A Teacher Researcher’s Look Into Small Book-Discussion Groups by First-Grade Boys

• In Event: Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Research: The Role of Inquiry in the Elementary Classroom

Abstract

This qualitative study is about a first grade teacher scrutinizing and taking a second look around her teaching, her students (all boys), within the context of a single-gender school: an individual’s search, re-search and findings. Exploring two questions this study documents, using four case histories, ways young boys negotiated and renegotiated their unique identities as they met in small book-discussion groups. As varied themes were discussed during the sessions, the performances of the boys’ masculinities shifted depending upon the cultural/social knowledge they practiced. Their social placement depended on their academic status and ways they perceived one another. This inquiry generated rationales for young boys and teachers to alter their respective practices, broadening the framework of teaching, learning, and single-gender schooling.

Authors

• Sudarshana Das, Iona College

• Joanna K. Uhry, Fordham University