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Middle Grades Research Journal, Volume 9(1), 2014, pp. 85–102 ISSN 1937-0814
Copyright © 2014 Information Age Publishing, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
VISUALIZING GENDER
WITH FIFTH GRADE STUDENTS
David W. Brown, Jr. Peggy Albers
Murdock Elementary School Georgia State University
How do fifth-grade students in a gifted class construct understandings of the opposite sex? In what ways do
these constructions manifest in the visual texts created in literacy and language arts classrooms? This qualita-
tive study integrated visual arts to understand how fifth-grade gifted students represented and perceived gen-
der roles. Using visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007), we analyzed the visual texts created by fifth-grade
students created during a semester-long investigation in which they studied informational and literary texts
that addressed content concepts such as compromise, criminal and civil law, and the constitution. Findings
suggest the need for close readings of the graphic, structural, and semantic information conveyed by visual
texts that children create in literacy and language arts classes.
In content classes, students talk to teachers
visually all the time whether it is in an assign-
ment that integrates the arts, their doodles,
and/or the projects they complete that have a
visual component. Their visual messages com-
municate a range of ideas, and have clear and
distinct forms and structures that can be read
and analyzed (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).
However, although many educators have
learned how to read and respond to written
responses, they often have little knowledge
about how to systematically read and respond
to the visual messages students create in their
classroom. Often, responses are often limited
to “That’s a really nice picture,” or “Tell me
about your picture.”
We introduce this article with a visual text,
a collage, created by a male student that
reflected his understanding of girls’ interests in
David’s, the first author, fifth-grade gifted
classroom. In the context of studying the U.S.
Constitution, students discussed the roles that
men played in writing the Constitution. This
led to a more intense discussion around issues
of gender issues reflected both in U.S. history
and contemporary understandings of boys’ and
girls’ interests. To augment their discussion,
we decided to invite students to visually repre-
sent their beliefs about gender. Both of us have
strong interests in how the visual arts commu-
nicate messages that are different from those
spoken and/or written. Further, Peggy (second
• David W. Brown, Jr., Murdock Elementary School, 2320 Murdock Road, Marietta, GA 30062. E-mail:
david1.brown@cobbk12.org
86 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
author) has written extensively about how
visual texts allow educators to understand
“what else” students reveal about their under-
standing of content and reveal about their
beliefs around a range of issues (Albers, 2007;
Albers, Frederick, & Cowan, 2009; Albers,
Vasquez, & Harste, 2011; Fisher, Albers, &
Frederick, 2013). With this interest in mind,
we asked students to create a collage that rep-
resented what they thought boys and girls were
interested in, and then to write a response that
described their collage. Figure 1 is an example
of one student’s visual text that we collected.
On the left, this student collected and pasted
pictures of what he thought boys were most
interested in—superheroes, science fiction,
and video games. On the right, he drew images
that he associated with girls’ interests: flowers,
jewelry, fashion (overall, appearance) and the
color pink.
This article focuses on a study we con-
ducted with fifth grade students in a semester-
long unit titled “Nothing but the Truth,” and
specifically on an activity around the Great
Compromise. The unit involved the students
learning about the U.S. constitution and the
justice system. Using visual discourse analysis
(Albers, 2007), we studied students’ collages
and their oral and written responses to issues
around gender, a discussion that they initiated
and wanted to pursue after engaging in this
activity. Questions for this study included the
following: How do fifth grade students repre-
sent gender through art? How do fifth grade
students write about the choices that they made
in designing their representations? What can
be learned about children’s perceptions about
social issues such as gender when they are
afforded the opportunity to express their ideas
through art first, and then writing?
FIGURE 1
S5 Male: Collage With Written Comments That Reflect His Beliefs About Gender
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 87
A study that undertakes the analysis of
visual texts is significant for a number of rea-
sons. First, it is not enough anymore to simply
learn to read a book or print-based text; we
must learn to read and write our world (Freire
& Macedo, 1987), and especially the many
multimodal texts we encounter daily (Harste,
2003). Story (2007) suggests that we are
exposed to over 5,000 ads a day (1,825,000 per
year), ads that are targeted toward younger and
younger audiences (Quart, 2003), and repre-
sent all types of products, including, for exam-
ple, how gender is sold. Consider, for example,
how Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren represent
gender through the models they choose to wear
their clothing, or how home improvement
stores like Home Depot promote particular
colors to use as consumers consider how to
decorate their children’s rooms. Harste and
Albers (2013) conducted a study to understand
how teachers read and analyzed advertise-
ments in terms of social markers (e.g., gender,
race, class, religion). Teachers then created
counter ads to more deeply understand the
messages—especially visual—that are sent
through ads, and how educators can create crit-
ical classrooms that enable students to read
visual messages more critically.
Further, what it means to be literate contin-
ually shifts in its complexities as new technol-
ogies surface (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, &
Cammack, 2004). In 21st century literacies, all
semiotic systems (Hodge & Kress, 1988) and
objects as artifacts of our literacy practices
(Pahl & Rowsell, 2010) are understood as
“texts,” and in today’s world must be under-
stood as carrying significance. Students access
information using a range of networked tools
(e.g., smart phones, iPads, laptops) and social
media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Pinterest), and learn about others as much as
they learn about themselves through the use of
networked technologies. Said another way, the
objects/texts that students create are informed
not only by the content they read in schools but
by the out-of-school spaces (e.g., Internet,
family, community) in which they engage.
Given the role that 21st century learning plays
in today’s schools, especially in terms of how
ideas, beliefs, and information are presented
visually, it is critical that students analyze the
very texts they create. Perhaps, more than ever,
studies that explore the messages that students
create visually in classrooms must be under-
taken in order to create space for students to
discuss messages that may position gender
(and other social markers) in normative and
static ways.
Context of Study
Each year, David teaches his fifth gifted
grade class in an elementary school in the
South, about the U.S. Constitution, one of the
topics required in the curriculum of this
county. This article focuses on one semester
during which students studied informational
and literary texts that addressed content con-
cepts such as compromise, criminal and civil
law, and the constitution. In particular, stu-
dents studied historical information regarding
the Great Compromise, who was involved,
where they were from, and their cultural back-
grounds. As part of this unit, students were
positioned to think like those who wrote the
Constitution, and participated in a simulation
activity in which they had to negotiate and
generate rules to a game, and come to a “Great
Compromise.” This activity was designed for
one class period of 90 minutes. Students self-
divided into two groups, and decided to work
in same-sex groupings: One group had six girls
while the other had five boys. Each group was
told that to be successful in this activity, they
would have to come to some kind of agreement
or compromise so that each group could even-
tually play one another’s newly created game.
Each group was given an existing board game
that they were unfamiliar with. The rules of
how to play the game were removed. Each
group was asked to generate their own rules,
write them down, and create a list of materials
needed to play the game so that once the task
was completed, the other group could under-
stand how to play the game they had created.
We expected that each group would most
88 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
likely create different rules based upon their
discussion and ability to compromise. This
task was designed to simulate how the United
States Constitution was written with virtually
no rules in place. We wanted this group of stu-
dents to learn, understand, and experience
what the many men from different back-
grounds might have felt when they came
together in Philadelphia to agree on what
became known as the “Great Compromise.”
This activity required that groups compro-
mised and generated rules to create a new
game by which they could then begin to vicar-
iously experience the negotiations that the
writers of the U.S. Constitution may have in
the mid-1700s.
In the initial stages of this activity, David
noticed differences between how each group
worked. The boys’ group generated a number
of ideas, discussed them, and quickly compro-
mised and generated rules for the game in
approximately 60 minutes. Since the boys
completed the activity quickly, they immedi-
ately began to play the game that they had cre-
ated. The girls’ group spent the entire class
period and experienced some difficulty com-
promising and generating rules for their game.
They argued amongst themselves, and at
times, their voices became raised. By the time
the class ended, the girls’ group had only fin-
ished roughly half of the activity, and was
unable to play their created game.
Following this activity, David engaged his
students in a discussion of the group’s process
and product: What went well, how the negotia-
tions went, and how satisfied they were in their
engagement with this activity. Although David
expected that the conversation would focus on
the process and the game itself, students turned
the discussion into one that focused on how
gender informed their actions and talk in their
groups. An excerpt of this conversation is pre-
sented here:
David: (Addressing the girls) I noticed that
you all were really struggling with
getting anything accomplished and
written down on paper. Your group
just seemed to be arguing a lot and
were not compromising much, while
the boys’ group would argue some
but compromised and moved on.
What was going on in your group?
Barb: We were all speaking up and giving
our opinions and we couldn’t agree.
David: Why couldn’t you come to some
kind of an agreement?
Barb: Because when girls are all in the
same group, we don’t care what oth-
ers think. We can be more confident
in an all girls group and speak our
minds.
David: Why can’t girls be confident and
speak their minds in a mixed group?
Barb: That is not the way it is.
Cara: Boys have simple minds. They can
only be one thing.
Milly: Yea, they just like to get dirty.
Cara: Girls are more complex. They can be
girlie or tomboys.
Grady: I don’t like to get dirty. Does that
make me a tomgirl?
Barb: If you let us draw anything we want,
girls would draw butterflies and
flowers (The girls all nodded in
agreement). The boys would draw
some kind of weapon and gross stuff
(The boys all nodded in agreement).
Elaine: Also, if we are asked to write about
something, girls will write a bunch
of pages.
Jonah: And boys would only write about a
half a page.
This conversation surprised us. In this day
and age where gender differences and potential
are considered in a range of spaces (e.g., edu-
cation, jobs, military service), we were more
than puzzled at the students’ statements that
positioned females and males in traditional and
predictable behavioral and interest spaces. Stu-
dents’ interest in gender roles as represented
through their conversation precipitated by the
Great Compromise activity encouraged us to
abandon temporarily the U.S. Constitution
study and direct attention to this class’s study
of gender roles and identities. It was clear to us
that this group of students had a keen interest
and desire to engage in conversation about this
topic, as did we. Further, Barb’s statement
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 89
above particularly interested us as both of us
locate our research interests in the arts. We
wanted to know how gender roles played out
when students were invited to visually repre-
sent their ideas about gender.
Both David and Peggy independently have
worked with children and gender representa-
tion elsewhere (Albers, 2007; Albers et al.,
2009; Brown, 2012; Brown Albers, & Bell,
2013), and we were interested in working with
this group to explore this topic. Out of this con-
versation, then, we designed a qualitative
study that investigated how fifth grade stu-
dents perceived and enacted gender through
art, the writing about this art, and conversation.
Since this study was conducted in David’s
classroom, this was a sample of convenience,
one that we could study closely and contextu-
alized within what we already knew about the
students from the start of the semester.
A study of gender in classrooms is signifi-
cant in that images of females and males in
advertisements, commercials, music videos,
YouTube, and so on inform how young males
and females see themselves, their opportuni-
ties, and which shape how they, in turn,
respond to each other both orally and visually.
THEORETICAL FRAME AND
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Like Fairclough (2003), we argue that the pro-
cess of making meaning is multimodal and
socially constructed, and that the relationship
among and between words, images, sounds,
gestures (and so on) is intertextual. That is, stu-
dents learn to read, interpret and produce their
beliefs through multiple systems of meaning,
including the visual. Interesting to us is how
they develop (or how they have developed) a
language for representing meaning visually,
and how they become visually literate (Sinatra,
1986; Wileman, 1993). Visual literacy entails
the ability to read, interpret, and understand
information presented in pictorial or graphic
images. For these two scholars, meaning is
constructed through an active transaction
between past visual experiences with incoming
visual messages.
Also of importance in understanding visual
literacy is representation. Representation is a
process in which humans seek to make an
interpretation of some object or entity, whether
physical or intangible. In any semiotic system,
or language system (written/oral language,
music, dance, math, drama), representations
are only partial, and can never convey a per-
son’s entire meaning. Representations are
driven by our interest in the idea or object, and
informed by our cultural, social and psycho-
logical history and the specific context in
which the representation is produced. That is,
we make intentional decisions about what
physical and intangible ideas we want to
include or not include in representations,
which are always based within past and pres-
ent experiences. Further, as in written commu-
nication, the textmaker’s representation is as
much about her or him as it is about the view-
ers’ reading. In essence, representations make
visible the beliefs of the textmaker.
As critical literacy scholars and visual ana-
lysts argue, all images are ideological (Albers,
2011; Harste, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen,
2006). That is, images, like written language,
are fused with artists’/designers’ beliefs and
values. For example, an artist will produce an
image of a fat, juicy Burger King hamburger
swayed by BK’s marketers’ desires to entice
viewers into purchasing this product. Beliefs
inform meaning construction, and like BK’s
marketers, students’ beliefs about social
issues, the world, their community, and so on,
emerge in their visual construction of meaning
(Albers, 2007).
Beliefs about gender, like other social
markers (race, economics, religion, sexual ori-
entation, and so on), are created not just by lan-
guage but also by social images seen, read, and
encountered in the world. Although many in
society believe that gender equity has been
achieved, gender studies suggest otherwise
(Blackburn, 2007; Butler, 1990; Davies, 1993,
2000; Gurian & Stevens, 2005). Davies’
(1993) concept of male-female dualism and
90 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
Butler’s (1990) concept of gender as performa-
tivity inform this study. That is, our perspec-
tive takes into account the relationship
between gender rules and regulations as
“power regimes” in which gender is performed
in normative ways (males are masculine and
females are feminine) (Blackburn, 2007, p.
34). As humans, we learn “appropriate patterns
of desire” (Davies, 1993, p. 145), and our bod-
ies are often subjected within available dis-
courses of what constitutes masculine/
feminine. In essence, our bodies become the
selves we take them to be—either feminine or
masculine. We learn to recognize ourselves
within these appropriate patterns of desire, and
produce them in in-and-out-of-school texts
through “clichéd binaries (such as male/
female). Bodies then learn to recognize them-
selves through these binaries” (Davies et al.,
2001, p. 170).
In concert with this study, there is a body of
literature about children, gender identity, and
differences, especially at the elementary grade
level (Adler, Kless, & Alder, 1992; Albers et
al., 2009; Änggård, 2005; Butler, 1990, Marsh,
2000; Niemi, 2005; Paechter, 2007; Swain,
2005; West & Zimmerman, 1987). According
to Davies (1993) and West and Zimmerman
(1987), children are builders of their identities.
That is, children learn that being a child means
being a girl or a boy, and especially in school
settings. According to Adler et al. (1992),
“Elementary schools are powerful sites for the
construction of culturally patterned gender
relations” (p. 169), and by the time children
enter elementary school, they have clearly
established their gender identity and recog-
nize—and enact—the clichéd binaries of boy/
girl (Paechter, 2007).
Not only do children actively construct gen-
dered identities in schools, but schools “main-
tain gender inequity” and perhaps may work to
actually “lessen chances for women and men’s
equitable life opportunities” (Niemi, 2005, p.
483). In her study, Niemi interviewed middle
school students about what constitutes a “per-
fect student.” She found that students could not
separate their student identities with their gen-
dered identities. Boys positioned girls as quiet
and nicely dressed, and students who were
teacher pleasers and did all their homework.
Girls positioned boys as loud, careless and
messy, and procrastinators who cared little
about pleasing the teacher. In this study, stu-
dents articulated the appropriate patterns of
desire, and demonstrated how reified these
binaries become by middle grades. Similarly,
in a year-long ethnographic study of 10 to 11-
year-old boys in three U.K. schools with dif-
ferent socioeconomic statuses, Swain (2005),
found through interviews that many of the
boys had established beliefs about gender
binaries: “They are not us” (p.75). These boys
recognized who they were by establishing how
they were not like girls: quiet, less active, not
as competitive as boys, but admittedly more
mature. However, they positioned girls as hard
workers, much like themselves. Additionally,
Swain found through these interviews that
boys had developed labels for particular girl-
types: tomboys, silly, sensible, girlfriends, old-
fashioned, or weak.
In another project, eight preschool children
demonstrated established beliefs about gender
through books they composed (Änggård,
2005). The children’s teacher asked students to
write and illustrate books based on fairy tales
and popular cultural icons such as Pokémon
and Barbie. Through image and word, children
followed a gendered pattern: boys illustrated
and wrote stories filled with action complete
with male heroes and male characters only,
while girls illustrated and wrote stories
focused on love and romance, with princesses
and princes living happily ever after. She con-
cluded that children’s popular culture texts and
exposure to fairytales greatly inform the sto-
ries told and illustrated by young children.
By analyzing the drawings of 23 third grad-
ers, Albers et al. (2009), sought to understand
how students perceived the opposite sex
through image. After completing a unit where
the students explored gender through a number
of different genres, students were asked to
draw as if they were of the opposite sex.
Images fell along normative roles often
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 91
assigned to males and females. That is, boys
“as girls” drew passive images and activities,
flowers, unicorns, love-driven females, and
animals, while girls “as boys” drew fierce ani-
mals (dragons, lizards, snakes), and action-ori-
ented activities (sports, pilots, space travelers).
These researchers concluded that educators
and researchers must pay attention to how
illustration and image convey students’
beliefs, perhaps even more visibly than
through written or performative texts. Across
these studies, researchers have found little
change in how children and young adolescents
construct gender through image, and have
found evidence to suggest reified beliefs about
normative gender roles.
A series of studies investigated gender in
terms of achievement, self-concepts, and/or
performance. Several studies located in self-
concept focused on gender differences
between boys and girls (Cornell, Delcourt,
Goldberg, & Bland, 1995; Ross & Parker,
1980; Schneider, Clegg, Byrne, Ledingham, &
Crombie, 1989). After interviewing and
observing 14 girls identified as high achieving
by their teachers, Skelton, Francis, and Read
(2010), found that these adolescent gifted girls
had to negotiate between what it meant to be
high achieving and feminine in regards to
interactions with peers. They state, “It might
be assumed that these pressures are only expe-
rienced by girls who are struggling with school
work, but in the study of high achieving pupils,
it was the most academically successful girls
who found managing achievement alongside
‘doing girl’ particularly challenging” (p. 186).
The girls felt that to be accepted by their peers,
they had to take on a second persona of a not
being a high achiever in order to fit in. In a
study with male students at an all-male Catho-
lic high school, Thompson and Austin (2010)
found that adolescent males in this school had
formed typical gender stereotypes. This
seemed to be perpetuated by the fact that these
male students attended a single gender school.
The authors argued for “the need for parents
and teachers to help students who attend sin-
gle-sex schools do a better job of separating
the myths that surround gender socialization
from actual facts. Possessing good intentions
is not enough” (p. 440). Hargreaves, Homer,
and Swinnerton (2008) found that both male
and female gifted students had bought into the
gender stereotype that boys were better at math
than girls even though research shows this is
not the case. A further finding brought to light
that even when gifted girls performed as well
as gifted boys, the girls lacked confidence in
the math classroom. In a study that focused on
third and fourth grade gifted students, Olsze-
wski-Kubilius and Turner (2002) found that in
academics girls perceived themselves as being
better than boys in reading and writing while
the boys perceived themselves as achieving
better in science and math. With our study
focused on the role of art in gifted students’
perception of gender in a language arts setting,
we see this as adding to the literature in this
field.
METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this qualitative study was to
understand how gifted fifth grade students rep-
resented and communicated ideas about gen-
der, and how these experiences influenced
their perception of identity and differences.
Questions guiding this study included the fol-
lowing: How do fifth grade students, identified
as gifted, represent gender through art? How
do these fifth grade students talk about the
choices that they made in designing their rep-
resentations? What can be learned about gifted
students’ perceptions about social issues such
as gender when they are afforded the opportu-
nity to express their ideas through art and writ-
ing?
STUDY OVERVIEW
This study took place in David’s gifted educa-
tion classroom in a small suburban grade
school in the South in the fall of 2010 with
eleven fifth grade students. Students engaged
in a semester-long study called “Nothing but
92 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
the Truth,” in which they discussed ideas such
as compromise, criminal and civil law, and the
constitution. Emerging within this unit of
study were clear issues of gender. For exam-
ple, when the procedures around how the Con-
stitution was written, both boys and girls were
very verbal about how little voice women had
during this time period. Gender as a social
issue emerged again after participants had
worked in self-selected single-sex groupings in
the simulated game. Thus, a study that exam-
ined participants’ perceptions of gender was
paramount, especially given the male-domi-
nant topics within this unit. This research is
one slice of this semester-long study. Although
this study took place in a gifted education
classroom, we did not focus on “giftedness” as
part of the study. We did not focus on this fac-
tor when they constructed and interpreted their
visual texts and wrote their responses.
Role of the Researchers
This was David’s class, and his first year of
teaching fifth grade and gifted students.
Because this was a gifted class, David was not
limited to adhering to a strict curriculum and
had flexibility in how long and how deep he
engaged students in studying concepts and
content. For example, if students wanted to
investigate a topic that was an extension of the
county gifted curriculum (as represented in
their interest in discussing gender), David
could offer them this opportunity. He did not
have the constraints placed upon teachers in
content area classrooms (e.g., math, science,
language arts, social studies), and did not have
to focus on the standards that eventually leads
to testing. As a result of this flexibility, David
had freedom to teach through many different
ways because he did not have to worry about
student scores on the standardized tests. As a
vital part of his beliefs, David taught content
and invited students to create art projects,
skits, music, particularly drama and visual arts,
and offered them opportunities to teach the
class as well. Because of Peggy’s expertise in
analyzing visual texts, David invited her to
participate in this study to more systematically
understand how students represented gender
and to what extent their beliefs about what
girls and boys are interested in emerged in
these texts.
Participants
Eleven fifth-grade students were in David’s
class, 5 boys and 6 girls; however, only 4 boys
and 4 girls participated in the study. One boy
chose not to do the writing and, thus, removed
himself from this study, while the mother of
one of the girls who wanted to participate did
not give permission. One girl voluntarily
removed herself from the study giving no rea-
son. Participant make-up was diverse. One girl
was Indian, one African, and two Hispanic; all
boys were European American. All students
were in a gifted program at this school. The
school had 814 students with a diverse popula-
tion. The gifted program makes up 20% of the
school’s population and is highly diverse just
as the school’s overall population.
Procedures
After the conversation we presented in the
introduction, we designed an experience for
students that involved their production of col-
lages, writing about these collages, and our
own analysis of these two expressive pieces.
This experience was based upon a study about
gender beliefs that Peggy conducted in a third
grade classroom (Albers et al., 2009). Girls in
this 6-week study were asked to draw what
they believed boys were interested in and boys
were to draw what they thought girls were
interested in. In David’s class, we wanted to
see if age would be a factor in how students
represented gender.
Instructions for creating collages were sim-
ple and direct. We asked students to complete
this assignment at home so that they were not
restricted by an allotted class time. Further,
students could choose from the materials that
they had at home. With the diversity of this
small group of participants, we thought that the
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 93
images that they chose might also reflect other
aspects of gender based upon materials that
they have access to at home. We asked partici-
pants to choose five pictures from magazines
and/or newspapers in which they felt girls
might identify. They could focus on objects,
colors, and/or symbols; we asked them not to
include pictures of faces or people. Next, we
instructed them to do the same with pictures
with which they felt boys might identify. We
then asked them to take their collection of ten
pictures and create a collage; we gave them no
other instructions on which orientation these
collages should take (vertical/horizontal), how
big the collage could be, or how they orga-
nized the objects in their collage. David sup-
plied the art materials that students used to
create their collages. After they had finished
their collage, they were instructed to write
about why they chose their ten pictures and
how they composed their collage. Students
wrote between one and two pages about their
process of creating the collage. Students cre-
ated their collages and wrote their responses at
home.
Data Collection
Data for this study included both the collage
and participants’ writing. A visual arts-based
participatory method (Leavy, 2009) was cho-
sen as a way to collect data from participants
as a way to understand their perception of gen-
der identity and differences. This method is
appropriate for gender research because it
allows the researcher “to qualitatively investi-
gate the relationship between visual culture
and changing relations of dominance and
oppression” (Leavy, 2009, p. 221). Familiar
with representing through art, participants
were asked to create a collage composed of
paper objects cut and pasted onto a large piece
of paper, which when read collectively, sym-
bolized their concept of identity and gender
differences. As researchers interested in the
arts, we wanted to see—literally—how this
group of participants understood identity and
gender roles. In essence, we wanted “to see the
world through students’ eyes” (Nash, 1982, p.
36).
To understand whether we saw what partic-
ipants were thinking, we also asked them to
write about their collage. Writing about their
collages served two purposes. First, partici-
pants explained their choices of pictures and
composition, and our interpretations could be
confirmed or disconfirmed. Second, writing
alongside the collages was aligned with the
school’s strategic plan to focus on writing, and
was in line with the fifth grade state and county
writing standards. It also allowed us to see if
our analysis of their collages was in line with
their intentions when creating them.
Data Analysis
Once the collages and writing had been
completed, both authors studied each of the
participant’s written statements and visual
texts independently. We then met together to
discuss our codes and findings. When we
agreed on a finding, we recorded it. We also
studied the written data and identified com-
ments that appropriated gender (“Boys always
like violent things. They just do.”). Students’
writing also enabled us to understand to what
extent that students had concrete and stable
concepts of gender (“They just do.”). By
studying the written text that students gener-
ated, we were able to read, in part, their under-
standing of gender. However, the collages—
the visual information—also gave us addi-
tional information about their beliefs about
gender that the written text did not. To study
the visual texts—the collages—we used visual
discourse analysis (Albers, 2007). Visual dis-
course analysis, informed by Gee’s (2005) dis-
course analysis and Kress and van Leeuwen’s
(2006) grammar of visual design, is concerned
with analyzing visual texts (student collages),
their visual marks and use of space, and the
contexts in which art as a language is used. A
visual text is a structure of messages within
which are embedded social conventions and/or
perceptions, and which also presents the dis-
course communities to which the visual text-
94 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
maker identifies (Kress & van Leeuwen,
2006). In short, visual discourse analysis is a
method of analyzing visual information that
enabled us to study how messages are con-
veyed and how elements and objects in student
collages mean. That is, we studied each stu-
dent’s collage and noted objects in the four
areas of the canvas, size and placement of
objects to determine significance, and the dis-
courses that underpin the art objects and ele-
ments. Specifically, we initially studied each
collage for objects chosen to represent gender,
and size, volume and organization of these
objects on the canvas to understand how stu-
dents represented gender visually. For exam-
ple, we use Figure 1 to demonstrate our
process of analysis. This male student oriented
the collage horizontally, read left-to-right, with
boys’ interests on the left and read first like a
story. This student has graphically organized
his collage as separate objects, but implicitly
connects them to tell his story of how he sees
gender (Albers, 2010). Overall, visually, he
suggests that boys are interested in science fic-
tion/fantasy, videogames, and construction.
Within this visual text, each object has differ-
ent weights. That Superman appears in the
upper left hand corner and is the largest of all
of the images suggests the significance of how
he sees males as heroes and in action-packed
spaces. His written text on the visual text is
declarative in nature: “Boys like Superheroes.”
“Boys like robots and aliens.” His written
response offers more explanation about how
he understands gender: “Boys like superheroes
because they have superpowers and fight evil.”
While his pictures show what boys like, in his
written response he includes attributes associ-
ated with males: “creative,” “skillful,” and
“strategic.” His representation of females is
essentialist in a similar way to that of his repre-
sentation of boys: Girls like the color pink.
Girls like butterflies.” Interesting on this
image is his explanation, “The reason I drew
these pictures is because I couldn’t find any
magazines with these pictures.” This explana-
tion references the materials that he had access
to at home. Also interesting is that he could not
find images in any magazines that referenced
girls’ interests suggests that he had specific
objects in mind when he considered what girls
find interesting.
To study gender beliefs across girls and
boys, we generated a table that included their
images and texts. This enabled us to analyze
both language systems and across boys and
girls (see sample analysis in Table 1). This
analysis allowed us to look carefully and
closely at what other beliefs about gender
these students generated through both written
text and visual images.
When analyzing written and visual data, we
theoretically invoke Greene’s (1988) concept
of the dialectic of freedom in which we open
spaces around which we, as artists and
researchers, have creatively played in for
years. Greene writes about the significance of
the arts,
for those authentically concerned about the
‘birth of meaning,’ about breaking through
the surfaces, about teaching others to ‘read’
their own worlds, art forms must be con-
ceived of as an ever-present possibility. They
ought not to be treated as decorative, as friv-
olous. They ought to be, if transformative
teaching is our concern, a central part of the
curriculum. (p. 131)
Greene’s words situate precisely our work
with these participants. The arts give permis-
sion for students to be different, to open up dia-
logue with others, and to engage the intellect
through multiple symbol systems.
Limitations
We understand that this study has limita-
tions. First, the data was limited by the number
of students in this class who participated in this
study. Although we had only eight partici-
pants, we were able to understand this study in
the context of other studies that confirmed
gender stability in visual and written represen-
tations. Findings from this study are not meant
to generalize across populations, but offer
insights into the significance that visual texts
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 95
play in understanding “what else” students
express in such texts.
FINDINGS
We discuss two findings from this research,
language of gender as stable essence and dis-
courses of gender.
Language of Gender is a Stable Essence
Similar to other researchers, especially
Blackburn (2007), we found the participants
used written and visual language that essential-
ized and stabilized their perceptions of gender.
Written language operated as a way to empha-
size gendered characteristics (authors high-
light language through bold italics), “Boys
“love, love, LOVE video games” or “Boys are
sometimes violent but always like violent
things (bullets) because they just do.” Partici-
pants used strong action-oriented words with
boys’ activities (“Boys take risks,” “Boys
fight evil,” and used passive words with girls’
activities, “Girls like feminine things,” “Girls
want to be fashionable,” or “Girls are decep-
tive.” Through active voice, repetition, and
superlatives (e.g., always, absolute best) boys
do and girls are. The essence of girlness and
boyness is captured confidently and succinctly
in these statements.
Across the four girls, they had stable and
essentialized beliefs about gender. In gender,
they described objects and concepts important
to them: appearance, relationships, beauty
TABLE 1
Sample Analysis of Both Written and Visual Texts
96 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
(nature and appearance), caregiving, reading
books, and particular animals (dogs and bun-
nies). They described themselves as “caregiv-
ers” who “like to play house.” They “plant
gardens but don’t dig.” “Girls put a lot of care
into their appearance,” but one girl wrote that
“girls talk bad about other girls who do not
dress right.” Across the girls, they valued rela-
tionships, friends, saw themselves as intellec-
tuals, and associated themselves with children
and families. Girls “read, but not just books but
book reviews.” Girls also like the color pink
and “girly movies.” Like the girls, boys associ-
ated girls with the particular objects, colors,
and activities. All the boys wrote that girls like
the color pink, like flowers, and care about
their appearance: Girls like “feminine
things”—smell nice, flowers, ballet (finer
things). They like to smell good and like things
that look nice.” One wrote that “girls like to
show off clothing, and like to be flawless/ per-
fect.” Across the four boys, they understood
girls as liking pretty things, pink, and nature,
but they like harmless things in nature.
In general, boys saw themselves in super-
hero roles, playing sports, and that they like to
“get dirty and get down.” Boys saw themselves
as risk-takers who “like going fast,” who like
“power,” are “strong,” and like “building” and
“being creative.” Unlike the girls who like
color, boys are “plain” and “care little about
our appearance.” Boys associated themselves
with aliens and robots, racecars, “crazy and
nutty” activities, and like being “raw at times”
(in terms of their language). Like the boys,
girls positioned boys’ interests in similar ways.
They saw boys as not caring about their
appearance calling them “messy.” Boys like
“action figures,” “scary things,” and animals
(dinosaurs and spiders). They also like new
technologies like “videogames,” “cool
watches,” and the fast cars. Girls located boys
FIGURE 2
S1 Female: Objects Essentialize Gender in Collage
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 97
in metaphors of strength like lions, “because
they think they are kings,” and alligators.
Visually, participants used objects that con-
firmed the essence of boyness and girlness. In
Figure 2, this female participant emphasizes
through object repetition that boys “love
sports.” Repetition of the football image both
suggests comfort with an object/concept/activ-
ity and functions as a visual adverb (e.g., “boys
like to play sports a lot”). Additionally, the size
of the racecar and its gaze that boldly meets the
viewer’s eye suggest the significance of cars,
specifically racing cars, because “boys love to
race each other.”
In Figure 3, this participant essentializes
gender through both his writing and his col-
lage. This participant has clear cut ideas of
what girls like and conveys them almost like a
mantra, “girls like little kids”; “girls like lots of
colors”; and “girls like animals.” Although this
participant also includes animals, he clearly
shows that boys like lions, “because they think
they are the kings like lions. There sometimes
violent but always like violent” (sic). Violence
is portrayed in the magazine of bullets, and the
poisonous snake and crocodile—both of which
can cause great harm, and which, according to
this participant, is something that boys like.
While situating these objects with boys, this
participant cannot imagine these objects asso-
ciated with other types of activities like herpe-
tologists, sharpshooters, or veterinarians. Like
in Figure 2, this student also uses size to con-
vey level of interest. The lion is the largest
image, while the magazine of bullets is in the
upper or ideal part of the image. The reptiles
ground the boys’ interests while scenery and
infants ground the girls’ interests, narratives
about gender that are corroborated in his writ-
ing. In general, flowers, perfume, and shop-
ping were clearly marked as significant to
girls’ interests and activities, while sports,
cars, getting dirty, violence, and building were
associated with boys.
Gendered Discourses Emerged
Across participants, larger discourses of
what it means to be a boy or girl emerged in
both writing and image. There were clear and
identifiable ways in which both girls and boys
talked about their interests and actions. Figure
4 is an excerpt of a longer response written by
a girl who has identified objects about girls
that signal clear gender roles and activities. For
her, girlness is a discourse that has “obvious”
markers that signal identity: the color pink,
princesses, baking, and jewelry. Together,
these markers build toward a discourse of
domesticity, girls comfortable inside the
house. For her, a pink cupcake is an “obvious”
symbol of femininity, one that captures the
essence of a girl’s softness and a girl’s love of
pink—a color always associated with girls.
FIGURE 3
S3 Male: Objects and Language Essentialize Gender
98 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
Like the color pink, a princess is an “obvious”
character girls use when writing stories,” and
one who is nearly always saved by a prince,
again reinforcing the idea of “softness.” Rather
than see girls as having careers in baking, she
sees baking as a “hobby”—an activity that is
not taken seriously and, thus, would be of no
interest to boys. And, jewelry signals the
importance of a girl’s desire to be beautiful—
“something that girls can’t survive without.”
That this piece of jewelry is a ring is not hap-
hazard and seals her role as a housewife.
Discourses also emerged in the visual texts
that students created. In Figure 5, this boy’s
object selections suggest that boys take risks
(e.g., racing) and enjoy sports while girls
become fashionably pretty (e.g., perfume,
shopping). These objects clearly identify con-
cepts associated with femaleness and male-
ness. Boys were associated with cars, food
(consumers), sports, dangerous cartoons
(Jaws), building (Legos), activities that offer
them opportunities to “get dirty,” “take risks,”
and enjoy “violent things.” Girls were associ-
ated with books, cartoons (nice, Snoopy), writ-
ing, and “feminine things” (smell nice,
flowers, ballet, babies, fashion). Objects were
repeated across participants, and ideas about
gender confirmed through image and written
text. That participants continue to view each
other in predictable, essentialist ways suggests
that larger discourses about how girls and boys
are viewed and communicated are stable and
in place in this site. Further, we found it inter-
esting that only two participants in this group
mentioned popular culture and digital litera-
cies as a part of their world—video games and
superheroes—both of which were associated
with boys’ activities.
DISCUSSION
Although gender is a topic that has been writ-
ten about, we believe that classroom research
such that we presented be more fully explored
and conducted in today’s classrooms. That stu-
dents in today’s classrooms have essentialist
views about gender is an issue when females
are becoming more visible as political leaders,
chief executive officers, race car drivers, pho-
tographers (doers), et cetera, and males are
featured prominently as perfume and clothing
designers, cooks, and home decorators (doers
FIGURE 4
S7 Female: Excerpt of Written Response
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 99
with a feminine touch). That baking and cup-
cakes are considered a “hobby” and “soft,”
according to one of the female participants, is
problematic. Cupcake shops have sprouted up
everywhere, and baking cupcakes, as is repre-
sented by the TV show “Cupcake Wars,” is a
career dominated by female business owners.
This research suggests that essentialized con-
cepts of gender must be challenged and taken
up in the classroom, disrupted with texts that
present gender in more contemporary sites,
and binaries discussed regarding boys and girls
activities.
This study also provides some evidence to
suggest that educators must pay attention to
the representations that students create in class
as they signal the beliefs that students bring to
that representation. That students chose spe-
cific objects to represent girls’ and boys’ inter-
ests suggests that these representations were
informed by what they have learned about
boys and girls through the many texts (e.g.,
cultural, visual, musical, and so on) they
encounter daily. By intentionally cutting out
objects in a magazine or drawing specific
objects, students made decisions about what
physical and tangible ideas they thought repre-
sented boys’ and girls’ interests. By creating
their collages and writing about why they
chose these objects, students revealed as much
about girls’ and boys’ interests as they did
about their own beliefs about what constitutes
femaleness and maleness. Further, by creating
collages and writing responses to those col-
FIGURE 5
S2 Male: Visual Representation of Gender. Objects Operate as Markers of Gender Interests.
100 Middle Grades Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 2014
lages, this group of students performed gender
roles. That is, as they created these texts, they
performed what it was that they thought girls
and boys liked and/or were interested in.
Vicariously, for this activity, they had to take
on what they thought the opposite gender
might find interesting, as well as perform their
own interests and likes as a boy or girl. Even
though the assignment was to encourage stu-
dents to create a text that represented what
boys and girls liked and were interested in,
only one student actually disrupted, in part,
static gender roles. In this way, gender roles
for this group of students, at this time and in
this context, were performed both visually and
through writing in normative and clichéd bina-
ries (males are masculine and females are fem-
inine) (Blackburn, 2007).
This work invites us to consider the signifi-
cance of how an activity is introduced and dis-
cussed. By situating gender as a binary, boys
and girls articulated the very binaries we had
hoped to dismantle, a result we did not neces-
sary set out to do. Although we invited stu-
dents to consider what boys and girls like, we
had hoped for more complex understandings
of gender, and written statements that sug-
gested that both boys and girls share similar
interests. We had anticipated that this group of
students might consider gender as a set of per-
formances in which girls can also like “cars”
and be “sports car drivers” and boys can also
“like little kids” or “animals.” In doing this
engagement, we realize that how we introduce
a concept or invite students to engage in com-
plex and critical discussions, we have to care-
fully consider the images and texts that we
select to generate discussions on social issues
such as gender.
Such performances in activities and assign-
ments then call for continued disruption of
static and normative beliefs and patterns of
behaviors in classroom settings. We suggest
that even though students were studying the
Constitution, they initiated discussions that
surfaced around social markers like gender.
Rather than push these conversations aside, we
argue that it is important to offer them a dia-
logic space in which to explore this concept
further and within their own experiences. To
do so suggests a need for curriculum that
allows for this flexibility and time. Further, we
must disrupt the emphasis on memorization of
content through standardized testing and fore-
front thoughtful discussion of, for example,
historical content that position students to
think in binaries: males do (the Constitution)
and females do not (make large decisions).
When students learn content that essentializes
gender, concepts about gender may become
stabilized, and representation will most likely
remain stable and predictable. Educators must
listen for essentialized notions of social mark-
ers (e.g., gender, race, sexual orientation, and
so on) and actively engage students in discus-
sions that disrupt common assumptions about
them. In this way, contemporary and critical
perspectives can be fostered and developed.
This research also surprised us that in the
21st century both girls and boys did not see
themselves in 21st century spaces. The Pew
Report (2010) and Kaiser Family Foundation
(2010) found that children between the ages of
8-18 spend over 10 hours/day using media.
Somehow, students are still sent the message
that out-of-school literacies play insignifi-
cantly in their school lives. That only one par-
ticipant represented boys and girls as using cell
phones surprised us. We wondered if students
believe that their out-of-school interests have
no place in school assignments.
This study was designed to encourage dis-
cussions of gender, especially since students
took up this topic in the study of history.
Although it might be viewed that we set up stu-
dents to write/draw in particular ways when
we explored gender, we continue to believe
that such engagements engender strong and
thoughtful discussions of social markers,
which will lead to changing perspectives.
CONCLUSION
As we continue to work with gender issues
within all content areas (language arts, social
Visualizing Gender With Fifth Grade Students 101
studies), and across language systems (written,
visual), we hope students will begin to see
themselves not in clichéd binaries, as Black-
burn (2007) argues is often the case, but as
members of a democratic society in which
issues of gender are discussed, disrupted, and
debated. With the face of U.S. elections chang-
ing (e.g., Hilary Clinton’s and Michele Bach-
mann’s presidential runs), we hope that
discussions of social markers of identity, such
as gender, be a regular part of instruction. With
standardized tests valuing students’ rearticula-
tion and memorization of content, the pressure
for educators to teach content is great; how-
ever, even more needed are discussions around
issues that arise in content that situate gender
as binary. Further, the integration of visual
representations as a significant part of instruc-
tion may allow teachers to see what students
believe. Students may talk a good story, but
what else can we know about them when we
see their visual representations of content and
issues?
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Publications.
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