) I repeat over and over again that when someone talks in class, whether to put forward an idea or to ask a question, they are joining in the class project of learning and understanding and exploring. I explain that it is your duty and your joy to speak in my classroom, and inside my classroom we pay attention to power dynamics that will encourage some people to speak more than others. This is why sometimes I ignore hands that are up and ask someone who hasn't spoken yet for their opinion.

(5) I re-iterate that it's always alright to 'take a pass', and that the class blogging requirement, and my office hours, are other spaces to practice 'talking in public about what you think.' I re-iterate that everyone should expect to graduate from my class confident and able to articulate and explore their thoughts with the help of other people. I point out that this is the real education they're getting at this university, and they will probably find they enjoy it.

Now to read the thread on my train! :)

I'd say that when you split students up in to groups make them all male and all female groups so the men dont just dominate all the groups.

I used to use the formal debate as a teaching tool. Partly this was to encourage students to think through a topic, organise their arguments and prepare for any possible challenge and partly to encourage a safe place to speak without fear of interruption.

I grew up in NZ where the native culture had no written language so developed a strong oral tradition and this has been adopted by the dominant culture in the form of debating clubs, speech making societies and oral competitions. As a child in school we were used to the formal debate with two teams of 3 (a proposer, a seconder and a closer).

I adopted this format when using it with UK teenagers to include a couple of non-speaking, note takers and point raisers on each team. They couldn't speak, but could pass notes/points to the speaking members of the team as the debate developed. Partly this was to include more students in the process and partly it was to give a part to the student with a speech impediment and to keep the normally dominant students involved but quiet. The audience, i.e. the rest of the class, voted for which team presented the best argument.

I encountered huge resistance from the students the first time we tried it. However, they came to enjoy the process and even ask for more opportunities to have a go. If you do try this you have to be very strict with the rules. 3 minutes per speaker, no interruptions, anonymous voting, no personal comments, only comments must be directed to the argument, not the person and must have evidence to back it up.

Yes, US students are not taught conversational skills so much as motivated by the fact that participation can be a huge part of their final grade. I had a graduate seminar once where participation was 70%!

I very much agree with tethers that we should rethink the value of participation as an aim and assessment tool.

Why not more focus on writing? Especially given how much people bemoan the poor writing standards of today's youth....

That's great, Phyllis. I wish schools would, in general, show more interest in students' home/other languages from an early age, and not just in the high-status ones.

I also have to think about this sort of privilege issue when I do my own research too, as I work with very socio-economically marginalized groups. The approach now in my field is to think of the "interviewer-subject" relationship as a joint research partnership, because you are both knowledge-holders working together towards a project. This means that the actual topic of research also comes under scrutiny from various ethics committees and is evaluated partly on what benefits it will bring to the individuals/community you work with - it's not just a vanity project for the researcher which never ends up benefiting the community.

I also think being a woman helps my research - I think if I had all the baggage of white male privilege I simply wouldn't get some of the access I do - the dynamic would be too oppressive.

I don't know that US students are taught to discuss and debate, but in general they are very motivated by short-term academic point-scoring, and being active in class is one way they see of collecting brownie points, as it were. I've no idea what happens in high school to foster this culture (am British and most of knowledge of the US high school system comes from ... er ... Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but it is striking. I'm not at all sure it is a good thing overall - they are all too frequently focused on their GPA and half-points on homeworks and tend to lose sight of whether they are cumulatively developing any kind of intellectual independence. I think the US degree experience really lacks that sense of "putting it all together" at the end of 3 or 4 years that you get in Britain. So the unfortunate corollary to having a lively class is that it may actually in a way entrench that short-termism - ideally you should be contributing in class because you're energized by the topic and want to enter into the academic discourse on it, not because you're thinking "oh God, I must say something because otherwise I'll be graded down for participation."

It may also be the type of student we get - they have typically always been super-high achievers wherever they have been and are keen to please!

It's funny you say how polite US students are. It is actually quite hard to get them to do constructive criticism of each other's work! There seems to be an idea circulating that "all opinions are valuable" and it's quite hard to get them to criticise things that are substantively wrong - they are often a bit shocked if I really make them defend something they say.

The religion aspect must be a tricky one to handle. I sometimes have to walk quite a fine line about students' personal backgrounds too because I teach about languages, so I always like to know what languages are in the class other than English and encourage people to bring up non-English examples if they have any. So you walk a fine line between "othering" students who are non-native English speakers or who perhaps are 2nd generation immigrants, and getting them to make insightful contributions about the languages they know or their language experiences.

As long as you don't pick on any one person too much, it is generally OK though - there are usually high numbers of students with another language, and they often quite enjoy relating something in class to their language and telling people about it. It can be a bit of an eye-opener for them that a language which perhaps doesn't enjoy privileged status in society is interesting in its own right and worthy of serious study. I had a woman student once who was really thrilled to be doing an essay on an African language she spoke at home, and she was able to interview her mother and grandmother for data for the essay. So you can sometimes end up giving students a sense of validation of their own linguistic practice or experience, and it often produces really good work when they are so personally invested in an assignment.

My ds's school has dramatically improved it's GCSE maths results for both genders by teaching boys and girsl separately in year 11. I don't have any helpful analysis to offer- sadly, just that bald fact.

I am in HE in the US. This is something I often think about wrt teaching. I am fortunate in that most of my classes have had an even ratio of men and women, which I think helps, and the "participation culture" in US education - they have usually been trained from high school that they have to keep actively participating.

Because for most modules here "class participation" is usually a component of the grade, we are encouraged to think of ways to provide opportunities for participation that aren't simply speaking up in class or answering a question. Most classes will also have "office hours" where you can drop in and speak to the lecturer privately, which I always encourage students to see as a resource of the class which they should make use of.

The most important thing is to stay sensitive to the dynamics of the class.

I have had a couple of young male students who have been quite hostile to having a young(ish!) woman taking the class and who have subtly tried to challenge my competence in the classroom. I was totally taken aback by this when I started teaching - how naive of me!

Another dimension of privilege to take into account is the experiences of students of colour - sadly I have noticed that African American women in particular are very reticent in the classroom, so it is very important to also keep thinking about whether there are class or race dynamics that are inhibiting some students, and what you should be doing to make the class one everyone can fully participate in.

I must fancy my phone something awful

Great topic, LRD.

Am on phone, so frustratingly limited, but a couple of things spring to mind:

1. We need to move away from 'encouraging girls to speak up' by providing different ways for students to demonstrate their understanding. We should question the notion that public speaking is the only way in which to do this, as this is often dominated by boys.

1. The interactions within the classroom which do not pertain to learning need to be examined- for example excusing boys' aggression towards girls as an expression of love or affection.

1. We need to address the issues low-achieving girls face; otherwise known as The Curse of Hair and Beauty.

I have more thoughts but will end up throwing this pissing phone out of the window with frustration at this rate

I think that having female teachers/lecturers is vitally important to young women and girls. I still have students in my university who tell me they have never been taught by a woman! I incorporate topics which focus on women and men evenly, have pictures of women on the walls (in an attempt to offset all the men they see in most other teaching spaces), I openly identify as a feminist and work really hard to make sure no one dominates discussion.

Lrd, that's good instincts though - it's pretty common or garden to use fiddle toys, blu tac, or dynabands on chair legs to deal with fidgeting.

Yy to 'jobs', kim. Even dd2 gets to carry stuff to the office, and she can barely get there on her own.

But why by gender Beth? Why not by eye colour. Or first letter of name. Or red group and blue on this tray, green and yellow here? I hate the way gender is treated as a natural way to group small children.

LDR - I think by the time they can role play, many incorporate gender. Sadly.

I assume that the water bottles are separated so that the 4 year olds are hunting for their bottle amongst approx 15 other bottles, rather than rooting through a tray with 30 bottles in. But I haven't asked the teacher about that so maybe that's not the logic behind it. I'm sure they can't possibly have single sex tables/groups though.