In this chapter the authors do a good job of summing up major key points in the book. One thing that is painfully obvious after reading this final chapter is that none of their conclusions have anything to do with males exclusively. Perhaps it doesn't matter, but it feels cheapened to me since the whole premise of this book is to focus solely on male student readership. What was the point? Why didn't they just do this study to include females, then, if these are the conclusions they are going to end with? Anyone have similar thoughts?
I was mostly underwhelmed by the conclusions because, for me, it didn't reveal anything "new." Maybe discussing it with you all will shed some light...
I did think that their statements about shifting from the "student-centered model" to a "learning-centered" model was interesting. Usually I hear about the student-centered classroom, while, shifting this to be a learning-centered classroom makes more sense to me (192-193).
They claim (don't they?) that they honest-to-god expected that, when they had the kids read and respond to the profiles, the boys would call Andre (the reader/ aspiring librarian) a "fag" or "sissy"...and generally what would come out was that boys believe school reading to be feminine or gay. And they claim, likewise, that they honest-to-god expected the boys' response to "My Sister's Marriage" to be that it was lame and girly and/ or boring. The boys again surprised them (they say) by being open/ responsive and interested in that story. So, at least in some respects, I think Smith and Wilhelm at least CLAIM that they didn't KNOW they'd come to these conclusions. Perhaps you could say that many/ most of their findings are relatively gender-neutral, but that doesn't mean that's what they set out to do at the outset. So, real question: Do you (and/ or the others in our group) *believe* (or to what extent do you believe) that the researchers genuinely had their expectations about gender and reading challenged by what they found? Or here's another question that's a bit different: Does this study perhaps function as evidence one could use in an argument AGAINST those who understand gender in a certain (essentialist, maybe?) way?
ReplyDeleteYes, they do claim that they thought most of the boys would respond in a dismissive way. I think that they did come to some "surprising" conclusions. I did not, however, find this to be as surprising as they did. I think that maybe the researchers had their expectations about gender and reading challenged, I, however, did not feel that there were many surprises in these results. Did you? I mean, obviously there were some revelations, I guess I just felt underwhelmed by the amount of revelations? The problem with answering your last question is that I don't think I could answer that unless they did this exact study on females. My GUESS/assumption is that their results are relatively gender-neutral, but, I feel like, because that is the case, the study as a whole is not really complete without the same study on females--it felt to me at the end like we had just read half of a study (the missing half being a study on females and the conclusion being a review of the two studies side-by-side). I wonder what conclusions would be presented there? But, clearly that is not the case...so what to do with the conclusion that we are left with? I need to think on this one more. My mind draws a blank right now. Ugh
ReplyDeleteThe finding that surprised--and pleased--me the most was the one that had to do with the boys' desire for *depth* of coverage and for connections between ideas as well as for multiple points of view. This was really heartening to me, actually. But, you're right: we have no idea (based on this study) whether girls the same age would feel differently or much the same. Unlike the researchers, I was NOT surprised that the boys were not intensely motivated by homophobia, etc., and I also was not surprised by the importance of the social in their lives.
ReplyDeleteI guess one question you implicitly raise here is: Can one productively study just one gender without *comparison* to the other? I do think they were concerned to avoid setting up or reinforcing a gender war thing, or setting up the genders' interests as necessarily competing with each other.
I still, too, have some issues with the conclusions they reach. I'm not fully satisfied. I'm still thinking.