Who Gets Called "Quiet," and Why? Gender, Race, and the Social Construction of Confidence in Early Adolescence

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

Girls outperform boys in most areas of education, including grades, high school graduation rates, and college completion rates. Despite girls' and women's achievements, men – especially White men – are overrepresented in jobs and occupations where confidence and leadership skills are considered integral to success. To identify how school processes shape students' gendered and racialized perceptions of their and other students' speaking skills, I draw on 2.5 years of longitudinal ethnography and 196 interviews I conducted at a racially diverse suburban middle school in Los Angeles. Focusing on students' experiences in the school's honors classrooms – where affluent, White, and Asian American students were overrepresented – I show how educators' responses to 6th and 7th graders' rule-breaking varied based on students' gender and race. Educators tolerated – and often encouraged – White boys' interruptions, despite discouraging similar interruptions from girls and Asian American boys. Educators' leniency provided White boys the most opportunities to demonstrate their academic and social competency to their peers, such that 8th graders associated the most superlatives to "well-rounded" White boys' capabilities. However, educators' disciplinary practices placed Asian American girls at the highest risk of having their academic and social competency called into question by their peers, such that 8th graders associated the fewest superlatives to "quiet" Asian American girls' capabilities. Through this analysis, I develop a new theoretical understanding of how school processes contribute to the social construction of exceptionalism and reproduce social inequalities in early adolescence.

Author

• Michela Musto, Brown University