Gender and English Language Learners: Challenges and Possibilities

INTRODUCTION During the past decade, several scholars in the fields of language education, second language acquisition, and bilingualism have addressed the influence of gender on access to linguistic and interactional resources, on dynamics of classroom interaction, and on language learning outcomes (Ehrlich, 1997; Norton, 2000; Pavlenko, 2001; Pavlenko et al., 2001; Sunderland, 2000). The field of TESOL has also exhibited a growing interest in the impact of gender on ESL and EFL learning, seen in the increasing number of plenaries, panels, discussion groups, and papers on the topic. Yet the nature of the connection between the two phenomena, gender and language learning, remains elusive, or rather it is seen differently by different scholars and educators. Some studies continue to appeal to variationist and interactional sociolinguistics methodology, treating gender as a variable, while others, grounded in critical, poststructuralist, and feminist theory, approach gender as a system of social relations and discursive practices. It is the latter approach that informs this introduction and most of the contributions to the volume. In what follows, we will discuss the feminist poststructuralist view of gender, outline its role in the context of ESL and EFL learning, and show how the contributions to this volume enrich TESOL theory and praxis, illuminating the key features of critical feminist pedagogy in TESOL.