Brodkey Research Report

TITLE: On Subjects of Class and Gender in “The Literacy Letters”

AUTHOR: Linda Brodkey

SOURCE: College English 51.2 Feb. 1989, 125-141

RESEARCH QUESTION(S):  1. How should teachers read what their students write?                2. Despite the theory that class systems do not affect discourse in the classroom, what actually happens in practice?

ANSWER TO RESEARCH QUESTIONS: 1.Teachers should read the works of their students more as peers than as an authoritative higher up.   (2. In practice, the class system exists even in the classroom.  It may not be by law, but it is indirectly established often unbeknownst to the teachers.  They feel a sense of power over their students whether they intend to or not.

RESEARCH DESIGN: Rhetorical analysis of the letter correspondence between the working class female students and the middle class teachers (4 female, 2 male).  Brodkey uses examples from only three of the six partners in the study.

KEY RELATED STUDIES:  What’s been done sort of like this? What theoretical work does the author draw upon? She notes Stuart Hall’s “theory of articulation” in which he explains how ideological elements cohere together in discourse, which leads to her initial research question.  She also references Foucault who states that we are unified as subjects through discourse and Bartholomae and Sharon Crowley who both address the power of the professor in regards to writing in the classroom.

 

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS:  Brodkey was doing her research in the 80’s during the time of postmodern theory where we believed that one’s identity was constructed out of discourse (Foucault) as opposed to the idea that one can have multiple discourses (Bakhtin).

SUBJECTS (including how selected): Who are we getting the data from?

The letters were initiated by six white middle class teachers (4 women, 2 men) who were all in Brodkey’s graduate course on teaching basic writing.  The teachers wrote letters to six students (6 working class women) in one of Brodkey’s student’s classes in an Adult Basic Education class for the purpose of providing the students with an authentic reason to write—pen pals.  Brodkey chose to only include 3 of the 6 student exchanges, but she does not articulate why.

 

METHOD OF RESEARCH (including key variables):  What exactly do we do to get the data?  The 12 pen-pals (6 teachers and their student partners) wrote back and forth for two months and agreed to not meet or speak on the phone during this time.  The partners were free to exchange letters as often as they desired during those two months.

 

MEASUREMENT OR ANALYTIC METHODS:  How do we analyze the data/crunch the numbers?  Brodkey received permission from 6 of the participants to photocopy the letters as data research.  She analyzed the seven-letter exchange between Don and Dora, six-letter exchange between Rita and Esther, and the eight letter exchange between Ellen and Pat.

RESULTS: What’s the main (condensed) drift of the data?  Two of the teachers censored their writing and often spoke down or glazed over what the students wrote by offering blasé responses as though they were above the students.  However, one teacher-student partner made a connection despite class differences based on gender and motherhood.  This connection did, however, fizzle after the two months were over.

CONCLUSIONS:  What conclusions can we draw from the data? 1. There are laws that provide educational opportunities for all students, and there is a dialect of educational discourse in which “a teacher’s control over discursive practice is contingent on the ideology that classroom language transcends class, race, and gender.  That being said, in the teachers’ attempts to ignore class in the letters, they first distanced and alienated themselves from the students.  (2. The idea that class, race, and gender differences may be present in society but not in the classroom is only the case because these differences go unarticulated by teachers in the classroom setting. (3. We only have one form of discourse even if we try to have others.

 

IMPLICATIONS:  What should we research now, and how should we change our teaching now, based on these findings?  I think the search should be expanded beyond rhetorical analysis of only 3 pen-pal pairings.  It is hard to make a conclusion with such a small sample.  Also the research should be extended beyond writing and to typing/emailing in the electronic era that now pervades our society.  In regards to teaching, I think we need to be aware of the way we communicate with students whether it’s via writing or orally.  We need to be able to alter our discourse to effectively communicate with them and not feel the need to show them what we know and be more empathetic and willing to learn from what they know.

 

STRENGTHS OF THE STUDY: The strength of the study was Brodkey’s pointed and vivid examples and her in-depth analysis of each response letter that she chose to include in her study noting how the teacher often breezed over the cares and concerns of the students with little sympathy.  She also references very credible sources during that time (Foucault, Bartholomae), who were the “buzz-word” scholars of the time.  Lastly, she uses strong academic language.

 

CRITIQUE OR LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY:  The biggest problem I find with the study is that people are more complicated than just class. Brodkey tries to simplify it in her study, but people are not that simple. The six students that she chose from her Master’s class were not just in a different class, but they were also teachers.  The separation seen in the letters may have come from the natural authority that teachers feel they have over students and have nothing to do with class. Also, the study is very small thus the conclusion is weak.  Maybe she chose people with bad interpersonal skills or people who were not all too interested in making a connection.  It does not necessarily show hegemony in the classroom like she claims.  Also, there are not enough men in her study to be titling her essay, “…Class AND Gender”.  She only uses examples from one letter exchange with a male; and takes this one example as sufficient evidence, thus shining a less than positive light on men. She needs to do more research if she wants to strengthen her argument.  Another problem with the study that she notes is that her Master’s students had anxiety about exchanging the letters.  She tries to relieve this anxiety by telling the students that she will not read their letters until after the semester is over, but Brodkey had a lot of pull in the academic world at that time, and these students obviously wanted to enter her field of work, so it was nearly impossible to make that anxiety go away and that could have contributed to their responses to the students in the ABE course. 

 

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE STUDY: How would the results of this study change in a technological world (one that exists 25 years after Brodkey’s study)?  Would there be less pressure and less formality amongst the pairing to yield a different outcome?  Also would this lead to research about the person because it is easily accessible via the internet these days.  Could information on one’s social media network of choice change the way the students and teachers connect?  I also wonder, Why did people buy what she was saying when there are clearly many problems with her research and conclusion?  Cauthen says it is what scholars wanted to hear at the time which points back my point about how she used the “buzz-word” scholars of the time.