Classroom Participation

1
Classroom Participation
Student Teacher Sex Relationships Sex Domination
in the Classroom

• Berwaldt, Recchia, Smock
• Variables Perceived Student and Teacher Sex
  Number Perceived Male Female Students

2
Classroom Participation Relation to Power

• Findings Men and Women Participate Equally in
  Scholastic Settings

3
Importance of Participation

• People who never get their words in are
  powerless (Eckert, 113).
• Direct relation to constructing the gender order.
• Feedback from teachers helps students learn
  better.
• Analyzing participation is a worthy undertaking
  with intrinsic value.

4
Operational Definition of Participation

• The act of taking part or sharing in a speech
  activity verbal comments or questions by
  students in the classroom.

5
Hypothesis

• The research group entered with knowledge of the
  hall of mirrors biases underlying the study of
  gender. Rather than fall prey to this bias or
  the related biases of confirmation and
  disconfirmation, the group chose to not construct
  a hypothesis. (Eckert, 80).
• Therefore, the group chose to search for
  similarities or differences rather than
  attempting to test previously found
  similarities or differences in participation.

6
Potential Explanatory Variables

• Gender relation between student and professor
• Four Possibilities
• Male - Female
• Male - Male
• Female - Male
• Female - Female

• Single gender composing majority of students.
• If more than two thirds of a class is of one sex
  then that class is defined as dominated by that
  gender.

7
Statistics Used

• Ratios determined by the following formula
• ( (fe)male students in class) / (total
  students in class)

• T- Test
• Used to determine if differences in ratios
  between (fe)male students speaking in particular
  category is statistically significant
• The mathematics is beyond the scope of this
  presentation

8
Percent of Men and Women Speaking DependingOn
the Classroom Context (Independent Variables)
9
Percent Speaking in Lecture vs. Seminar
The differences between men and women are not
significant here, but the differences between
amount of speaking in lectures vs.
seminars/sections is significant at t8.63!
(The probability of this result, assuming the
null hypothesis, is less than .0001).
10
Future Paths

• Examine data from other demographics, such as
  from other geographic areas and universities with
  predominantly different political affiliations
• Explore possibility of more explanatory variables.

11
Thank You
12
Bad Data

• To determine ratio of distinct male or female
  speakers to total number of students in the
  class, a person speaking more than once must be
  counted as if ve1 had only spoken once.
• Five students with bad data More distinct
  speaker numbers than students in class!
• 1 The word ve is a gender neutral pronoun of
  he or she (wikipedia.com).

13
Examining Correlation Between Speaking Gender
Ratio in Class
14
Percent (Fe)male Speaking in Lecture
15
Percent (Fe)male Speaking in Section