Written Communication Jan 1996

“Just Girls”: Literacy and Allegiance in Junior High School

MARGARET J. FINDERS

Abstract

Drawing from a year-long ethnographic study that follows four early adolescent girls (two sets of self-proclaimed best friends and their larger circle of girlfriends) from May of their sixth-grade year through the completion of seventh grade, this article examines how (a) focal students comply with and resist official institutional expectations, (b) participation in the classroom is influenced by the underlife present within the school, and (c) one's membership within groups regulates literate practices. The author argues that students' performances within the classroom cannot be free from sociopolitical tangles. As newcomers to junior high, these girls had limited ways in which to assert identity or seek power. Literacy proved a tangible means by which to document social allegiances, claim status, and challenge authority. In conclusion, this study challenges many of the commonly held assumptions about appropriate pedagogy for adolescents.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
1996-01-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088396013001005
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy qualitative research literacy studies
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (59) · 1 in this index

  1. American Association of University Women
    How schools shortchange girls: A study of the major findings of girls and education
  2. Apple, M.
    Teachers and texts: A political economy of class and gender relations in education
  3. Atwell, N.
    In the middle: Writing, reading and learning with adolescents
  4. Bakhtin, M. M.
    The dialogic imagination
  5. Belenky, M. F.
    Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind
Show all 59 →
  1. Britton, J.
    Language and learning
  2. Brooke, R.
    Writing and sense of self: Identity negotiation in writing workshops
  3. Brooks-Gunn, J.
    At the threshold: The developing adolescent
  4. Brown, B. B.
    At the threshold: The developing adolescent
  5. Burke, K.
    The rhetorical tradition: Reading from classical times to the present
  6. Cazden, C.
    Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning
  7. Cherland, M.
    Private practices: Girls reading fiction and constructing identity
  8. Coleman, J. S.
    The adolescent society
  9. Comer, J. P.
    Adolescence in the 1990s
  10. 10.17763/haer.58.3.c43481778r528qw4
     ↗
  11. Delpit, L. (1991)
    10.58680/la199125323
    Language Arts  ↗
  12. DYSON (1992)
    The Case of the Singing Scientist: A Performance Perspective on the “Stages” of…
    Written Communication
  13. Eckert, P.
    Jocks and burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school
  14. Erickson. F.
    Handbook of research on teaching
  15. Everhart, R.
    Reading, writing and resistance: Adolescence and labor in a junior high school
     ↗
  16. Feldman, S.
    At the threshold: The developing adolescent
  17. Fine, M.
    Gender and education: Ninety-second yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education
  18. Foley, D.
    Learning capitalist culture: Deep in the heart of Tejas
  19. Gee, J.
    Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses
  20. Gilbert, P.
    Language, authority and criticism: Readings on the school textbook
  21. Gilbert, P.
    Towards a critical sociology of reading pedagogy
  22. Gilligan, C.
    Moral voice: Adolescent development and secondary education
  23. Gilligan, C.
    Making connections: The relational worlds of adolescent girls at the Emma Willard School
  24. Gilligan, C.
    Mapping the moral domain: A contribution of women's thinking to psychology and education
     ↗
  25. Goffman, E.
    The presentation of self in everyday life
     ↗
  26. Goffman, E.
    Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates
     ↗
  27. Goffman, E.
    Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience
  28. Graves, D.
    Writing: Teachers and children at work
  29. Griffin, C.
    Typical girls: Young women from school to the job market
  30. Heath, S. B.
    Spoken and written language: Exploring orality and literacy
  31. Hines, M. B. (1992)
    Iowa English Bulletin
  32. Kamler, B. (1993)
    10.58680/la199324679
    Language Arts  ↗
  33. MacLeod, J.
    Ain't no makin' it: Leveled aspirations in a low-income neighborhood
  34. 10.2307/378334
     ↗
  35. Pratt, M. L.
    Profession 91
  36. 10.1080/0013191910430206
     ↗
  37. Romano, T.
    Clearing the way: Working with teenage writers
  38. Sadker, M. (1986)
    Phi Delta Kappan
  39. Sadker, M.
    Failing at fairness: How America's schools cheat girls
  40. Santrock, J. W.
    Adolescence: An introduction
  41. Schlegel, A.
    Adolescence: An anthropological inquiry
  42. Scott, J.
    Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts
  43. Shuman, A.
    Storytelling rights: The uses of oral and written texts by urban adolescents
     ↗
  44. Spradley, J.
    The ethnographic interview
  45. Spradley, J.
    Participant observation
  46. Stretch, C.
    From self-awareness to self-mastery: Literacy and the discourse of body consciousness in …
  47. Takanishi, R.
    Adolescence in the 1990s
  48. Taylor, T.
    The cay
  49. Vygotsky, L.
    Thought and language
  50. Vygotsky, L.
    Mind in society
     ↗
  51. Walkerdine, V.
    Schoolgirl fictions
  52. Weiss, L.
    Beyond silenced voices: Class, race, and gender in the United States schools
  53. Wertsch, J.
    Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action
  54. Willis, P.
    Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs
CrossRef global citation count: 38 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Written Communication Jan 2026
    Writing Instruction for Adult L2-Learners: A Case Study From Three Swedish Classrooms ↗
    Clara Palm; Ann-Christin Randahl; Liss Kerstin Sylvén
    genre theory writing pedagogy teacher development qualitative research literacy studies
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication Oct 2025
    Teaching Ethics in Communication and Business Courses: The Use of Standard Versus Virtual Reality Video ↗
    Steven Bauer; Juanie N. Walker; Sarah Fischbach; Alice Labban
    writing pedagogy teacher development qualitative research literacy studies
  3. College Composition and Communication Sep 2025
    Using the AI Life Cycle to Unblackbox AI Tools: Teaching Résumé 2.0 with Résumé Analytics and Computational Job-Résumé Matching ↗
    Huiling Ding
    writing pedagogy teacher development professional writing labor and working conditions qualitative research artificial intelligence literacy studies editorial matter
  4. Communication Design Quarterly Sep 2025
    Designing Social Media Learning Environments to Promote Digital Literacy ↗
    Jacob D. Richter
    writing pedagogy qualitative research digital rhetoric social media literacy studies
  5. The Peer Review Sep 2025
    The Impact of Working at a Writing Center in Brazil: Perspectives of Student Tutors ↗
    Ana Raquel Fialho Ferreira Campos; João Tiago Gaspar Cozechen; Elaine Pereira Lustosa; Marcos Angel De Carvalho Eing; Leonardo Schimiloski
    first-year composition writing pedagogy graduate education argument writing centers professional writing qualitative research artificial intelligence multilingual writers literacy studies race and writing