asking for opinion

[kaidomar latifa]

DEar Galalist subscribers , i am glad to subscribe to this organisation in which we  share common interest and can discuss about the topic of our concern that relates to gender studies . I am an Algerian student working on gender in the EFL  faculty  classroom  . In this research i want to investigate whether faculty teachers hold genderd conception abvout teaching and whther  teachers gender is related tofaculty teachers' performance of power in their classroom interactions . To answer those research questions i opted for the interview as a research methodology with open-ended questions in which gendered conceptions about teaching may be detected . First i tried this method with 3 male and femele ( same experience span ( 9 years)  teachers whose tape recoreded answers resulted from these questions :-1 How can you define a university teacher?2-Under what teaching conditions are you
most comfortable while teaching?

3-Under what teaching conditions are you
least comfortable while teaching?

4- What  ,do you think ,encourages students to talk in the
EFL classroom?

5- How can you describe your actual
teaching style at college?

6- How would  you decide  about the topics to be taught in your subject
?the participants did not know about the topic of my reserch nor about what i am investigating through this interview . They were simply told that the study concerns professinal experience of EFL teachers and its pedagogic immplications. what i discovered  from the results is that femele tended to focus on the communicative and behavioural  side of teaching by defining faculty teachers first of all as" generous", "respectful"," patient"  (behaviour) then they cited their competence in their fields of specialty  whreres men tended to emphasise their competence and knowldge viewing faculty teacher as a "guide" ," source of knowledge" "competent in his discipline" ( knowldge) . And the interpretation i made of it is that by focusing the behaviour female see teaching in terms of  establishing interpersonal relationships with their learners  where the teacher is more concerned with interpersonal relationship that teaching involve rather than the knowldge that it necessitates.by contrast , male teachers in emphasising their knowldge as a characteristic of faculty  teacher they see teaching in terms of  transmitting knowldge which the teachjer is supposed to hold and thus centers their view on the teacher as 'knowldge- holder' and thus are more concerned about his status as  faculty teacher  . Female tendency to place premium on their behaviour may be  because they believe that a faculty  tecaher is, first of all , valued by establishing good relations with their students.     This can be compared to Tannen's model of  communiction styles where women focus on establishing rapport / connection  whereas men on report/ status.  female teacehrs view faculty  teaching as a world of connection where less hierarchical relations are established ( good relations with student) while male teachers conceive faculty teaching as a world where institutional status and power are negotiated. similar genderd conceptions of faculty teaching have  been discerned in their responses to other questions . Female teachers tended to be more student -oriented  while male teachers were teacher-orineted. while asked about  makes tham feel discomfortable while teaching   femele teachers tended to relate their own feeling of discomfort to their students' in relation to class size as an inhibiting factor to their involvment of intercations .  They considered student lack of intercation as the source of their discomfort while teaching . Male teachers in contrast viewed that  they  would feel les comfortable if technological devices ( internet access or overhead projector..)  were not available and referred to classize in reference to their own feeling of discomfort because it makes the classroom hard to manange or homework difficult to be corrected .The other questions also elicited gendered replies in the sense that  male  teachers tended to  show more concern about transmitting knowldge( content-based tecahing) but female teachers about engaging the student in classroom intercations( communication -based teaching) .Would you please give me your opinion on both the  method  i used , questions i designed and the interpretation i made about the results ?Any suggestions , related articles, pieces of advice will be of valuable help.                                                                                                    Thank you in advanace  		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gala-l/attachments/20110117/eec6af39/attachment.htm>