Daniel Landers-Nolan
Secondary English Professional Development School
Inquiry Paper May 2013
As a 24-year old Secondary English intern as a part of Penn State’s Professional
Development School partnership with the State College Area School District, I have been
fortunate enough to spend an entire year with my 10th grade English students (and half a year
with one class of 12th grade Sports and Adventure Literature). What has made this experience all
the more interesting is that, in addition to being an alumnus of State College Area High School, I
also have been partnered with my former 10th grade English teacher for a mentor.
My inquiry question began to form even before I saw my students in our classes. As I
glanced at the class roster a few days before school started, I was struck by the gender disparity
in English 10 and Advanced English 10 classes. In one English 10 class, we had 15 males to five
females, while in another the ratio was 16:6. Conversely, in Advanced English 10, there were six
more females in the class than males. I originally hypothesized that for males, it was “not cool”
to be good at English. Deborah Tannen tells us in You Just Don’t Understand, that a way that
“boys achieve status is to take center stage by telling stories and jokes, and sidetracking or
challenging the stories and jokes of others.... Finally, boys are frequently heard to boast of their
skill and argue about who is best at what.” (Tannen, 43.) I have noticed this phenomenon in my
classes, and wondered if this behavior was necessary for males to cover up “being good” at
English. As we began the school year, I noticed that there were several males who would not
participate or do particularly well in full-class activities, but would turn in exceptional article
responses and creative projects on their own. RESEARCH- Cornwell/Mustard study,
Shakespeare and Masculinity book-how can I incorporate these?
Two particular interactions with my students stuck out to me early on in the school year.
As a part of our Night unit in English 10, my mentor and I gave our students a “Found Poem”
assignment. Their task was to take portions of the novel and arrange it into a poem. They could
do this either individually or in partners, and we allowed them to choose their partnership. As I
was circulating the room making sure everyone had at least begun working, one male student
called out to me. “Mr. Lando, two guys can’t write a poem!” I was struck by this response to our
assignment, and asked him to explain what he meant. He responded that this kind of assignment,
especially poetry, was “too creative” and required too much artistic ability. His underlying
message seems to be that boys aren’t wired that way, or aren’t able to be creative, and perhaps
poetry and traditional English is too unstructured. As Michael Kimmel discovered in his study,
“Solving the Boy Crisis in Schools,” English is difficult because “there are no set rules for
reading texts...you have to write down how you feel.” (Kimmel). Even when using an author’s
words to create poetry, males seem to dislike the academic and intellectual freedom that genres
like poetry provide.
The other interaction with my students that furthered this yearlong journey occurred in
one of my Advanced English 10 classes. As a part of our Fahrenheit 451 unit, we had the
students choose partners and create a dystopia. The students had to determine the cause of the
dystopia (biological, educational, military, etc.), the conditions of the society, and the hero that
would ultimately attempt to save the society. A male and female partnership was working
together near my desk and seemed stuck, so I approached and asked what they had come up with
so far. “Well, we know it’s a biological cause, so obviously the hero has to be male-we just have
to figure out his name,” said the female student. I was caught off-guard by her assertion that the
hero had to be male, so I decided to test her line of thinking. “What if the dystopia was caused by
something in history? What gender would the hero be then?” She responded that it could be
either a male or female. I then asked if the dystopia was caused by something related to literature.
My student responded that the hero should be an old man, but that “a woman could also solve it.”
When I asked about a nature-based dystopia, she responded that it “of course, had to be a female
heroine.” I wanted to know where these preconceived ideas about gender roles and identity were
coming from, so I decided to focus at least part of my instruction towards these ideas.
After these two interactions in which I discovered my students’ perceptions of gender, I
also wondered if these perceptions extended to specific characters in literature. Some of my
questions were: “Are there gendered roles in literature?” “How do my students deal with these
gendered characters?” As we made our way through the school year, my students formed this
basic understanding of male and female characters:
Charact.
Characterist
ic
Characteristic
Characteristic
Characteristic
Characteris
tic
Male
assertive
strong-willed
straightforward
powerful
(physically+
socially)
unemotional
Female
passive
indecisive
creative
weak/diplomatic
emotional
Character
in
Literature
Macbeth/
Mildred
Jack, Roger,/
Piggy, Montag
Jack, Malcolm/
Lady Macbeth,
Clarisse
Macduff,
Macbeth/
Piggy, Ralph,
Mildred
Macbeth,
Jack/Mildred
, Clarisse,
Piggy
I created this chart as I looked at how my students perceived various characters in the
literature we read this year. My students characterized Mildred, the hero’s wife in Fahrenheit
451, as a passive, unfeeling woman who stands idly by as her husband is pursued by the
enforcers of the dystopian society. Conversely, Macbeth (although initially reluctant) goes on a
killing spree to preserve his place as the king of Scotland. Jack, one of the main characters of
Lord of the Flies, is clear from the beginning that he desires to take control of the island society.
My students said in our class discussions that Jack’s iron will on the island made him more
masculine, and several male students actually preferred his brutality to Ralph and Piggy’s
diplomacy. The female characters Lady Macbeth and Clarisse were identified as “creative” by
the class, although the way each character uses this creativity varies greatly. Jack and Malcolm
were directly opposite to these two, as they progress through the book with a “barrel through life”
mentality. Both characters are intensely focused on their goals, which my students found much
easier to identify as a result. Malcolm and Jack are incredibly straightforward with their plans to
take down Macbeth and Ralph, respectively, and my students were much more sure of their
characters, as opposed to Clarisse or Lady Macbeth. As you can see, Lord of the Flies is where a
lot of these characters were based, and this is where I focused by instruction early in the year.
Golding’s Lord of the Flies is considered a traditional “boy book,” and I was most
interested in my students’ reactions and handlings of the character of Piggy. Piggy is considered
an outcast in society because he is not a hunter/warrior, like the antagonist Jack, or a hut-builder
like the protagonist Ralph. When the two groups are busy hunting or building, Piggy is left to
care for the smaller children on the island. Golding clearly handles Piggy differently than the
majority of the other boys on the island. He is consistently referred to as a more feminine
character by authors, critics, and readers alike. My students called him “lazy”, “weak”, and “fat,”
while refusing to acknowledge his obvious intellectual superiority.
With respect to our Lord of the Flies activities, I became aware that our classes also thought
of Piggy as “different.” Class discussions would mention Piggy, but characterize him as “weak”
or “wimpy”, and then move on to discuss other characters in the novel. Towards the end of the
novel, I gave my classes this prompt: “If one of the boys on the island was a female, who would
it be and why?” One of my classes decided on Piggy because the way he was treated matched the
way females were treated in the 1950s (when the novel was published). Here is the dialogue that
ensued in the class:
Female student: “In that time, girls were less than men...”
Male student (calling out): “They still are...” (Laughing)
Female student: (Name of male student)!
(Several students feigned incredulity)
Other female student: “What did he say?”
First female: “He said, ‘They still are.’
Second female: “Well, it’s true!” (Laughing)
This discussion revealed to me that my students have stereotypical views about the role
of females in literature, even with texts they read as children. The statement of the male student,
and response of the “second female” also showed that this stereotypical view is held in everyday
life--”They still are...it’s true.” Larraine Wallowitz’s study “Reading as Resistance: Gendered
Messages in Literature and Media” shows that even with young children’s literature, boys are
“written as ‘active’ agents and girls are featured ‘passively’ waiting or watching.” Although it is
clear that Piggy possesses the intellectual ability to lead the group and to lead them to safety, he
is consistently shut down because of his unwillingness to come forward. Several students were
visibly frustrated with Piggy for not taking charge of the island. Piggy’s inaction throughout
Lord of the Flies suggests to my classes that he fits the feminine identity. Each time Piggy would
have an opportunity to speak up in the island meetings, he would shrink back and expect Ralph
to step up for him. My male students called him “pathetic”, and believed that he “set himself up
for failure acting like he knew better than everyone else.” One of my classes declared, “Piggy
has knowledge, but he’s too emotional.”
After that very interesting and enlightening discussion, I decided to give out a Lord of the
Flies Character Survey. The survey, listed below, focused on three of the major characters: Jack,
Ralph, and Piggy. Through our class discussions, it seemed as though Piggy was on one extreme
and Jack on the other, with Ralph somewhere in between. The various choices also are gender
stereotypes, with “Star athlete” and “CEO” historically male occupations, while “kindergarten
teacher” is thought of as a female occupation.
Some of the other questions were based on activities and discussions we had on particular
chapters in the book, such as “What is Ralph’s/Piggy’s/Jack’s role in the society?” The potential
issue I saw with this survey was that by framing Piggy as “different”, I could have
unintentionally influenced my students’ perceptions. Despite this concern, I believe I received
honest and valuable responses.
One student responded to the question, “Are there gender roles in Jack and Ralph’s
relationship?” by saying, “Yes. Ralph’s more like the wife-he helps out with the children, and
Jack’s more like the husband-he goes out and does the work/hunting.” Another student said,
“They are both male roles, but on different ends. If a woman did either role, she would crack
under the pressure because women are more emotional.” Charged with describing Piggy socially,
one student responded, “He’s like a woman-kind of quiet, and even when he has ideas, he
doesn’t share.”
When I asked the students to describe boys and girls socially (to see if there were any
patterns between their interpretations of the island society and their own experiences), one
student responded, “Girls overthink things, and guys could care less. Guys who overthink things
are feminine, like Ralph and Piggy.” This belief was stated again during a class discussion, and I
took the opportunity to try and complicate this understanding. I informed the class that I too,
overthink things. “Does that make me feminine?” The class chuckled nervously, and looked a
little confused.
My students seem to have clear expectations about what it means to be a man, and what it
means to be a woman. To them, men have more emotional strength and wouldn’t “crack under
the pressure,” while “boys are strong and women are not--unless they are bodybuilders.” These
perceptions of both emotional and physical power permeate not only their survey responses, but
also the literature they read.
In the spring, I taught a unit on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which contains one of the
strongest female characters that my students will read this year. Bruce R Smith’s book,
Shakespeare and Masculinity, says, “Tragedy portrays the female other (Lady Macbeth) as a
destructive force.” (Smith, 113.) Lady Macbeth is the most assertive character in the play, and
pushes Macbeth to make choices that affect the rest of the action.
I chose to juxtapose Lady Macbeth and Macbeth because Lady Macbeth initially drives
the action of the play and forces Macbeth into action. Towards the end of the play, I held full
class discussions on “what it means to be a man” in both Shakespeare’s play and today. The
whiteboard shots of our discussion are on the following pages.
In this first shot, notice the statement “Cowards are not manly”, and the statement below where a
male student says, “Cowards are girls.” He received a lot of grief from his female colleagues for
that, but did not back down from this assertion, and no one said he was wrong. According to my
students, men stand against their foes and go after what they believe in. Macduff and Malcolm,
meanwhile, escaped to England to prepare their defense against Macbeth. This particular student
believed that the two men should have stood up against Macbeth in Scotland, rather than
strategize in another country. He indicated Malcolm and Macduff’s passivity as a sign of
femininity, saying that they were cowards for fleeing the country, rather than invading
Macbeth’s castle to face him alone (Recall that the majority of the class identified Malcolm as
manly because he was straightforward in his aim to defeat Macbeth.)
In this shot, notice how they say that Lady Macbeth is manlier than Macbeth because she had
emotional strength and she didn’t think about the consequences of their action. In this instance, it
seems that emotional strength outweighs physical power. Macbeth’s indecisiveness at the
beginning of the play is overrun by Lady Macbeth’s assertiveness and lust for control. During a
class discussion about who was responsible for driving the early action of the play, Lady
Macbeth received overwhelming support from my classes. “If it wasn’t for Lady Macbeth,
Macbeth wouldn’t have killed Duncan,” said one student, while another said, “She had a plan
and knew what they needed to do to execute it.” My students actually treated Macbeth’s
uncertainty as comical and unexpected given both his gender, and the title of the play. Many of
them expressed to me that they had assumed he would be a driving force in the play’s events
from the beginning because he was mentioned in the play’s designation. Given their limited
previous experience with Shakespeare in a classroom (They read Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade.),
my students appear to assume that the male character would be the proactive one in the plot,
rather than this headstrong female character that they were presented with.
Towards the end of the Macbeth unit, I pondered whether then gender of the instructor or
author would affect my students’ perceptions of a particular work. To explore my students’
notions about characters in literature, and these characters’ seemingly gendered characteristics, I
developed a “Teacher Expectations Survey.” I was interested in seeing how strongly these
perceptions of literary characters extended to males and females in the students’ own lives. I also
was curious about their reaction to my statement about overthinking things. When the students
chuckled at my admission of overthinking, I wondered if male teachers were “supposed to” hold
certain characteristics similar to the male literary characters we had discussed earlier in the year.
The survey asked students about their past experiences with male and female teachers, any
behavioral, teaching, or social patterns they noticed, their preference of a male or female teacher
(and if it changed depending on a particular subject), and if they believed their experience of
Lord of the Flies might have changed if a female had taught the novel.
Out of the 52 students that responded to my survey, 10 made a negative statement about
male teachers. Five of these students said that male teachers are much more strict, while others
said they were more "no nonsense" and "just give out worksheets." This relates to the
“straightforward” nature expressed by my students when discussing male characters in literature.
These male teachers that they encountered did not appear to engage them in activities, and
focused on disseminating the necessary content for an exam or essay. 13 of the respondents had a
gender preference depending on a particular subject. A few of the 13 students not only had a
single preference, but made a list of the subjects and indicated next to each one whether they
preferred a male or female teacher for that subject. It is quite possible that our culture’s
association of certain subjects with a male or female teacher might at least partially contribute to
this preference of a particular gender for a certain subject.
Given these responses, it seems as though my students (generally) prefer having a male
teacher for history and math, a female teacher for World Languages and Health, and no clear
preference for music, science, and English. After receiving the 52 responses, I wanted more
information on the answers many students gave, and decided to do 27 follow-up interviews. At
the conclusion of each follow-up interview, I asked the particular student if their experience in
our English class had changed their views.
One female student said, “Male teachers didn’t care about her and just wanted the work done.”
When I asked her for some specific experiences, she said, “At my old schools, a lot of the male
teachers didn't care about how I felt that day, but female teachers I've gotten closer to and can
talk to them easier.” Another female student said, “Female teachers are annoying and try too
hard to be nice.” When I asked her why she believed that, she said “They’re too peppy and do
pointless activities like ‘Rate your weekend on a scale from one to ten’.” This last student’s
assertion that female teachers do “pointless activities” may illustrate that this student prefers a
male teacher who is less creative and more straightforward about what they need to learn for that
particular text or unit.
Female students weren’t the only ones with strong opinions. One male student said, “In
my experience, male teachers are more understanding of kids’ needs.” When I asked what he
meant by that, he responded, “Male teachers are more understanding to things that happen
outside of school.” (I should explicate that this particular student has had some behavioral issues
with female teachers in the past.). Ben Feller’s 2006 article, “Teacher’s gender affects academic
performance of boys, girls, study says,” discusses a 1988 study conducted on 25,000 8th graders
in the United States. The study discovered that “having a female teacher instead of a male
teacher raised the achievement of girls and lowered that of boys in science, social studies, and
English. Looked the other way, when a man led the class, boys did better and girls did worse.”
Feller also acknowledges differences in perceptions of behavior between male and female
teachers. With female teachers, boys were “more likely to be seen as disruptive,” while with a
male teacher, girls were “less likely to look forward to the class or ask questions.” (Feller, AP
2006). Our female teachers seem to genuinely enjoy participating in class and in our activities
but our male students often mentioned female teachers as being too strict or lacking patience.
Another male student was one of those that had a gender preference for every subject.
When I asked how he came to this realization, he responded, “I do better with male authority
figures for certain subjects. Anything that’s factual, where there’s one straight answer.” This
particular response was striking to me, given that he had two male teachers in his English
classroom, a class with no “one straight answer” in most cases, and he seemed to enjoy our class.
He also had responded to my final question by saying that our class had not altered this view in
any way. This particular student hit on one of the characteristics that the class had identified as
masculine: being straightforward. The irony is, our class constantly employs activities that
stretch our students’ creativity and organization (Scrapbooking, scene adaptations, and several
group projects have highlighted our year.). Where then, is this student getting the impression that
the two male teachers leading his class confirm his preference of a teacher that is “factual?”
Following these responses, I went back to the idea of gendered characters and gendered
perceptions in literature. Several students responded to my final “Teacher Expectations Survey”
question by stating, “A female teacher would have focused more on the characters’ feelings, and
less on the action of the book.” I wondered if it was possible that students approach texts that are
classified as “boy books” or “girl books” based on how the text is presented by the teacher, or
even by what gender the author is. I asked my students “What if William Golding was a female
writer? How would that change the book?). Here are some of their responses:
“I think that if it was a girl there would be less violence and more romance. I can’t think
of a movie or book that a girl wrote that doesn't have a love story in it.”
“It would have more feelings and rational thoughts in it. There would be more thought
put into important decisions and they would most likely all get along.”
These two statements show a clear belief about females. These two responses identify
another characteristic of female teachers and characters; that females are “more emotional.” This
is a widely held belief in our society, so it is not surprising to encounter it in an English
classroom. Many students responded that female authors include more romance and deal more
with emotions than males, who focus more on physical conflict and plots of treason and
redemption.
My students seem to classify male characters and male teachers at least somewhat
similarly. In the course of the Lord of the Flies and Macbeth units, my students identified that
male characters like Ralph, Jack, Macduff, Malcolm, and Macbeth are assertive, powerful,
intelligent, stoic, and are unable to be persuaded. Many of these characters overcame challenges
from other males (Jack, Macduff/Malcolm), while my students’ impressions of Ralph and
Macbeth changed from the beginning of the text to the conclusion. Both Ralph and Macbeth are
indecisive for a considerable part of their works--Macbeth for nearly the first two Acts, and
Ralph for a large part of the middle of Lord of the Flies. However, my students’ identified
Ralph’s intelligence in escaping from Jack’s band of hunters, and Macbeth’s stoicism in the face
of his murders as masculine traits. In the “Teacher Expectations Survey”, my students said male
teachers are: No nonsense, authoritative, straightforward, curt, independent (rather than
collaborative), and harsh or strict. Several students identified male teachers who had either
formed no connection with them as a student, or ran a very disciplined classroom. It seems as
though my students classify all males, whether in literature or the “real world”, as being
unemotional, authoritative/in control, and extremely focused toward their goals.
Following this year, I still have many questions:
1. How has having two male teachers in the classroom affected the students? Has it affected
their interpretation of the texts?
This question is most puzzling to me, because what my students say, and what occurs in
the classroom is different. My students say they prefer male teachers because they do not try and
interact with the students and just focus on direct instruction of the content (no “creative”
activities or projects, more worksheets or lectures), and yet both my mentor and myself
constantly socialize with our students as we lead class discussions, craft scrapbooks, and
participate in the construction of graphic novels.
2. Where do students’ perceptions about what makes either males or females better equipped
to teach a certain subject come from? (Classroom practices, personalities?)
3. What variables am I discounting in my research? (What other factors are there in students’
perceptions?)
4. There seems to be a disconnect between behavior in the classroom and individual work:
How do we know what is authentic? Is it possible that both of these behaviors are authentic?
Despite having all of these additional inquiries, I have formed some overall truths about
my students’ perceptions of gender in the classroom. My students’ discussions of characters like
Macbeth, Montag and Jack, and their responses to the “Teacher Expectations Survey” show me
that they believe males to be assertive, unemotional, and extremely directed towards their goals.
Male teachers focus on teaching content through more traditional means (such as lectures and
worksheets) rather than having the students participating in group or partner activities. Females,
meanwhile, are more emotional and focus on social conflicts. Characters like Piggy (My students
identified him as the “female of the island”), Clarisse, and Mildred, are more concerned with
everyone getting along, rather than moving up in society. My students’ referenced female
teachers as being more likely to try and get to know their students, and also be more likely to
discuss a character’s emotions in a particular text.
After gathering these perceptions, my lingering question remains: How strong are these
perceptions of gender? While spending an entire year in an English class led by two males who
try to engage students with a variety of approaches (mostly focusing on activities), my students
do not seem to have changed their views about what a male and a female look like in an English
classroom (or in a text). Female students and male students alike both stated that they enjoyed
our class, and did not notice any difference from previous years of instruction. Do their
perceptions of gender not actually come from previous experiences? Is the media the driving
force in my students’ view of education? I will continue to ponder these and other inquiries as
my teaching career develops.