Tillträde till festen
Abstract
The author makes use of action research methodology in order to change the oral interaction patterns of an undergraduate grammar course, so that male and female students are encouraged to split even the time dedicated to student talk activity. The idea is that if female students form 75% of the class, they should get 75% of the students' talking time. At the same time, in accordance with action research tradition, the author studies this very change. The teacher of the class is identical to the author of this article, thus, as often in action research focusing pedagogy, the teacher is the researcher. The data comprise the teacher's journal, students' questionnaires, and an audio-recorded observation of 45 minutes. The results show that it is possible to split the student talk activity even between the male and female students, but this distribution was not obtained until the fourth and last class. The strategies used by the teacher was (a) to distribute questions in a regulated way, (b) to encourage female students in terms of establishing eye contact during the class and to engage in jokes and small talk, and (c) to get back to the female students that had already talked, in terms of asking for feed back, e.g., ”did I answer your question?”. The male students were not encouraged in the same way. Further, the results show that the teacher felt awkward and stiff at first as she prevented herself from turning mainly to the male students. This feeling declined as the change proceeded, and the teacher rather turned to the whole group. 75% of the students were positive or slightly positive to the process, while 25% were indifferent. None expressed negative feelings and none expressed a feeling of having been neglected.
Domains
Nordic languages| Origin | Explicit agreement for this submission |
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