I find myself convinced by Tannen’s argument of how certain classroom strategies may disadvantage some students. However, I am inclined to refine Tannen’s point of male and female learning styles to masculine and feminine learning styles. That is, instead of equating learning styles as a gender construct, students are categorized by the aggressiveness in their classroom participation regardless of gender. Students that consistently participate actively have a masculine learning style and students that are more passive, feminine.
This refinement is largely due to my decade long experience in an all-girls school. If Tannen were right about how both sexes use language differently in their sex-separate peer groups, active class participation would have been an extremely rare occurrence. On the contrary, I have attended classes where open debate was active and strongly encouraged by female teachers. In fact, I personally enjoy such sessions as I find my mental faculties being stretched and learning to see things from different viewpoints. Admittedly, not all of my classmates enjoy the open debate, the quieter ones enjoying small group discussions and preferring group presentations. The contrasting learning styles of an all female class, therefore, lends support to my opinion that gender does not dictate learning styles, but there can be engendered learning styles and it is these engendered learning styles that educators need to take into consideration when planning their classroom strategies so as not to neglect the needs of a particular group of students.
interesting observations from a same-sex schooling. I think you are right about how learning or communicating styles vary even in same sex settings, but Tannen would probably say that in coed settings, women tend to revert to a quieter style as men become even more dominant than "aggressive" women students.
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