Ghosts houses & the psycho brother

GhDSts,hOUSeS&thepSlchO'brbther:Ayoung girl working on gendered and schooled identities through text pr duction

by Sue Nichols, University of South Australia, Centre for Literacy Policy and Learning Cultures

scene of constrainf' (Butler, 2004, p.1) is applied to analyse how,through her text production, Rose negotiates the demands ofproducing herself as a school child, as literate and as a girl. Thisis a process in which losses and gains are inextricably interrelated.

Introduction

This paper follows Rose from kindergarten into school andexamines how she negotiated the complex and competingdemands of social relations and formal learning. Rose was one ofeight children across two pre-school settings who were closelytracked over three years in the South Australian component of anational project investigating children's literacy learning across thetransition from home to schaaP. Rose will be viewed here througha particular lens - that of her textual production in educationalsettings. We will see Rose drawing and writing both alone andwith others through four 'snapshots' taken over three years.

I first met Rose with her mother Polly one morning at RiversidePre-school. Polly informed me that Rose was a confident childwho would 'love' being involved in a research project. Roseherself looked at me with large round eyes and a wary, observantexpression that I would learn to see as her characteristic mode inunfamiliar situations. Later, though, as I observed her at play, itwas easy to see why Polly would characterise Rose as confident.She was an active, sociable child who seemed just as happyclambering over the outside equipment as drawing pictures inside.She liked to take a directive role in play, and could be quiteassertive.

My choice of a female focus child for this discussion of earlyliteracy acquisition is a deliberate intervention into the genderpolitics of education. This is done with awareness that boys are

aisNicholsSue

researcher and teacher

educator with the Centre

for Literacy Policy and

Learning Cultures within

the Hawke Research

Institute for Sustainable

Societies. Her work in

gender and literacy

spans 15 years and has

focused on parents'

beliefs about children's literacy development, young children's

participation in home and schoolliteracies, and boys' Iiteracies and

identities in the middle years. Sue has been published in the

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, the Australian Journal of

Language and Literacy, and Contemporary Issues in Early

Childhood and has written chapters for several books including

Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies (edited by K. Pahl & J.

Rowsell).

AbstractThis case, drawn from a larger study of literacy in children'stransition to school, examines one child's participation in theproduction of texts over a three-year period. Close observationand detailed description shows a child, Rose, in the process oflearning the practices through which texts are produced in thedifferent contexts of kindergarten and schooling. The author'sselection of a female child for this particular case is a deliberatechallenge to assumptions that young girls take up literacy easilyand make smooth transitions to schooling. The focus on textproduction (writing), rather than on reception (reading), enables 'Comber, Hill, Louden and Rivalland (2002) Questioning Development:

the researcher to analyse how Rose draws from her semiotic Literacy from preschool to the second year of school. Australian Research

repertoire, including visual images, elements of print language, talk Council Discovery Grant. (NB The author was a contracted researcher on this

and sound, to negotiate the social and academic demands of project.) A special issue of the Australian Journal ofLiteracy and Language,

7li\S~S.,••. Th.(Lf9Q.c~pt of performativity as "improvisation withipa•.. Y.~L27(2(,;vns evoted to this project:

. Copyright Agenc;limited (CAL) licensed ccpy.Further c.d~ying and , '.'communication prohibited except on paymen~ of fee per G~~'.PS:Eom~uJ.l~?~tion2008

,>.\; and otherwise in accordance with the license from CALt&;~~~ust.,~ information c(")nta~i' CAL on (02) 9394-7600 or it.fo@Cop~ti:gh£:.c'~m.~ll.

Redress IAugust 2008

currently considered to be at greater educational risk than girls,particularly in the area of literacy, and with no wish to denyevidence that shows gender differences in participation andrecorded achievement (Alloway et aI., 2002). A long-standingdiscourse in early childhood education the developmentaldiscourse - has for some time supported the idea that girls arefaster to develop than boys and this supposed developmentaladvantage is often attributed as the cause of girls' early literacyprogress (cf Gurrian, 2001). Gender construction theories, whileoften advanced against developmental perspectives, can also beused to support the idea that girls are advantaged, in this case bytheir early socialisation into literacy practices, such as bookreading, and habits, such as neatness (cf White, 1990). Bothperspectives - the developmentalist and the social constructionist- combine to produce an image of young girls' transition to school,and acquisition of school literacy, as smooth, natural andunproblematic. This is evident in the comments of adult carersabout young children's early learning, including parents (Nichols,2002) and teachers (Clark, 1990).

What we observed in the project, however, challenged the notionthat girls' early literacy acquisition occurs as an easy ftowering.Young girls, like young boys, were working at becoming literate.They were working at becoming school students and at finding aplace in their peer groups. Analysing observations and artefactswe could see that these different kinds of work were related.

Understanding the performalive work of becominga school girl/boyIn developing this analysis, I draw on the concept of performativity,as it has been applied to both schooling and to gender identity(Ball, 2003; Butler, 1997; Davies, 2006; Hey, 2006; Jeffrey, 2002;Nayak & Kehily, 2006). A performative practice is one which isintended to produce the truth of a state of affairs through thisperformance - that is, the act is taken as evidence for the reality.So, for instance, the question from an adult to a young femalechild "Aren't you a lovely girl?" (when uttered without sarcasm) isan implied statement, "You are a lovely girl". This statement helpsto produce what it purports to describe by encouraging therecipient to believe herself just such a 'lovely girl'. Thus, thequestion "Aren't you a lovely girl?" can be described as aperformative utterance (Austin, 1975). Performativity entails anelement of assessment or evaluation. In a performative context,the 'lovely girl' question/statement implies there are standards of'loveliness' which have been met by the girl in question, or will be ifshe wants to live up to the description. It is this notion ofevaluation which distinguishes performativity from performance. Icould act the part of a 'lovely girl', but it is only when I know myperformance is being judged, and when I am invested in others'accepting it as a 'true' representation of myself, that performativityis operating. Performativity has been described in terms of "thediscursive practices of the self and the other" which create the

possibilities of "belonging or exclusion" (Hey, 2006). In otherwords, the ways in which I act as myself influence how I can berecognised and whether I can be considered to belong to thoseothers who witness my actions.

Schooling is a performative system, one in which the products ofevaluative practices (grades, gold star stickers, having one'sdrawing chosen for the wall display, progressing to the 'blue dot'readers) produce for each child an academic identity - goodstudent, hard worker, at-risk. In the early years of school, teachersof young children consciously and explicitly teach and reinforce thephysical, social and attitudinal elements that make up theensemble of attributes that signals "successful school child"(Kamler et aI., 1992). For instance, I have frequently observedteachers reinforce the norm of 'five L's' during teacher-directedactivities. In recent years, the academic pressure on youngchildren and consequently on their teachers has increased, withthe advent of standardised formal literacy assessments, often runin the second full year of schooling (Miller, 2001). Theseassessments, which generally focus on literacy and numeracy,reinforce the relationship between the identities of school child andliterate child. Thus, for children, learning how to perform the roleof school child and succeeding in acquiring school literacy areclosely related (Freebody, 1995).

At the same time as children are learning to perform schooling,and literacy, they are orienting to their peers as social andgendered beings. Butler (2004, p.1) defines gender performativityas "a practice of improvisation within a scene of constraint". The'scene of constraint' is produced by the evaluative gaze of anaudience which is expecting the actors in the scene to playrecognisable parts. MacNaughton (1995) has described younggirls' play in the 'home corner', the area of a kindergarten wherescenes of domesticity are often enacted, in terms of negotiatedstorylines within strong boundaries:

For the girls' play, 'mum' was the director, producer and

writer of the storylines....If you were 'mother' in the home

corner you wielded power, but it was consensual power

negotiated with, and agreed to, by the other girls.

(MacNaughton, 1995, p.7)

So, in this case, the girls in the home comer are both audienceand actors, collectively ensuring that the scene is played out withinthe scope of available scripts.

Many relevant examples are found in Kamler and colleagues'(1992) study of children's first month of school, which stillconstitutes one of the most fully elaborated accounts of the earlyformation of the school child. In one example, taken from 'morningtalk', a ritual in the junior primary classroom, young Alicevolunteers that she has been a flower girl at a wedding. Herteacher, Mrs. T., is described as "providing a scaffold to help Alice

construct an account ...she does this by setting up a series ofslots, or gaps, for Alice to fill in flower, hair, dress. Thesecategories all relate to Alice's appearance and position her as thegendered object of an adult gaze" (p.151). We see that powerfulactors, such as a teacher, or the girl who plays 'mum', havegreater knowledge of the scripts available, and can be influential inmodeling and directing the performances of others.

Within these constraints, a degree of creativity is possible.However, the element of improvisation depends on the individual'sidentity resources; that is, the extent to which one has experienceddifferent 'selves' in different situations. Butler has referred to "thevery interesting question about how multiple identifications co-existwithin a child" (in Olsen & Wolsham, 2004, p.336). Closeethnographic work with young children can contribute to ourunderstanding of the ways in which they experience these multipleselves when simultaneously negotiating the academic and socialdemands of schooling.

Literacy as a semiotic practiceIn this analysis I focus on a particular aspect of Rose's experience

of schooling - her participation in the production of texts. Thesetexts, as is typical with young children, include both visual andlinguistic elements. I draw on a semiotic perspective of literacywhich is inclusive of the full range of meaning making practicesand modes of representation which are available to social actors(Kenner & Kress, 2003). This is particularly relevant in the earlyyears when children's communication skills often make greateruse of oral language, gestures, sounds and drawing than of writing(Hill & Nichols, 2006; Trushell, 1998). The notion of a semioticrepertoire is useful here (Nixon, 2007). This is constituted by allthe familiar signs and texts children have at their disposal, whetherthese take the form of symbols, single letters, story characters(Shrek, big bad wain, logos, slogans or any other communicativeelement.

Dyson (2001, p.36) defines literacy learning in childhood as "aprocess of text appropriation and recontextualisation". On thebasis of close observation over time, she argues that childrenconstantly choose and combine elements from their semioticrepertoire. Their choices and combinations are influenced by theirsocial goals and their positions within social relations, includinggender relations. Thus, we can see children's text production asanother example of improvisation within constraint.

In relation to young girls' acqUisition of literacy, this perspectiveforegrounds the social and cognitive work involved in textproduction, as well as the importance of the immediate socialcontext. I argue this is a necessary corrective both to the view thatgirls are innately predisposed to literacy and that genderedsocialisation in the home produces an effortless transition toschool for girls.

The analysis that follows moves through four 'snapshots' of Rose'stext-making in early childhood educational sites. The first exampleis taken from her pre-school year where she was enrolled inkindergarten. The second and third examples are from Reception,which in South Australia is the first year of schooling and isconsidered a transitional year. The final example is taken fromGrade 1. These examples were chosen from a much largercorpus of field notes gathered over three years of observation.While the final example was exceptional, for reasons which willbecome clear and which are significant, the others were typical ofthe kinds of text production Rose engaged in whilst in thesecontexts. My interpretive readings of these examples apply theconcepts of performativity and literacy as social practice whichhave been outlined above.

Snapshot 1: Look at my monster oneWhen I first met Rose, she did not come across as a particularly'girly' girl. Like her mum, she wore track-pants rather than skirts,plain colours or stripes rather than the pastels or flowery printsfavoured by most of the other girls, and wore her hair in a short

Redress IAugust 2008r


bob. While Rose was well accepted by the girls in thekindergarten, and was particularly friendly with some of them, herbest friend at this time was undoubtedly a boy, Henry. Since theirmothers were friends, Rose and Henry played together both atpre-school and at each other's houses. They also shared anunusual bond since both their birthdays fell on Halloween.

Over the kindergarten year, Rose and Henry developed a style ofcollaborative play that wasrecognisablytheirs. This play wascharacterised by sustain~d

imaginary scenarios, involving eachchild taking one or morecharacters, acting oufand speakingin character voices, often singing orrhythmically chanting. A feature oftheir interaction was the way thatthey shared initiating rights. Eachaccorded the other power to directthe action at different times andwould generally respond to theother's direction. The two~()metimes constructed objects ordrawings collaboratively withavailable materials.

During p(e-school, Rose's textproduction primarily took the formof drawings withioccasional letterlike symbols included, which iscommon emergenf literacybehaviour at this age (Steward,1995). Many of these texts wereproduced in company with Henry"i:as in the following example taken from theresearc:her's field notes:

Rose and Henry are at the drawing table:;:: Most otherchildren are outside it's a warm, sunny daY::iRose andHenry are drawing monsters. Rose shows Henr)i:"Look atmy monster one. Aaaah! This one's the one that'killseverybody. Snake!" Rose and Henry tell me theY:aregoing to a Halloween show together. Rose tells me aboutthe rides, circling broadly with her arms. Rose leaves thetable to look at animal magazines with Sally while Henrystays on drawing and making ghost noises to himself.Henry gets up and joins Sally and Rose. They move backto the drawing table. Rose is starting a drawing. It's apicture of ghosts. Henry is doing the same.

In this example, although Rose and Henry each had their ownlarge sheet of paper, they were engaged in creating a collaborativemeta-text. Their heads close together, their gaze encompassedboth picture planes, while bodies, sounds and images wove thestory together. The same visual images and symbols crossed

their pages: wavy ghost shapes and dotted lines tracing theghosts' movements through the imagined space. Four handsmoved between the two sheets, often in rhythm with their owner'sproduction of sound effects (ie. stuttering sounds accompanied themarking of the dotted lines). Their speech mingled ghostly "oohs"with suggestions about text production ("Put another one there")and injunctions to look and listen at crucial moments of the story inprogress.

The storyline of Halloween providedthe frame for this text production.Even though the scary nature of thetopic might be considered moreattractive to boys than girls (thoughse§Hicks, 2005), both childrenappeared to be equally at home inthis imaginary world and to sharethe power to improvise. Externalevaluation, beyond their ownsatisfaction with the performance,was absent. Kindergarten teacherstended to leave children to theirown devices at the drawing tablewhile peers either attempted to joinin the activity or to pass by withoutcomment.

Fluid and permeable boundatieswere evident in this situation.iiiJhefact that Rose and Henry in\$racledboth at home and at kindergartenenabled them to bring. elements oftheir private play .identities intothe more public space. Thearrangemenfofthe kindergarten in

terms of simultaneous spaces and activities between whichchildren could move, contributed to this fluidity. While it waspossible to see children policing gender identities within thekindergarten context, this did not seem to impinge on Rose, whospent much of her time with Henry and Sally, continuallydeveloping and layering adventure and fantasy play scenarios.Improvisation was greatly in evidence and constraint muted. Textproduction, both visual and oral, was crucial to this process.

Snapshot 2: Now look what you did!Rose's first (Reception) year at school saw her in the class of Mrs.S., a ,lively and engaging teacher who believed in keeping a

balance between creative play-like activities and explicit teacher

led instruction. She allowed children to choose their own table

places; Rose and Henry sat together. This snapshot is taken fromthe first weeks of the school year. Mrs. S. had been focusing initial

literacy instruction on visual recognition of alphabet letters and on


encouraging children to develop their phonic awareness byidentifying initial sounds in words. On this occasion, after working

with the children as a whole group sitting on the floor, she sentthem to their seats to complete this task: Draw any picture and

write down what it starts with.

Rose did not begin to draw straight away. Instead she wrote theletter A in the top left-hand corner of her picture page. As Henrybegan his drawing, Rose added the letters B, C and D thusindicating she had interpreted the task as requiring her to displayalphabetic knowledge. On my next pass behind the pair, however,their old habits of collaboration had come into play:

Rose has B next to something that looks like a bear.Henry has the same. Both have Hnext to ahelicopter.

Thus Rose and Henry had nearly identical pages, whilst theirpeers nearby did not. The two had succeeded in producingsomething a little more like the joint texts of their kindergarten dayswhilst still complying with the official task. What happened nextshows that Rose was strongly oriented to collaborative textproduction and was expecting to generalise this to other children:

Rose teans over towards the child on the other side of her. Shereaches over and draws something on this girl's page.

Girl: "Now look what you did!"Rose puts her hand over her mouth.Mrs. S. tells the class if anyone moves around they'll be sent tobuddy class.

Rose's attempt to treat another child's text as shared was notwelcomed, as it had been in kindergarten, but treated astransgressive. The other girl's annoyed reaction indicates hergreater awareness of the rules of text production in school. Theserules are: that marks on a page are work, not play, that one's workis located immediately in front of one's self, and that students areindividually accountable for their work. The teacher's statementabout removing non-compliant children to 'buddy class' (which wasnot actually directed at Rose but at other children who were out oftheir seats) powerfully reinforced the message that bodies must beconstrained in order to produce work. Rose's hand to the mouthwas like the gesture of someone who has let something wrong slipout and is trying to prevent anything else from escaping.

However, Rose continued to improvise and in so doing test theconstraints applying to text production in this unfamiliar space. Myfield notes on this instance continue:

Henry is drawing. Rose is leaning over watching him. Sheleans across the table and makes a mark on the pageopposite her. No child is sitting there. Rose is out of herchair leaning on the table. She takes a handful of pencilsout of the tin and drops them back making a bit of a noise..

She planks down on the floor.

Here we see Rose moving back into Henry's text production zone,thus continuing to treat the space as shared. She then againforays out of her sanctioned space by rising from her chair andmarking a piece of paper not her own. In cautiously choosing oneunattached to any other owner she shows a new awareness of theconstraints operating. Finally, she removes herself from therestrictive scene of work by sitting on the floor, despite theteacher's prior warning.

Seemingly careful not to push her luck, on this occasion Roseeventually got back on her seat and shortly after the followingexchange of talk was heard between her and Henry:

Henry: What's so funny? (Switches to funny voice)What's so funny?

Rose: T for bag (giggles).Henry: T for pam pam.Rose: T for toy. T for toy.Henry: (Still in funny voice) T for toy.Rose: Draw atoy. Draw any toy.

In an example of text appropriation and recontextualisation(Dyson, op cit), Rose draws on the alphabet text genre ("T is fOl")and combines this with her understanding of nonsense ("T is forbag"). She hears Henry's silly voice cue as indicating hisreadiness for play and moves immediately into a sharedimprovisation. However, unlike in the kindergarten where these'riffs' could be spun out for extended play sessions, Rose doesn'tallow this to continue for long. She repeats the correct "T is fortoy" and when Henry continues to use his silly voice, explicitlydirects him to draw the object which will match the letter, inkeeping with the task set by the teacher. Striking here is that Roseis not content simply to produce herself as a correct school childbut is concerned that Henry also produces an appropriate text.She experiences both improvisation and constraint as elements ina shared identity, Rose-and-Henry at school. Improvisation hasbecome muted by restrictions on movement and voice. Rose islearning that speaking in silly voices, leaving one's seat andmarking another child's page are now risky activities and shebegins to apply limitations.

Snapshot 3: We all areAs the weeks went by, Rose experienced a change in her positionin the social relations of the class. At seating time, she wouldbegin to find that boys had quickly claimed seats on either side ofHenry, leaving her to look for another place. A free seat couldnormally be found at a girls' table and, after a while, Rose beganto look for those seats first. A latecomer to the girls' table group,Rose found herself the subject of some explicit instruction in thegroup's practices. Since children's social relationships in class areformed during and alongside the official business of learning,

much of this social instruction involved ways of doing school work.

This snapshot, taken from the field notes of colleague BarbaraComber, finds Rose and her table mates starting a free drawingactivity. On this occasion the session started with lots of talkbetween the girls on what one was 'allowed' to draw. This isdespite the fact that Mrs. S. very rarely set topics for free drawingactivities; indeed she believed in the importance of children'screative exploration. In the following excerpt from research fieldnotes, owing to the nature of shared and overlapping talk,utterances are not always attributed to individual children:

herself as a successful school subject, not by joining the girls'collaboration, but by announcing that she could write sentencesand spell words. She appeared to be operating on the assumptionthat literacy knowledge was the dominant social currency. This isindeed the kind of performance which adults understand asindicating success in performing the role of school student in theearly years. However, Rose's display was reframed in this contextas a kind of a faiiure in understanding. What Rose did notunderstand was that the girls' group was constructing itself as theauthority on text production practice, albeit within the constraints ofthe teacher's pedagogic structure.


Rose:

Lucy: You have to copy me.No I don't.Can you sort of copy me?

Alicia to Rose:Rose:Alicia:

Rose has drawn a pink house wifh a blue chimney.

Rose: I did a mistake. Hey, if it still looks pretty, if I doanother one I can give one each to the new kids.

As we have seen in the earlier example, Rose was not unused totesting boundaries. Even though she signaled her desire to beincluded ("Can I too?"), she did not immediately embrace the roleof copier:

Rose starts yet another pink house. Alicia has two houses side byside - one large and one small. Then she adds another house.Rose draws another replica house - a blue one. After Mandy tellsthem to pick up she draws yet another house.

Success in this very localised form of literacy practice meantunderstanding the distinction between different kinds of textproduction. It was made clear to Rose that draWing and writingwere meant to be different and mutually exclusive: "We don'tusually write when we just draw." This practice, of excludingwriting from drawing, had not been imposed by Mrs. S., who wasdelighted when children introduced written language into theirdrawings. The girls' construction of these boundaries made iteasier for the group to police its members through the very visiblepractice of visual text production.

Rose refused to copy Alicia but neither did she claim any right toinitiate or to have a copier of her own. Alicia's response can beread as an attempt to repair this disruption to the group'sconstruction of its shared 'following' practice while holding openRose's membership. Actually, Rose was all this time selecting

from the shared image repertoire the standard images of houseswith chimneys similar to those being drawn by the other girls. Itwas only in her talk that she positioned herself as resistant.

Alicia: I'm going to the Show tomorrow.Rose: I am too.

They plan to ask their parents if they can go on the same ride.

Girls' talk: I can follow you.You can follow me.We can follow each other.I can write a sentence. I can spell 'rat', and 'cat',and 'sat'.

Girl: This is adrawing table.Rose jiggles apencil for several minutes. Agirl is handing out starstickers.Girl:Rose:Girl:Alicia to Rose:

New entrant Rose had not yet learned how to operate as afollower or an initiator in this context. Her collaborative drawing inkindergarten had not involved explicit contestation over whoshould lead and who follow, but rather a fluid movement betweenthese roles. Also, her and Henry's 'ghost' drawings had beentraces of an evolving narrative rather than productions of aprescribed visual formula. Here Rose attempted to produce

The theme of 'following' was strong in the girls talk, and further,their talk actually performed a following practice in the sense thatindividual girls picked up the group theme, follOWing on from eachother. In terms of visual text production, following took the form ofsharing a common repertoire of images and taking it in turns toclaim the role of initiator by being the first to draw an image andthen attempting to enlist another girl into drawing the same imageon her sheet of paper. As such, it was not strictly an imitative orcopying practice. With a common repertoire of images and ofcomposition formats (ie. sun in corner of page, grass at thebottom) genuine imitation was not required. The role of initiatorwas one of social power rather than image originator and wasoften contested in talk. Statements like "do this like me" operatedperformatively since any production of the same item from theimage repertoire could then be interpreted as an imitation.

Hey, let's do that cool thing again.Can I too?We all are.You have to copy me, ok? I'm putting stars on mypicture.

Rose: Me too.Rose writes near the top of her page.

I like to see buIlic to see biWe don't usually write when we just draw.


Rose used the researcher's question as an opportunity tointroduce a new narrative into the visual text production event.

•

At this point, Rose looked up andsaw herself being watched by theresearcher, a familiar experiencesince this was by now the third yearof the project. My notes record theconversation which took place:

Sue: What are you going to putin now Rose?

My brother going psycho.Your brother going psycho?He did! It was on the weekend. My brother gotmy bear and he was going psycho and he threw itup. He threw it right on top of the house.[Summary of longer story.]I know a boy who goes psycho... He's three.Do you ever go psycho?No!No response.

During this session, Rose and Hayley were sitting side-by-side at atable of four girls. Hayley was first of the four girls to start herpicture by drawing a squiggly line of blue at the top of her page torepresent the sky. Rose started just after Hayley, also putting asquiggly line of blue at the top of her page. By this time, Hayley

was drawing a yellow sun in the topleft corner of the page with linesradiating out to represent rays.Rose also drew a yellow sun withrays in the top left corner. Hayleyhad added green grass at thebottom of the page and wasdrawing a tree at the side. The twogirls drew mainly in silence. This initself was very different from theinteractive context of Rose's preschool drawings with Henry wherethe speech and sound effects werestrands in a co-constructednarrative of which the visual textwas the trace.

unquestioningly produced, along with her table mates, standardimages of houses with smoke coming out of the chimney,butterflies, flowers and girls in triangular dresses. On thisparticular day, however, a researcher's intervention provided theopportunity to understand that Rose was still actively working withideas of gender identity and trying to hold open multiplepossibilities for herself, even when these were contradictory andhard to keep in play simultaneously.

Rose:Sue:Rose:

Hayley:Sue:Hayley:Rose:

[T]the idea of 'free choice' ledteachers to accept highlygendered activities and to missseeing just how 'unfree' manychildren's choices were. In anysituation there are a wholerange of hidden constraintswhich we take for granted. (15)...when explicit constraints areremoved, implicit constraints, in

particular those related to ideasabout appropriate masculinityand femininity and constraints related to power differences,become more influential.'

Thus it was at these times that much of the social negotiationoccurred, during which children worked with their social resourcesincluding literacy, language and knowledge of how to performparticular roles (see also Nichols, 2004).

Snapshot 4: The psycho brotherIn her second year at school, Rose had settled membership in agirls' peer group, sitting with them in class and playing with them inthe yard at lunch. Anyone meeting Rose for the first time in thisclass setting would never guess that she and Henry had oncebeen close friends and, indeed, this was news to her teacher.Mrs. C., a late career teacher, was very concerned to ensure thatchildren got a thorough grounding in literacy and ensured therewas plenty of repetition of decoding tasks. The following year, allchildren would be undertaking the first of their nationalstandardised tests. Mrs. C. spoke about feeling anxious that shespent so much time trying to 'bring up' the low achieving childrenand could not attend enough to those who were competent, one ofwhom was Rose.

Rose was by now experienced in the participation practices of thegirls' group as was particularly evident in her method of producingvisual texts. Whenever a free drawing activity was available she

Assigning undemanding freechoice activities, like drawing,bought her some time to work withthe strugglers. Accordingly,children's behaviour andaccomplishments during thesetimes were not sUbject to hermonitoring and were treated asoutside the privileged curriculum.Clark has commented on thepractice of 'free choice' activities inrelation to the formation of genderidentities in school:


This narrative (here in summary form) was a detailed account ofRose's older brother's seizure of her new teddy bear, which sherelated with dramatic indignation. 'Going psycho' appears to becode for an act of social disruption rather than lunacy and, fromHayley's response, one that girls saw as the province of boys.Hayley, however, did not interpret the interaction as an invitationfor story weaving, offering her information simply as confirmation.

Brothers 'going psycho' were not on the list of acceptable imagesfor girls' drawings so even to announce this intention was an act ofminor transgression for Rose, and probably one which she wouldnot have ventured without the presence of an adult supporter. Totake it a step further and introduce this image into her visual text,Rose would have to depart from the imitative practice which hadhelped to produce her as an acceptable peer to the other girls.Fascinated to see how Rose resolved this dilemma (and possiblysensing the importance of my support), I stayed near the tablewhile she continued the drawing. As she drew, Rose kept up arunning commentary, as the notes record:

Rose draws a small figure at the bottom of the page.

Rose: That's me looking.She picks up apink marker and holds it up to me, smiling.

Rose: My brother's going to be pink. (Laughs.)

Rose draws a head in the space next to the first figure but a bithigher. She adds girlish hair to this head.

Rose: My brother put my wig on, it's pink. He put myclothes on as well.

Rose draws a body below the head. She draws on a top and skirton this body. The two figures look like two girls.

Rose: He put on my flowered one.Rose draws flowers on the brother's skirt. Rose tells me againabout her brother throwing her teddy on the roof.

Rose: I went psycho trying to get it off him.

Rose, true to her word, drew her brother into her visual text. Andshe drew a standard 'pretty girl' in pink with a flowery skirt. Shemanaged to perform these simultaneous conflicting tasks by usingher talk to me to create an epilogue to the story of the psychobrother in which the little sister got her revenge by dressing him asa girl. The conventional figure of a 'pretty girl' could now be read,however ephemerally, as a boy in drag. Putting her own clotheson her brother seemed to open the space for other kinds ofgendered boundary crossing. It seems no coincidence that, afterthis, Rose finally answered my earlier question: "Do you ever gopsycho?" Earlier, she had been silent while Hayley had responded"No!" in tones that implied the alternative was unthinkable. Withher brother safely stitched up, Rose retold the story of his crime.The ending did not change but her description of her ownresponse positioned her differently, as one who could be sociallydisruptive - 'psycho' - and thus resistant to a gendered discoursein which such disruption was seen to be the domain of themasculine.

Hayley had not entered into this interaction at all. However, shehad been monitoring the situation and, while Rose worked on herdual text, Hayley drew two girl figures on her page. In this way,the dominant text production practice of the girls' group could bemaintained even if Hayley had to take the less powerful role ofimitator to Rose's initiator. Whether these roles were maintainedafter I left my observation post to observe another focus child isnot known; however, when I returned both girls had embellishedtheir drawings with birds and butterflies. Rose had also drawn in atree which Hayley had added to her drawing at an earlier stage.The two girls' drawings looked identical.

All that was evident was the performative practice of gendered textproduction, a girl 'doing girl'. The improvisation of Rose's oralcounter text could not be read from this evidence. To produce thiscounter text, Rose needed not only her semiotic repertoire, sheneeded an audience who would recognise and accept thetransgressive self she was allowing to emerge in her oral counternarrative. This she would not find in her peer group or in herteacher.

ConclusionPerhaps we need to look for the moment when

participation becomes constraint, when achievement

becomes loss and when failure becomes success. In

these moments other discursive possibilities may be

glimpsed even if only momentarily.(Hayes, 2003, p.16).

We hear very few stories of young girls' acquisition of literacy.Assumptions about their predisposition and social conditioningmean they are generally regarded as unproblematic subjects. Interms of the discourse of development, there is a track, and girlsare already further along it at school entry than boys.

Taking a close look at this young girl's experience of textproduction enables us to see what is often rendered invisible byaccounts that cast girls' school success as somehow natural.Rose does not move smoothly through a developmentalsequence. There is a major disjuncture between the literatepractices of kindergarten and school, involving a shift from greaterimprovisational scope to greater constraints, both academicallyand socially. Rose actively negotiates her participation in differentcontexts for text production, always trying to work out what countsas a successful performance.

Prior to school entry, she is already competent at some forms ofliteracy but in the early years classroom these competencies arenot always recognised. She can recite the alphabet, but this hasno social cachet in the peer space of so-called 'free drawing' time.She is experienced at collaborative text production but thisinvolves physically moving out of the sanctioned zone of


individualised text production, thus risking being marked as a noncompliant subject. Prior to school, she understands the genres ofhorror and adventure and enjoys producing multi-modal textsfeaturing ghosts and monsters. By the time she is in Grade 1, sheunderstands how to silence the drama of her narratives and toproduce feminised visual texts featuring flowers and butterflies.Her will and ability to improvise has not disappeared, but thescene - the conditions of reception - has changed.

Through the lens of performativity, we see Rose becoming awareof the evaluative gaze through which her textual practices will beapproved as appropriate to a successful school girl, where both ofthese identity terms - school and girl - are critically important andrelated. Like a too-clean glass door, Rose sometimes does noteven see the constraints until she runs head first into them - aswhen she is sanctioned for marking another girl's page. Heradoption of the literacy practices of the approved schoolgirl subjectcan be understood as a case of "mastery as submission" (Butler,1995, p.46) in the sense that her competence can only berecognised by subjecting herself to prevailing constraints. Howmany other 'psycho' Roses and how many other hidden ghosts,are made to lie dormant in the lives of those seemingly effortless,determinedly bland, and successfully literate little girls?

ReferencesAlloway, N., Freebody, P., Gilbert, P. &Muspratt, S. (2002) Boys,Literacies and Schooling: Expanding the repertoires ofpractice.Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Education, Science andTraining.

Austin, J. L. (1975) How to Do Things with Words, 2,d Ed. Oxford:Clarendon.

Ball, S. (2003) The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity,Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228.

Butler, J. (1990) Gender trouble, feminist theory, andpsychoanalytic discourse in L. Nicholson (Ed)FeminisUPostmodernism. London: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1995) Contingent foundations: feminism and thequestion of 'postmodernism', in S. Benhabib, J. Butler, D. Cornell& N. Fraser (Eds.) Feminist Contentions: aphilosophicalexchange, pp. 35-57. New York: Routledge.

Butler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender. New York: Taylor &FrancisRoutledge.

Clark, M. (1990) The Great Divide: The construction ofgender inthe primary school. Carlton Vic: Curriculum Corporation.

Davies, B. (2006) Subjectification: the relevance of Butler'sanalysis for education, British Journal of Sociology ofEducation,27(4),425-438.

Dyson, A. (2001) Where are the childhood in childhood literacy?An exploration in outer (school) space, Journal ofEarly ChildhoodLiteracy, 1(1), pp. 9-30.

Freebody, P. (1995) Identity and precompetence in earlychildhood: The case of school-literacy learning. Australian Journalof Early Childhood, 20(1),17-22.

Gurrian, M. (2001) Boys and Girls Learn Differently! Jossey-Bass:San Francisco.

Hayes, D. (2003) Mapping transformations in educationalsubjectivities: working within and against discourse. InternationalJournaloffnclusive Education, 7(1), 7-18.

Hey, V. (2006) The politics of resignification: translating JudithButler's theoretical discourse and its potential for a sociology ofeducation. British Journal of Sociology ofEducation, 27(4), 439457.

Hicks, D. (2005) Cultural hauntings: Girlhood fictions in aworkingpoor community. Qualitative Inquiry, 11 (2), 170-190.

Hill, S. &Nichols, S. (2006) Emergent literacy: symbols at work. InB. Spodek &O. Saracho (Eds.) Handbook ofResearch on theEducation of Young Children. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Jeffrey, B. (2002) Performativity and primary teacher relations.Journal of Education Policy, 17(5), 531-546.

Kamler, B., Maclean, R., Reid, J. & Simpson, A. (1992) Shapingup Nicely: the formation of schoolgirls and schoolboys in the firstmonth ofschool. Canberra: Department of Employment, Educationand Training.

Kenner, C. and Kress, G. (2003) 'The multisemiotic resources ofbiliterate children'. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 3(2),179202.

MacNaughton, G. (1995) The Power of Muml Gender and powerat play. Watson: Australian Early Childhood Association.

Miller (2001) Shaping Early Childhood through the LiteracyCurriculum. Early Years, 21(2),107-116.

Nayak, A. & Kehily, M. (2006) Gender undone: subversion,regulation and embodiment in the work of Judith Butler. BritishJournal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 459-472.

Nichols, S. (2002) Parents' construction of their children asgendered literate SUbjects: a critical discourse analysis. Journal ofEarly Childhood Literacy, 2(2),123-144.

Nichols, S. (2004) Literacy learning and children's social agendasin the school entry classroom. Australian Journal ofLiteracy andLanguage, 27(2),101-113.

Nixon, H. (2007) Expanding the semiotic repertoire: environmentalcommunications in the primary school. Australian Journal ofLanguage and Literacy, 30(2), 102-117.

Olsen, G. & Worsham, L. (2004) Changing the subject JudithButler's politics of radical resignification. In S. Salih (Ed) TheJudith Butler Reader, London: Blackwell.

Steward, E. P. (1995) Beginning Writers in the Zone ofProximalDevelopment. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Trushell, J. (1998) Juliet makes her mark. Reading, April, 29-32.

Ghosts houses & the psycho brother

Documents

Transcript of Ghosts houses & the psycho brother