STYLES OF LINGUISTIC PEER INTERACTION OF GIRLS AND BOYS IN FOUR SMALL GROUPS INVESTIGATING MATHEMATICS

Mathematics Education Issue For completing the assignment of seminar mathematics

Created by : KHOERUL UMAM 117785002

MATHEMATICS EDUCATION DEPARTMENT DUAL DEGREE PROGRAM GRADUATE SURABAYA STATE UNIVERSITY SURABAYA 2012

PREFACE The social justice issue is excessively essential on the mathematics education for the context of globalisation. Atweh and Keithel (in press) note that social justice concerns are no longer seen at the margins of mathematics education policy, research and practice. Issue related to gender, multiculturism, ethnomathematics, and the effects of ethnicity. Gender problems which is part of social justice have been a crucial issue that should be addressed. In addition, Deborah Cameron (1996) argued that investigating gender differences always has a political dimension that should not be omitted. The substantial of this matter will be discussed comprehensibly in this paper. This paper will address about The styles of communication and negotiation of meaning between girls and boys. It is a research that conducted by Anna-Maija Partenan, teacher researcher. It lead the instruction process whichs formed the several groups of students. Each student is allowed to find out their own partners. To control the process, the researcher record the entire conversation among students for each group. Afterwards, the researcher will find the similarity of group then she is going to compare two data that probably analyze by researcher. Analysis of qualitative data used ethnograpic and sociolinguistics. The results of study has shown that the girls encouraged others to speak and acknowledge what the others said, more than boys. The girl give others an opportunity to address their opinion and they provide a forum for other to

contribute to overcome the problems. Conversely, the boys had disputes, boasting, name calling, jeering, and mocking. In addition, they likely gave more orders to each other than the girls.

Khoerul Umam Surabaya State University March 2012

ACKNOWLEDGE

The writer would like to prise the Almighty God, Allah SWT, for his blessing and merecy so that the writer could accomplish this assignement.The author is immensely grateful to many people who has encouraged me to fulfill this assignment especially my parents who always ask about my study progress. More over, their encourgement and supportive speech have inspired me to address this matter as quickly as possible. May Allah SWT bless every single step of the progress that can lead us to shape our brighter future. Indeed, I am deeply indebted to my parents, siblings, brother, and sister for the prayers, supports, understanding, and love especially for the one Surabaya

Khoerul Umam

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
Social justice has been an issue on the globalisation world. Atweh and Keitel (in press) noted that social justice concerns are no longer seen at the margins of mathematics education policy, research, and practice. Undoubtedly, social justice issue had been extended to the greater context. Atweh (2010:1) isssues relating to gender, multiculturalism, ethnomathematics, and the effects of ethnicity, indigence, socio-economic and culture background of students on their participation and performance in mathematics are regularly discussed in the literature. Many researaches had been conducted to address the social justice problem in particularly about gender. The educational researches on gender are vast. The evidences had shown that the conception about the superiority of man. Conversely, Camaron (1996) critized that traditionally the research on gender differences has stranghened conceptions about the inferiority of women. Moreover, Wenzel (2001) discussed the difficulties within the traditional equity discourse in determining questions as who is entitled for equity measures and how to avoid the individual selfishness at the expense of the groups benefit. In particular, the greater circumferences of the skull of men has been intrepted to show women to be less intelectually then men. The data is contradictary about the main concept of social justice that everyone of us has the same right either men or women. Anna-Maija Partanen, who is not satisfactory with these evidence, strived to show the results were no

longer true. The dissatification of previous researches had driven her to do the research. She conducted a teaching experiment with two of her upper secondary classes in Nothern Finland. She plans to make teaching experiment. Prior to the research she strived for theory and information about the styles of communication. Moreover, Boaler (2002 :4) argued that theory is critical to the production of research knowledge, and to work more generally. Therefore, her journals contained several information about the styles of communication and gender problems. Simon (2010) argued that a good theory should help researchers understand what is going on in the classroom, it is essential for framing the research, it is essential in interpreting the evidence, it is essential in the development of knowledge. After collecting the necessary information, she would conduct the teaching experiment. The experiment process would be formed in the group of discussion among students. The students would be worked in groups of three or four and they were allowed to choose their own partner by themselves. Fortunately, it happened that almost groups consisted of girls or boys, only. The students would discuss about the concept of derevative. In the midst of research, she found out that the a class had more structured questions and the other had questions as open as I dared to let them study with. Subsequently, she consider that the group probably can be classied into two kinds of group ; structured question and open sturcture. From video recording, She chose one group of girls and one group of boys from each class so that the group were as similar as possible. She shalll refer to the group of
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girls of the open approach as GO (Anni, Jenni and Veikko), group of girls of the structured approach GS (Heidi, Leena and Maaria) and groups BO (Juha, Mika, Pekka and Reijo) and BS (Matti, Oula and Tapani) correspondingly. Although there was one boy, Veikko, in the group GO the interaction of the students seemed originally to me rather girl-like. The purpose of research ,which was being conducted, intended to create a context for communication and negotiation of meanings between girls and boys. To obtain the original data of interaction between boys and girls utilized the recorder to note down comprehensibly the entire interaction of groups. Data that was collected would be analyzed by using ethnography and theory Maltz and Brokers concept of socio-linguistics subscultures. Woods (1990) ethnographic account of pupils in secondary school is powerful and informative. Subsequently, her choices of using ethnographic is an excuse for excellent analysis tools.

RESEARCH PROCESS
The Inferiority of women over boys (Problems)

The Research Methodology

The styles of communication

The dominance approach

The consequence of research on gender

The Research Process

Groups of three or four students

Group Of Open Structered

Group Of Siss Structered

The group of girls of the open approach (GO)

The group of boys of the open approach (BO)

The group of boys of the structered approach (BS)

The group of girls of the structured approach (GS)

Data is analyzed by ethnograpics and sociolinguistics subcultures

The Results of research

CHAPTER II DISCUSSION

To view the analysis of the research, we are going to discuss comprehensibly to address this matters. The following data are taken to give a brief undertanding of this complication ; 1. Groups GS Maaria, Heidi and Leena 1.1. Proactive utterances and connectedness of discussion. To show that the girls in her data encourage others to speak, and also acknowledge what the others say more than boys. According to Maltz and Borker (1982) this is part of maintaining equal relationships and creating cooperation through speech. 1.2.Positive minimal response She discovered that girls had a high frequency in positive minimal response compared to the boys. The use of positive minimal response in the groups of girls shows that the girls were acknowledging what the others had said. 1.3.Hedges Maaria was mathematically the most successful girl in her group. The researcher thought that by using hedges Maaria avoided giving an impression of mathematical authority, and thus maintained equal relationships in the group. On the other hand using hedges can also be interpreted as an expression of uncertainty.

1.4.Short Laughs The short laughs can be interpreted to show uncertainty. On the other hand laughing together may be releasing tension and supporting the others: We are together in this.

2. Group GO (Anni, Jenni, and Veiko) 2.1. Propositions as question and statements. To The girls in the group GS all belong to the second group, they asked questions and made propositions using conditional statements in half of the cases. Three boys in the group BO stated their propositions in a great extent, thus belonging to the group 3, and one boy was in group 2. Two boys in the group BS stated much, and one boy was in group 2. It is also interesting to note that those boys who had the greatest proportions in making suggestions as questions were among the three least successful boys: Tapani in the group BS and Reijo in the group BO. Hence, the research had shown Finnish girls to be less confident in mathematics than finnish boys. 2.2.Tag question and denial of statement It happened sometimes in her data that girls totally denied their statements or suggestions. she did not see this happen among the boys. Anni in the open group of girls did so 6 times. All the other girls, except Jenni from the group GO, did so sometimes: Maaria and Heidi

once and Leena twice. Anni, Jenni and Veikko were discussing the meaning of the gradient of a secant in a time-distance graph. Although the frequencies of tag questions and denials of statements are small, the phenomenon becomes bigger because the use of them occurred in the same groups. They also add to the other features, like propositions as questions, in giving a similar impressionech. 3. Group BO Mika, Reijo, Juha, and Pekka 3.1. Overlapping and interruption. The researchs data had shown that Tapani's great contribution might be due to the fact that very often he could not follow the mathematical discussion in the group and he had to ask what the other boys were doing. It seems that all the boys, except Pekka, participated in the phenomenon symmetrically. She was tempted to see the greater number of interruptions in the all male groups in her data the style of boys to maintain friendships, rather than domination. 3.2.Dispute and boasting She saw that the disputes in the group BO and teasing Tapani in the group BS exemplify the processes of posturing and counter posturing Her data there were no disputes or boasting in the groups of girls. In the group BS few short episodes could be classified as boasting. But in this group Oula and Matti were often teasing Tapani in a way that reminded me of the disputes in the group BO. Tapani arrives late in the lesson. The other boys accuse him of shirking. Tapani makes a counterattack.
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4. Group BS Oula, Matti, and Tapani 4.1. Propositions as statements. It is interesting to note that although the most successful boys in the data expressed a great proportion of their propositions as statements, the most successful girls used questions and conditional sentences as much, or more, than the least successful boys. She interpret that by making propositions as statements the successful boys in my data expressed their mathematical authority and leadership in the groups. This way of expressing one's ideas gives an impression of self-confidence. 4.2.Commands and orders One has to remember the possibly dual nature of this kind of linguistic behaviour. It may be expressing dominance, but it also may be the style of boys to create and maintain friendships. It may, of course, be both of these at the same time. 4.3.Name calling, jeering, and mocking In the groups of boys there were more than five times as much name calling, jeering and mocking towards the other members of the group. Sometimes he even recognised that he had been mean towards the other members of the group. It should be noted that in the groups of girls this kind of behaviour was sometimes directed to the girl herself or to her group, which happened only once in the group BS and twice in the group BO.

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CHAPTER III CONCLUSION

The gendered features of the talk of the girls and boys investigating mathematics in her research data fit with Maltz and Borker's theory (1982). Through their talk, the girls encouraged others to speak and acknowledged what the others said, more than the boys. Maltz and Borker had shown this as part of maintaining equal relationships and creating cooperation through speech. Many of the girls used different strategies to hedge what they said. This can be seen as trying to avoid giving the impression of mathematical authority and also recognizing the speech rights of others, which both contribute to building relationships of equality. Whether the girls really did listen the messages of others in an equal manner is not clear on the basis of my analysis. I have merely described the style of their talking. Conversely, the boys in her research data were very often in the process of posturing and counter posturing, that Maltz and Borker refer to. They had disputes, boasting, name calling, jeering and mocking, and they gave more orders to each other than the girls. They can be interpreted having been more assertive than the girls.

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REFERENCES
Atweh, B. Keitel, C. (In press). Social justice in international collaborations. In B. Atweh; M. Borba; A. Calabrese Barton; N. Gough; C. Keitel; C. Vistro-Yu; & R. Vithal (Eds.), Internationalisation and Globalisation in Mathematics and Science Education (pp. 95-112 ). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Atweh, Bill. 2010. What is this thing called social justice and what does it have to do with us in the context of globalisation?. Australia : Psychological Journal II. Boaler, J. (2002). Exploring the nature of mathematical activity: Using theory, research and working hypotheses to broaden conceptions of mathematics knowing. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 51, 3-21. Cameron, D.: 1996, Sukupuoli ja kieli, Feminismi ja kielentutkimus, Vastapaino, Tampere. (Original book: Feminism & Linguistic Theory, Macmillan, 1985 and 1992.) Goodchild, Simon. 2010. Classroom Research: Impact And Long Term Effect Versus Justice, Liberation And Empowerment?. Australia: Psychological Journal II. Maltz, D. and Borker, R.: 1982, A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication`, in J. Gumperz (ed.), Language and social identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 196-216. Wenzel, M. (2001). A social categorization approach to distributive justice: Social identity as the link between relevance of inputs and need for justice. British Journal for Social Psychology, 40, pp. 315-335. Woods, P. (1990). The happiest days? How pupils cope with school. London: Falmer Press.

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APPENDIX PRELIMANARY

The theme of issue Researcher

: Social Justice about gender : Anna-Maija Partanen University of Lapland, Finland <anna-maija.partanen(at)rovaniemi.fi>

Publication Year From Type of research Research Framework

: 2010 : Curtin University of Technology : Qualitative Research : using an investigative approach and small group setting. The students worked in group of three or four and they were allowed to choose their partners by themselves.

Data Analysis

: the researcher used ethnographic nature and sociolinguistics theory.

Research Purpose

: Describing the styles of talking of the girls and the boys in the four small groups, in order to create a context for communication and negotiation meaning.

Research Question

: What kind of sociolinguistic subcultures the girls and boys expressed in the four small group investigating mathematics, and how they did it ?

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