Language and Gender In the Classroom
1.) The class I decided to observe for this assignment was my sociology class, this class meets twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday. The Tuesday class is a lecture class that starts at 11 am and goes for about two hours, and the Thursday class starts at 10 am and goes for an hour. I decided to observe the Thursday class. On this day the attendance in class was less than half the whole class, there were only 11 women and 5 men (including myself). Throughout the duration of the class, the women participated more often than the men. The final tally was, women participated 10 times, and men only participated 2 times. I feel like the topic of discussion in class is what contributed to the lack of participation from male students, we were discussing gender and that probably made them hesitate to give input.
2.) On average when women spoke, they talked from 35 seconds to 50 seconds and at least 100 words. For men, their average speaking time was for 25 to 35 seconds and with usually less than a hundred words. The women gave more in-depth and complete answers, and the men’s answers were short and did not really get the most out of their responses.
3.) The usual thought is that, men are more assertive and display strong body language when speaking and that women are more reserved and hesitant to speak. That was not the case in today’s class, most of the time when the women spoke they were assertive and loud, and their body language reflected that they were confident in what they were saying. When the men spoke, they were not as vocal, and the body language was poor. One of the men who answered, his voice was low, he had to repeat himself a couple times and he was hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees. The majority of the class revolved around our thoughts and reactions to a video, the video was a clip from a law and order episode where am adult actress is on the stand because she was raped, the controversy comes from the fact in her videos, she acts like she is being raped and the defense lawyer is trying to use that against her and have the claims dismissed. I feel like this video made the men a bit afraid to participate.
4.) From what I observed, Ms. Brooks heavily encourages everyone in the class to partake in the discussion. While she speaks, her eyes meet with all the students as she makes her way around the room and she prompts all us to contribute to the discussion.
5.) Ms. Brooks called on women a lot more than she called on men, that is not because she held any kind of bias, the women in the class were more engaged and volunteered more often. She wanted to hear input from both sides, but the men were not volunteering, it got to the point where she started to look just to the men for responses because up to that point none of the men had volunteered so she had to call on them.
6.) I don’t think that the professor’s gender influenced how she interacted with the class in this specific session. I believe Ms. Brooks focuses on involving all her students, but I think that with certain discussions that she will provide experiences and viewpoints that will resonate more with the female students, but not to the point that it would take away from the learning experience of other students. Matter of a fact, I think that will benefit all students because more often the male perspective is dominant in society and it will be good for all students to receive a change in their views.
