Constructing Gendered Identities and Agency through Classroom Discourse in a Foreign Language Learning Context

Abstract

This study investigates constructing gendered identities and agency through classroom discourse in a foreign language context by drawing on data collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations in two Foundation Institutes in the Arabian Gulf. Informed by poststructural feminism, Foucault’s (1972) power relations, and Butler’s (2004) performativity theories, the article investigates how students’ behaviors in the Gulf tertiary classroom affect their academic performance and their personality construction. The findings suggest that the students’ gendered identities were shaped as an effect of their cultural construction, which remarkably affected the way they learn. The findings also illustrate how modern education has a positive influence on learners as a means to mitigate gender sensitivity issues inside the classroom. These findings have implications for educators and curriculum designers that the learner’s identities and agency must be acknowledged in the first place, and the prior knowledge of gender influence on learning can enhance the educational process to be more effective.