A STUDY of GENDERING CULTURE of NEW TAIWANESE CHILDREN in THEIR KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOMS a Dissertation Submitted to the Kent
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A STUDY OF GENDERING CULTURE OF NEW TAIWANESE CHILDREN IN THEIR KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOMS A dissertation submitted to the Kent State University College and Graduate School of Education, Health, and Human Services in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Yu-Hui Chou August, 2011 © Copyright, 2011 by Yu-Hui Chou All Rights Reserved ii A dissertation written by Yu-Hui Chou B. A., Chinese Culture University, Taiwan, 1985 B. A., University of Missouri-Columbia, U.S., 1992 M.A., University of Missouri-Columbia, U.S., 1994 Ph.D., Kent State University, U.S., 2011 Approved by , Director, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Janice Kroeger , Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Alicia R. Crowe , Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Natasha Levinson , Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Huey-Li Li Accepted by , Director, School of Teaching, Learning, and Alexa L. Sandmann Curriculum Studies , Dean, College and Graduate School of Daniel F. Mahony Education, Health, and Human Services iii CHOU, YU-HUI, Ph.D., August 2011 TEACHING, LEADERSHIP, AND CURRICULUM STUDIES A STUDY OF GENDERING CULTURE OF NEW TAIWANESE CHILDREN IN THEIR KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOMS (515 pp.) Director of Dissertation: Janice Kroeger, Ph.D. Current literature suggests that young children can socially construct gender identities when submitting to or resisting dominant discourses. In this study I sought to understand the gendered culture of contemporary Taiwanese kindergartens. I focused on how Taiwanese Children (NTC) and mainstream Taiwanese peers play together as they constructed gender identities in urban and rural classroom settings. I observed and interviewed five- and six-year-old NTC and their peers as they engaged in critical gender incidents related to male, female, and cross-gender play. The research addressed how NTC and their peers enacted multiple gender performances as daily experiences continually shaped and reshaped children’s gender-doing, and investigated how NTC maintained and resisted gender norms under dominant gender discourse. The research questions asked: What constitutes children’s gendered knowledge and how do children perform gender culture?; and How do children represent gendered social order in class? NTC’s gender identity often represents multiple levels of gender power, which relates to issues of SES, ethnicity and family culture backgrounds. It is insufficient to examine individual NTC’s gender-doing; only when her or his peer interactions have happened can gender incidents display local children’s specific gender culture. As such, I explored how NTC persistently build gendered knowledge, gendered social orders and gender identities by tracking critical incidents within local school culture and family settings. This study reveals where NTC’s gender identities intersect with gendered knowledge and classroom gender culture. From these conclusions, I highlighted the importance of classroom gender norms and gender education in early childhood education. The results indicate that the constellation of gendered classroom activities makes it difficult to create the most advantageous learning environment, and that teachers need to be sensitive to different social classes, ethnicity, language and activities so NTC can co-construct gender culture with mainstream peers. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to be Dr. Janice Kroeger’s first Ph.D. student. I appreciate her endless patience to help me by reading my drafts, posing questions and pushing me to rewrite and revise my dissertation. I would like to thank my committee, Dr. Natasha Levinson, Dr. Huey-Li Li, moderator Dr. Sara Newman, and especially Dr. Alicia Crowe for providing consistent support and inspiration throughout the process. Their standards challenged me to consider possible theoretical interpretations of my study. I am also especially thankful for the participants who chose to share their classroom lives and immigrant experiences. The study would not have been possible without classroom Teacher Su, Teacher Chen, and Teacher Wang (pseudonyms), the parents, and their kindergarten children. The contributions of my advisor, committee, and participants helped me to finish this dissertation. In particular, I am grateful to Director Jeanne Smith’s tutors in the Kent State University Writing Center, and later the Writing Commons, for helping me to discuss and revise drafts over the course of six years. Writing tutors helped me throughout the writing process: Jason Csehi, Dan MacGregor, Dayna Goldstein, John Tamplin, Anthony Garrison, Joshua Coblentz, Erin Maxwell, Erica Copeland, Jean Nasvytis, Nikki Lentz, Jessica Joseph, Vanessa Sellers, Wayne Elliott, Brian Russ, Tao Zheng, Daae Jung, Jessica Heffner, Curtis Scheck, Kyle Roerink, Jessica Krieger, Rachel Nordhoff, Heather Haden, and Jonathan Tietz. I am especially grateful to Linda L. Meixner, Jason Csehi, Deb DeBenedictis, and Thomas Welsh, who edited my semester papers, conference papers and dissertation at every stage of my study. iv My study peers, Thomas Welsh, Deb DeBenedictis, Diane Craig, Maria Shaheen, Wendie Willis, Carie Greene, Anita Levine, Xin Zuo, and Ji-Young Choi, provided help and opportunities for discussion at every stage of my study. My good friends and fellow international students Jyh-Shyan Lan, Hsien-Hong Lin, Wei-Hung Cheng, Fang-Yu Lin, Shu-Fen Chiu, Rui Cao, Lin-Yan Luan, and Kamonwan Kerdnaimongkol always helped me whenever I had personal issues that needed to be addressed. I am also grateful to the many learned professors whose academic achievements and teaching attitudes have served as excellent role models. I also pay my compliments to the KSU Library for providing a study carrel where I wrote this dissertation. The assessable interlibrary loan greatly helped with research, as did the knowledgeable librarians. The rich study environment enabled me to write and think clearly. I also give thanks to Gerald H. Read Center for International and Intercultural Education. The Director, Dr. Linda Robertson, provided many opportunities to know international education and educators. The Women’s Resource Center held Brown Bag Lunches, where I became involved in activities surrounding gender issues and discussed gender concerns on campus. I also thank The English Proficiency Center for teaching me to be a professional presenter at academic conferences. The working families of Sherry Tian, Liyun Lia, Ning Lee, and Annie Sun helped me immensely as well. My host family, led by Phyllis Armstrong, invited me to go to her family’s Christmas dinner, their daughter’s wedding ceremony, her church’s Thanksgiving dinner and let me experience American customs. She is on a mission to the Middle East, and I wish her well and a safe return soon. v I also appreciate my department, the Department of Early Childhood Care and Education, at Tajen University in Taiwan. My colleagues kept in touch with me and shared my duties during my study years. My colleague, Ren-Mian Kou, often discussed studies and teaching via e-mail. My high school teacher, Li-Ping Chiu, encouraged me via e-mail from Australia every week. My friends, Shu-Ying Chang and Hsiao-Wei Chang, retired ECE teachers, always e-mailed me from Taiwan to offer encouragement. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the endless generosity and patience of my family. I am grateful to my father and mother, Te-Yi Chou and Hsiu-Lan Su, for the encouragement and love that they have consistently given me throughout my life. Also, I owe special thanks to my sisters, Phone-Hua Chou, Phone-Mei Chou and Phone-Yu Chou, and my bother Liang-Shu Chou and cousins, Phone-Tz Chou, Hsueh-Mei Su and Bonnie Baker, for their support and companionship. My nephew, Yau-Ren Huang and niece, Kuang-Huei Huang, used Skype to share their study abroad and immigrant experiences with me. My nieces, Jessica Cheng and Celine Cheng, continually e-mailed me about how they resisted dominant courses to be mainstream Taiwanese female students and the stories about their immigrant classmates in Taiwan. I am particularly grateful to my 11-year-old niece, Winnie Cheng, who told me her gendered experiences as a Taiwanese kindergartener and displayed her cross-cultural experience as an international student in an American elementary school for one year. Their collective life experiences prompted me to think about how gendered childhood is intertwined within various and indefinite power structures. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................ iv LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xix CHAPTER Page I RESEARCH PURPOSES ......................................................................................... 1 Interpreting Kindergartners’ Gender Culture ..............................................................1 Rationale for Study .....................................................................................................1 Problems Resulting from Transnational Marriages in Taiwan...........................1 Changing demographics ...........................................................................1 Personal reasons ........................................................................................3 Background of the Study ............................................................................................4 East Asian Paradigms for Gender Roles ...........................................................5