Power Through Voicing Others: Girls' Positioning of Boys in Literature Circle Discussions

This qualitative study uses an analysis of literature circle discussions to illuminate larger issues of gender and social class for a group of fifth-grade students. By examining how four students were positioned and positioned themselves within these literature conversations, I demonstrate that the roles reproduced certain gender- and class-specific storylines. These storylines served to empower the girls' literacy development, while simultaneously disempowering the literacy development of the boys. I draw upon positioning (Davies & Harre, 1990), voicing (Bakhtin, 1986), and power (Foucault, 1977) as lenses to analyze the students' discussions of literature. I then connect these discussions to larger cultural storylines in order to demonstrate the connection between these small literature circles and greater gender and social class influences.

In an urban fifth-grade classroom, four students, Cassy, Dion, Tora, and Jack,1 sat in a circle to discuss the book Girl of Kosovo (Mead, 2003). As the group began, Cassy asked her peers to read the questions about the book that they had written in their notebooks.

Cassy: Share your questions.

Dion: I ain't reading mine!

Tora: Here let me see. [grabs the notebook from Dion's hand]

Cassy: I'll read it. [tries to grab from Tora]

Tora: [reading from Dion's notebook] I like that she helped her mom around the house like- [pauses with confusion until she realizes she is reading the wrong section in his notebook]

Tora: Oh-did you like when the dad and brother died? [Cassy grabs the notebook and Dion grabs it back]

Cassy: You read it! [to Dion]

Dion: Uh

Cassy: [interrupting Dion] He's shy! [to the camera]

Upon Cassy's request to share, Dion stated that he did not want to read his question. Tora ignored this refusal and physically took Dion's notebook away from him. Then Cassy and Tora momentarily argued about who would read from Dion's notebook before Tora began reading it herself. Although initially confused, Tora eventually located Dion's questions and posed his first one to the group. At this point, Dion grabbed his notebook back, and Cassy told him to read it himself. Interestingly, Dion did not get to read it because Cassy interrupted him, stating to the video camera that he was shy.

As I watched these girls take Dion's notebook and speak for Dion, I began to think about some curious patterns that had emerged during this 5-week literature circle unit. The girls' practice of speaking for Dion did not match the findings of other studies that had found that girls were frequently marginalized and silenced in these groups (Cherland, 1994; Evans, 1996a, 1996b; Evans, Alvermann, & Anders, 1998; Hinchman & Peyton-Young, 2001; Marks, 1995; Phelps & Weaver, 1999). Even more intriguing, these findings did not match my own from the previous year with the same students as fourth graders (Clarke, 2004). In fourth grade, the boys engaged in assertive discursive practices such as using direct commands, insults, and challenges that rendered the girls as "victims of symbolic power" (Cherland, 1994, p. 41). Ironically, Cassy, who effortlessly spoke for Dion in fifth grade, was frequently insulted, interrupted, and stripped of her voice in the previous year's discussions. This reversal of interactional patterns caused me to wonder what was happening in these discussion groups. In fourth grade, the boys engaged in dominating discursive patterns that silenced and marginalized the girls, but in fifth grade, the girls broke this tradition and used this space to empower themselves while simultaneously disempowering the boys.

Although in this class, literature circles (Daniels, 2002) provided an opportunity for meaningful discussions (Evans, 2001) and grand conversations (Beds & Wells, 1989), this practice also opened a space to make visible the process of social reproduction. For these fifth graders, a second year in a literature circle curriculum revealed how this instructional space illuminated larger issues of gender and social class as it pertained to literacy.

The purpose of this research was to investigate how gender, as it intersects with social class, influences the way students discuss texts in literature circles. Data come from the second year of a longitudinal qualitative research investigation as I followed the same group of students from fourth to fifth grade. As I observed the emergence of these fifth graders' interactional patterns, I wondered what these new findings were telling me about larger issues of literacy for these particular students. How were the boys positioned by the girls in this group? How did the girls position themselves? Why was there a change in interactional patterns from the previous year? What does this positioning tell us about literacy engagement for these students?

In this article, I begin by explaining how I use the constructs of positioning, voicing, and power as it relates to literature discussion groups. I also draw upon earlier research to demonstrate how this study counters previous notions of gender as it affects student-led discussion. I elaborate on the context because it is necessary to understand the students' cultural location in order to link their current discursive productions to larger cultural storylines. Then, I describe pieces of conversations that show how the girls in these discussions positioned Dion and Jack, as well as how they positioned themselves in powerful roles. Through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I demonstrate the link between these conversations and larger storylines of class-specific gender roles for these students as they pertain to literacy engagement. The boys, with the help of the girls, were finding ways to access power outside of school-sanctioned literacy events and thus conformed to larger working-class masculine narratives that aligned them with manual labor. The girls, on the other hand, aligned themselves with power through literacy practices, better preparing them for the changing workforce. Through this analysis, I will explore both the local context and larger cultural context to consider the external influences that shape these discussions. Finally, I explore implications for educators and researchers as to how this understanding can affect classroom instruction.