Problem Girls

Understanding and Supporting Troubled and Troublesome Girls and Young Women

Gwynedd Lloyd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134412891
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book explores the issues surrounding girls and young women who are seen as troubled or troublesome. It sets out to further our understanding of young women who face or cause difficulties, offering a diverse and complex view.

Recognising the increasing importance of schools as the primary source of support for girls and young women, the chapters discuss the implications for practice of teachers and other professionals, covering important issues like:

• girls' classroom behaviour
• mental health problems
• violence and sexuality
• exclusion and community offences.

By presenting a range of theoretical perspectives, readers of this book will be encouraged to reflect on what underpins the actions of girls and young women and take their voices seriously. It will be essential reading for practitioners and professionals in Education, as well as students and academics in the field.

Chapter 1

Not/Knowing their place: Girls’ classroom behaviour

Becky Francis

What are the experiences of girls in the classroom? The contemporary concern over ‘boys’ underachievement’ in comparison with girls at GCSE level has led many to assume that girls’ classroom experiences must now be, like their exam performance, equitable with those of boys.¹ It has even been suggested that the current gendered trends in exam performance show that the equal opportunities initiatives of the 1980s have ‘gone too far’ in empowering girls, and that attention now ought to be brought to bear on improving schooling experience for boys.² In fact, however, all the evidence demonstrates that girls’ classroom experiences are characterised more by continuity than by change. A review of the literature of the past thirty years on gendered classroom relations reveals little change in three decades in the perceptions applied to girls, girls’ classroom behaviour, and girls’ experiences (Skelton and Francis 2003). Feminist classroom research in the 1970s and ’80s drew attention to the ways in which girls were marginalised in the education system, and systematically belittled and undermined in the mixed-sex school classroom and playground. Education policy, curriculum, interaction with boys, and teacher expectations were shown to impact negatively on girls’ self-esteem and schooling experiences. Contemporary research is often more attuned to nuances, contradictions and differences according to ‘race’ and social class than was the case in the 1980s, but in general findings continue to support, rather than refute, the trends in gendered behaviour that were identified in former studies.

This chapter is intended to explore girls’ experiences regarding gendered classroom interaction. I shall discuss tendencies in mixed-sex classroom interaction, such as the ways in which some boys monopolise physical and verbal space, and the ways in which girls tend to defer to boys. Issues of power, of gender and discipline, and ‘policing’ of girls by boys and by teachers, will be attended to, drawing on findings from my own research as well as that of others. The chapter will conclude with a consideration of implications for teachers.

As Reay and Arnot (2002) observe, children ‘describe classroom life through social interactions rather than subject knowledge’. Social relations are for most young people the most important, and by far the most immediate, aspects of schooling. Exam performance may or may not have an impact on aspects of life in the distant future; popularity and ‘fitting in’, however, make a huge qualitative difference to day-to-day school experience. Hence ‘being popular’ and ‘fitting in’ are understood as vitally important, particularly given the heavy consequences of failure, which can result in marginalisation or bullying. Gender is one of the most, if not the most, important cornerstones of our social identity. So the adoption of ‘correct’ gender positions is usually necessary for the ‘fitting in’ (Davies 1989). The construction of gender identity involves particular types of (gendered) behaviour that demonstrate gender allegiance, and this of course manifests itself in males and females tending to exhibit different behaviours, very notably in the classroom.

Much of the work on gender and classroom interaction analyses behaviour in terms of frequency and trends—for example, showing that teachers spend more time interacting with boys than girls, or that boys tend to dominate classroom space, and so on. I shall discuss such findings below. But in doing so, it is also important to remember three key points. First, that these macro trends manifest due to the perpetual, mundane, diverse and often contradictory ways in which gender is constantly being worked at, created and recreated, by individuals in the minutiae of our social interactions. Analysing findings from my own classroom observation, I discuss how pupils’ responses to stimuli were gendered, as each occasion of stimulus represents an opportunity to construct and perform gender in response. So, for example, I relay occasions when certain boys expressed their relish of violent incidents in curriculum reading material; other boys loudly read sexual innuendo in their teacher's or classmates’ words; and when girls gushed over a teacher's baby (Francis 2000). It was not that other pupils were not experiencing these thoughts or emotions, but certain pupils were using their ostentatious articulation of these responses as part of the mundane and multifarious project of gendered identity construction. This reminder concerning the micro level of gendered interaction relates to my second point—that gendered trends do not represent the behaviour of all pupils. Pupils do not behave in consistently gender-stereotypical ways, and some do not behave gender-stereotypically at all. And third, it is essential to keep in mind that gender is only one of the variables that influence interactions in the classroom: factors such as social class, ethnicity, age, appearance, ability and the intertwined issue of popularity, impact on classroom interactions and on pupils’ positions within this.

Gendered verbal interaction in the classroom

Girls tend to be ‘out-voiced’ by boys in mixed-sex classrooms. In their landmark studies, Dale Spender (1982) and Michelle Stanworth (1981) found that schoolboys gained far greater proportions of the teachers’ time and attention than did girls in the same classes. Recent studies continue to support these conclusions, and show that girls are quieter and, consequently, their talk less often heard than boys’ talk (Younger et al 1999; Francis, 2000; Warrington and Younger 2000). Spender (1982) and Stanworth (1981) found that boys frequently interrupted and talked over girls, and ridiculed their contributions. This male domination of classroom talk had an impact on teachers’ perceptions of pupils: Stanworth (1981) found that teachers could better remember the names and characters of boys in their classes than those of girls, and tended to see boys as having greater potential. Not all boys are loud and demanding, and conversely some girls are—of the twelve classrooms observed in my recent study, eight were verbally dominated by boys, but in two, boys and girls were equally noisy, and in two girls tended to be noisier than boys (Francis 2000). However, the tendency for boys as a group to create more noise and to monopolise the teacher's attention clearly remain. This continues through school right into higher education, where men are shown to talk more in seminar groups (Kelly 1991), and where women students are often silenced in mixed-sex interaction (Thomas 1990; Somners and Lawrence 1992).

Researchers have examined how social class and ‘race’ inflect with gender both in pupils’ constructions of gender, and in teachers’ responses to pupils. For example, Mirza (1992) maintains that African-Caribbean girls tend to construct gender differently from the way that white girls do, due to the structural constraints imposed by racism in Britain, as well as cultural differences. Reay's work (2001) shows how working class and middle class constructed their girls’ school-based femininity in subtly different ways, and how their subsequent behaviour was responded to differently by teachers. The working class “Spice Girls” assertive and loud presence in the classroom was viewed as inappropriate (for girls). They tended to be seen as over-sexualised and over-assertive, referred to variously by teachers as ‘little cows’ and ‘real bitches’. Teachers have been shown to stereotype pupils according to ‘race’ and gender, for example expecting South Asian and Chinese girls to be particularly quiet and deferential, and positioning them as ‘ruthlessly oppressed’ by their home culture (Connolly, 1998; Archer and Francis, forthcoming). As Connolly (1998) observes, Asian girls who break the stereotype by being outspoken and disruptive in class are likely to be penalised particularly harshly by teachers. Meanwhile African-Caribbean girls tend to be stereotyped as loud and ‘unladylike’ (Wright 1987; Connolly 1998).

Recent research has called into question the assumption that high proportions of teacher attention automatically benefits boys. Early research tended to imply that because of their domination of teacher time, boys were inclined to receive more teaching than were girls in the class. However, research exploring the nature and content of pupil-teacher interaction reveals that although girls ask the teacher fewer questions, their questions tend to be more task-related and effective in furthering learning than are those of boys (Younger et al. 2000). Further, much of the teacher attention directed at boys involves discipline, rather than discussion of the learning task at hand. Younger et al. (2000) show that boys are verbally disciplined more frequently than are girls. Indeed, boys are extremely aware of, and aggrieved about, this situation, feeling that teachers favour girls and pick on boys (Pickering 1997; Francis 2000; Younger et al. 2000). Yet classroom observers agree that it is certainly boys who disrupt the classroom more noticeably than do girls. As such it is difficult to judge whether teachers’ more frequent reprimanding of boys is unfair, or whether it is simply a consequence of boys’ verbal domination of the classroom and the disruptiveness often involved in this (Francis 2000; Younger et al. 2000).

Abuse and abusive language peppers verbal exchanges between pupils, particularly boys, in the classroom, contributing to some extent to the ‘hardness hierarchy’, which manifests as boys struggle to perform their masculinity.³ Much of this abuse is homophobic. Because gay men are perceived as lacking masculinity (and thus ‘like females’), their very existence poses a threat to the dominant (heterosexist) construction of masculinity (men) as powerfully relational to femininity (women). It is no surprise, then, that in a school culture that promotes traditional constructions of compulsory and male-dominated sexuality, homophobia is rife. It appeared in my research that to position another pupil as gay, either in a jokey or serious manner, could provide a demonstration of a boys’ own sexuality and thus increase the security of his own construction of masculinity (Francis 2000). Homophobia is a major form of bullying in schools, constituting a form of sexual harassment (Salisbury and Jackson 1996; Mac an Ghaill 1999; Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolli 2003). Such harassment of gay men and boys is linked to the positioning of gay men as ‘other’ and ‘like women’, and in this sense is closely related to misogyny. Hence the denigration of the non-masculine, reflected in homophobic abuse, is also expressed in the frequent use of language that denigrates girls and women. Such language was in constant use both in and outside that classroom. Lees (1993) has discussed how the majority of terms of abuse relate to women or to female bodily parts, reflecting social practices of surveillance and regulation of women as well as contempt for things female.⁴ As Salisbury and Jackson (1996) observe, boys’ prominent use of such misogynistic abuse binds boys together as ‘superior’. And it also perpetuates a normalised climate of denigration and abuse of women. Both these elements help to sustain the gender order in school.

Gendered physical interaction in the classroom

As we have just seen, girls tend to be quieter in the classroom than boys, and are therefore less noticed. The ‘invisibility’ of girls is compounded by boys’ monopolisation of the classroom space. Even seating in class tends to reflect gender difference. Where seating is undirected by the teacher girls tend to group together, and are often concentrated at the back of the class. This reflects girls’ different methods of resistance to schooling. Girls tend to engage in low-level, often non-confrontational or unnoticed forms of resistance, such as chatting to one another, reading non-curriculum materials, attending to their hair and/or make-up, and so on (Riddell 1989). (Similarly, girls’ disaffection with schooling tends to be expressed by their disappearance via truancy, rather than by direct confrontation (Osler et al. 2002; Osler and Vincent 2003).) Although many girls do engage in ‘backchat’ with teachers (some actually taking up the maledominated role of the ‘class clown’ (see Francis 2000)), confrontational resistance is more common among boys, as the research discussed in the previous section attests. Because girls’ forms of resistance tend to be quieter than those of boys, and are often hidden (for example the strategic seating at the back of the class), they often go unnoticed and unchallenged by the teacher. Although they suffer less direct disciplining because of this, it also exacerbates their invisibility (Osler et al. 2002).

This tendency for girls to seat themselves on the peripheries of the classroom compounds the impression of girls as pushed to the margins of mixed-sex school life. Boys’ physical domination of the classroom and playground space has been well documented. In the classroom, boys quite simply tend to take up more space than do girls. Even when sitting at desks boys tend to sprawl more and take up more room, and when moving around the classroom their activities are more invasive of space.

These gendered practices concerning use of physical space are continued in the playground. As researchers such as Thorne (1993), Skelton (2001) and Connolly (2003) show, the activities pursued by girls and boys in the playground tend to be quite different. Such segregation is by no means naturally occurring or unproblematic. It reflects power differences and struggles, and often psychological or physical enforcement. Playgrounds can be dangerous places for children, the interaction characterised by relations of domination and subordination (Connolly, 2003).

Connolly (2003) describes a rare example of female domination of playground space at South Park Primary School. Here, part of the playground was designated a ‘skipping’ area, and was dominated by girls, to the extent that some boys took great delight in attempting to ‘break in’ to the area and disrupt the girls’ skipping games. The tendency for boys to dominate the primary and secondary school playground space is particularly enacted and illustrated by their common practices of playing football (e.g. Blatchford et al. 1990; Francis 1998; Connolly 1998, 2003; Skelton 2001). Football games usually involve a large number of boys and take up a considerable proportion of playground space, often the majority of it. As Connolly (2003) reports, football games often force those not involved in the game to play on the peripheries of the playground. Girls in his study were often fearful of going near the game. Boys also use football games to enforce a masculinity hierarchy through exclusion of girls and less athletic, or less popular, boys from games (Connolly 1998; Skelton 2001). Connolly reveals how such constructions of masculinity can be racist as well as sexist: South Asian boys in his study tended to be constructed as effete by other boys, and hence excluded from football games. Such physical male-dominance of the playground and classroom has the effect of subordinating and constraining the interaction of girls and of less physically confident or aggressive boys.

Gendered pursuits and subjects of talk

Pupils use talk about, and pursuit of, particular subjects and pastimes to demonstrate their gender allegiance and aid the construction of gender as relational. However, while boys’ subjects of interest are readily evident, girls’ are harder for...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• ‘Problem’ girls
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction: Why we need a book about problem girls
• 1 Not/Knowing their place: Girls’ classroom behaviour
• 2 Feeling under pressure: Low-income girls negotiating school life
• 3 Girls’ mental health problems: Often hidden, sometimes unrecognised?
• 4 Exploring the psychosocial landscape of ‘problem’ girls: Embodiment, relationship and agency
• 5 ‘Violent girls’: Same or different from ‘other’ girls?
• 6 Growing up mean: Covert aggression and the policing of girlhood
• 7 The trouble with sex: Sexuality and subjectivity in the lives of teenage girls
• 8 Black femininities go to school: How young black females navigate race and gender
• 9 Girls in trouble in the child welfare and criminal justice system
• 10 ‘EBD girls’—a critical view
• 11 ‘I was never really there’: Reflecting on girls’ non-participation in school
• 12 Engaging girls’ voices: Learning as social practice
• 13 ‘My little special house’: Re-forming the risky geographies of middle school girls at Clifftop College
• Afterword: ‘Problem’ girls—a complex picture
• Index