Language and Gender in Educational Contexts

This chapter reviews trends in educational research on language and gender in recent decades around the world and across ethnic groups. To make sense of these trends, we draw on the dominance, difference, and diversity paradigms, while noting that the boundaries between these approaches at times become blurred in individual research studies. In reviewing language and gender findings, we examine in particular three areas of educational research: classroom interaction, literacy, and second-language learning. For each area, we discuss principal themes and exemplary studies. Observing that quantitative research on gender differences seems to be on the rise, we call for renewed attention to thoroughly contextualizing and theorizing research results.