Boys, boys, boys: The conversation we’re not having

You’ve probably seen lots of recent discussion about gender representation in children’s story books and in education materials. You can see some of my previous posts on the topic here and here, with regard to ELT materials specifically.

The hype around recent publications such as Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls has done a lot to raise awareness of the dearth of female role models in children’s books, and to try to redress the balance. It’s much needed. A recent Guardian article  cites some alarming statistics – in a study of the 100 most popular picture books of 2017, lead characters were 50% more likely to be male than female, and, over the course of each book, the characters who spoke were 50% more likely to be male than female. There’s no question about it – female characters must become more visible on the pages of story books, and more empowered when they do appear. Girls need to see positive, inspiring images and be presented with a wide range of role models, on TV, in story books and in educational materials.

But that’s not the whole story, and I fear that branding a book ‘for girls’ rather misses the point.

Because this not just for the sake of girls. Boys need to see these stories too. Is it not equally important for boys to be brought up respecting and admiring the achievements of pioneering women?

We need to think about the way boys and men are represented, as well. Do the materials we expose children to challenge or reinforce traditional norms where men are expected to be dominant, aggressive, strong and unemotional?

Let’s take a minute to think about alternative characteristics we could be portraying. I absolutely love this though-provoking poster by Elise Gravel.

(Incidentally, if you like that poster, there’s companion one about girls, and also this about women in STEM . Best of all, Elise Gravel is happy for these to be printed out for use in class.)

How often do the materials you see include sensitive, dreamy or gentle boys? Or even boys looking after younger siblings? What about boys who love craft activities, dancing or doing gymnastics? As the tweet below from Let Toys be Toys says, there’s no ‘one way’ to be a boy, so we need materials that celebrate this richness of experience. (And I don’t know about you, but that picture of The Hulk pushing around Baby Hulk in a buggy has made my day.)

There is no ‘one way’ or ‘right way’ to be a boy #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/AFQRF24rvU

— Let Toys Be Toys (@LetToysBeToys) February 21, 2018

In many ways, I suspect that this discussion is more controversial than attempts to include strong female characters would be. Believe me when I say I’m very conscious of the tightrope which ELT editors and materials writers walk, keeping a product commercially viable for a range of potentially very conservative international markets while also trying to move things forward. Of course there will be lots of compromises, but we can definitely take some steps in the right direction.

The picture book Guess How Much I Love You – which is criticised in the Guardian article I’ve linked to above for not including any female characters – deserves praise for its rare depiction of a highly affectionate relationship between a single dad and his son, who compete in their claims of love for one another. I can’t believe this would be particularly controversial in many cultures, but it definitely chips away at some unhelpful macho stereotypes.

We need to move towards a situation where presenting complex, multi-faceted depictions of masculinity is the norm. I would love to hear of positive examples you’ve seen of this in ELT materials, and for us to give a virtual pat on the back to the people who’ve made it happen, and encouragement to those who want to.

 

 

Free resources for ELT materials development

Whether you are a teacher preparing bespoke materials for a class, a writer, or an editor doing content development work, at some point you will probably find yourself scouring the internet for ideas and information. It can be a time-consuming business. I’m going to use this post to pull together some of my favourite sites for materials development.

In case you are not already familiar with it, the IATEFL Materials Writing Special Interest Group has an excellent resource page full of useful links. Start there! It’s free for everyone to access, so you don’t have to be a member. There’s also advice on how to get into materials writing, and how to write quality materials (more from me on that here and here).

What else?

Images

In addition to MaWSIG’s suggested sites for images, I’d add pexels, which has a good selection of free stock photos. My favourite is probably pixabay.

Many art galleries now have open access to their collections, too. See this article about searching the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, and this link to the National Gallery of Art. Both have huge collections from which you can download and reproduce images.

L’Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux by Vincent van Gogh, available from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Grammar

When writing grammar activities or reference pages, I make regular use of English Grammar Today, which has simple explanations and helpful examples.

Corpora

Julie Moore recently published a great blog post on corpora you can access and scenarios in which you might find them a useful reference point.

Checking the level

If you want to make sure you are pitching language appropriately, you can search English Vocabulary Profile to find out the CEFR level of vocabulary. It’s free to subscribe. There’s also the Global Scale of English toolkit, which I admit I haven’t used, but I know writers who do. And there’s Vocab Kitchen, which has the advantage of allowing you to check a whole text.

Dictionaries

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that ELT professionals love dictionaries. They are super useful, after all, as Kerry summarises:

Tip from me: ELT dictionaries are brill resource for editors & writers – examples provide inspiration for item-writing, reliable grammatical and pron info, word families, thesaurus links to words in same topic area. Check out e.g. @MacDictionary & https://t.co/Vv7j4dQ21v #FreeELT

— Kerry Maxwell (@Kerry_Maxi) January 27, 2018

Anyone trying to write songs will probably also appreciate a rhyming dictionary. I mostly use Rhymezone.

Rhymer is another option. It allows you to modify your search to find different rhyme forms.

(I also recently made the discovery of the Flocabulary site for aspiring rappers, and enjoyed reading their list of unconventional rhymes … spaghetti, Serengeti … Barack Obama, stop the drama … and so on. It goes without saying that I am yet to find a use for any of these!)

Phonetic keyboard

Last but not least, I find it really useful to have a link to this IPA keyboard on my favourites bar, particularly when writing lots of pronunciation activities.

Over to you

What have I missed? I’d love to hear about your recommended sites for materials writing, so do share more ideas in the comments.

 

 

 

 

Themes from the ELT Freelancers’ Awayday 2018

Last week I attended the fourth ELT Freelancers’ Awayday, a highlight in the calendar of many freelance editors in our industry, myself included. I can’t possibly capture everything from the day in this post, or begin to do it justice really, but there were some recurring themes which jumped out at me, which I thought I’d try to summarise here.

Theme #1: Finding new opportunities and working in new ways

Sarah Patey, Karen Spiller, Jo Sayers (ELTjam) and Deborah Tricker (Richmond) participated in the panel discussion, entitled ‘Broadening Horizons’. It covered ideas for broadening your client base, pitching your services and diversifying into other fields where editorial skills are in demand. (For those interested in a complete change of focus, note that the SfEP offer an online course on getting editorial work with non-publishers.)

Next, Kathryn Munt and Caroline Boot from Integra gave an interesting overview of outsourcing, the reasons for it, the kind of work they do as packagers and implications for their suppliers.

So what are ELT publishers and packagers looking for in their freelancers? What attributes and skills are particularly in demand? Throughout the day, speakers stressed the value they place on freelancers who:

• show problem-solving skills and a willingness to take ownership of a task,
• are familiar with publishing technologies such as project management software, freelance management systems and content management systems
• have digital editing and writing skills,
• can keep an open mind about different ways of working, especially when working with people from different fields, or when working with uncertainty,
• above all … show a readiness to learn the skills they lack.

The need for effective communication while navigating this changing digital landscape also emerged as a bit of a theme, most memorably in Diane Nicholl’s informative and amusing talk on ‘How to tame your developer’.

Theme #2: Networking

Networking was mentioned by Karen White in her brilliant list of top tips for successful freelancing, and the day was certainly set up to encourage this. Representatives from publishers including Richmond, Nat Geo, Macmillan and Pearson had stalls at the friendly ‘jobs fair’, together with EMC, Integra, ELTjam and the Content Station. It was a great opportunity to get to know fellow freelancers too. I think most delegates will have come away with new avenues to explore and contacts to follow up.

Excellent tips from @KarenWhiteInk for freelancers, or anyone at all really, at #FreeELT – We love you Karen! ❤️ pic.twitter.com/nTVCiNvycW

— ELTjam (@eltjam) January 26, 2018

Theme #3: Finance and tax

Financial advisor Rebecca Kingwell’s persuasive talk about pension planning and ISAs was an important reminder to all of us about making the most of the tax breaks on offer when planning for the future. Phil Hendy from PAH Accounting introduced us to ‘Making Tax Digital’, HMRC’s plan to roll out digital record keeping and quarterly reporting. Don’t tell me you’re not excited by that prospect! But seriously, it was great that the day included a focus on these issues. They are easily neglected in life’s day-to-day hustle and bustle.

 

Julie Moore’s excellent ‘corpus hacks’ talk doesn’t fit neatly into the categories above, but definitely also deserves a mention, not least because it has made me totally paranoid about my apparently fairly idiosyncratic spelling preferences! (Want to check you’re keeping up with the latest trends in hyphenation and spelling? There’s a corpus for that.)

Huge thanks to the day’s organisers Karen White, Helen Holwill and Jemma Hillyer for another great day. It has certainly given me lots to think about. Best wishes to Karen as she moves on to pastures new.

For photos and more information on the Freelance Awayday see the official page here and check out #FreeELT on Twitter for updates from the day and more freelance chat throughout the year.

You can see my write-up of last year’s awayday here. If you’re interested in writing, you may also find my summary of the Education Writers’ Seminar from the Society of Authors helpful.

Talking about gender equality at the Future of ELT conference, Regent’s University London

On Saturday June 17th, Trinity College and Regent’s University held the second teachers’ conference on ‘The Future of English Language Teaching’. Together with Melody Philip and Varinder Unlu, I spoke on the panel ‘Women in ELT: How can we achieve gender equality?’, chaired by Jackie Kassteen. This blog is a summary of my contribution to the session. I took the student experience as my focus, looking at how students are taught and the materials used.

According to a report by the World Economic Forum, the gender gap for economic participation and opportunity now stands at 60%. At the current rate of progress, it’s estimated that it will be 81 years before women can expect equality in the workforce, internationally.  In the light of these stats, what can we do as teachers, writers or publishers to help promote a more gender-equal future for our students? In my talk I suggested three areas to look at.

 

Me talking at the Future of ELT conference panel discussion on Women in ELT (Photo credit Melody Philip)

 

1 Being critical of materials

In a show of hands, about half the audience said they currently considered gender representation as a criterion when selecting classroom materials. When asked how many had come across materials they found sexist, about half said they had. The examples of sexism they volunteered to share included the cliché of women rather than men performing domestic duties.

This comes as no great surprise. I have talked at length about gender representation and materials development in a previous blog for IATEFL MaWSIG, outlining the subtle but recurrent imbalances we see in course books, and the problematic lack of women depicted in aspirational roles. Essentially: students can’t be what they can’t see. One way to tackle this is to incorporate role-models in the classroom materials we put under students’ noses.

As well as identifying poor gender representation in course books, and avoiding or adapting that material, I suggest that when we find good resources which empower and inspire, we share them! (The Women in ELT facebook group is a forum sometimes used for this, for example.)

2 Being self-critical – monitoring the behaviours we model and the language we use

We’re all sexist. I know I am. We all have unconscious bias. We have it because we are the products of the society we live in, which is unequal in some fairly fundamental ways.

How does this affect the classroom?

There’s a lot of research showing that teachers interact more with boys, call on them more frequently and ask them more questions. Boys are also more likely to shout out answers, and less likely to be reprimanded for doing so. We can be aware of these biases, and consciously try to rectify them.

We can also be mindful of the language we use. Lots of people will say this is unimportant but I don’t agree – language shapes the way we see the world, and in defining our reality we change the way we experience it. We can find and teach neutral alternatives to gendered language (eg firefighter, police officer, actor, head teacher, chair, spokesperson etc)

3 Encouraging learners – male and female – to be critical too

We know that visual literacy is a crucial 21^st century skill. Kids are bombarded by images on TV and the internet, as well as in books, and they need to know how to read their messages. We can encourage learners to be critical of the visuals they consume by routinely asking questions: What do you think about this picture? Is it realistic? Why or why not? Is your family like this? What message does this picture tell us? What’s missing?

We can also teach learners to be aware of gender stereotyping (and other types of stereotyping) and call it out when they spot it. Perhaps the most effective way to get students talking about this is to surprise them by highlighting their own unconscious biases. Check out this recent post by Adi Rajan on an activity which uses images to explore stereotypes, for example. And see this fantastic video by Inspire the Future about the surprise a primary class had after being asked to draw a firefighter, a fighter pilot and a surgeon.

We can encourage learners to think about gendered assumptions about behaviours and expectations and not to be pigeonholed.

Attitude to risk is also part of this conversation. It’s important to create learning environments in which girls become accustomed to taking risks. In this TED talk, Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code asks us to ‘Teach girls bravery, not perfection’. She argues that we’re raising girls to be perfect, and we’re raising boys to be brave. Girls are taught to avoid risk and failure, which holds them back. This ‘bravery deficit’ accounts for female under-representation in many parts of the public sphere, she says. Women have been socialised to aspire to perfection and are overly cautious as a result.

Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, makes a similar argument in her influential book Lean In. Her main point is to say that as well as facing institutional obstacles, women face internal ones, which prevent them from putting themselves forward for opportunities and make them more likely to downplay their achievements and abilities. She has a refrain which she comes back to over and again, which I think is a good note to end on:

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

This is something we need to ask ourselves about our own careers, and can also get students thinking about, too.

Over to you

I’d love to hear your ideas about gender representation in materials and what we can do to challenge stereotypes. Please do share your thoughts in the comments.

 

Chair Jackie Kassteen, with speakers Melody Philip, Varinder Unlu and me, Emily Hird (Photo credit Caroline Robinson)

Links

For more about the ‘Women in ELT’ panel session, read Melody Philip’s blog here.

You can read a more recent post of mine about gender and the representation of boys, specifically, here.

Ten takeaways from the Educational Writers’ Seminar by the Society of Authors

On May 6^th, I attended the seminar day for educational writers run by the Society of Authors in London. It was a first for me.

The day kicked off with Lionel Bender, co-founder of book packager Bender Richardson White, who talked about the differences in the educational publishing landscape between the UK and USA.

Takeaways:

• There is a huge appetite for non-fiction in the States. (This is in contrast to educational publishing in the UK which has seen a decline in the number of non-fiction titles published since the 1990s.) From my own point of view, it will be interesting to see how this focus on non-fiction reading texts begins to influence the ELT sector, as it surely must, if not in the form of stand-alone readers, then incorporated within course book publishing.
• The Common Core (that is, the US national curriculum) places strong emphasis on reading content-rich non-fiction at school. This is partly as a result of consultation with industry leaders in the US on how to best to prepare students for working life. At Elementary school, 50% of the focus on reading texts should be devoted to non-fiction, increasing at senior school to 75%.
• Educational non-fiction writers in North America are highly regarded and much sought after.

Source: Pixabay

After lunch, Ken Wilson, ELT course book and methodology writer, shared his often entertaining experiences of delivering webinars.  The topic was well-received by writers in the audience, at a time when publishers increasingly seek to reduce author travel budgets by replacing face-to-face conference presentations with webinars conducted at a distance.

Takeaways:

• Remember the end-user experience and how sitting alone at a computer differs from attending a conference presentation.
• Look at the camera!
• Don’t do one trial run. Do ten.
• Be aware of being too serious or too light-hearted.
• Read the comment stream, and, if at all possible, line up someone to read it for you and help you sift through the comments for particularly useful or pertinent questions and responses.
• Watch Nicky Hockley’s webinar tips on Youtube.

The day concluded with Nick Bilbrough talking about giving English lessons via videoconferencing through the Hands Up project to children in Gaza, Pakistan and camps for Syrian refugees. He showed footage of children in Gaza talking to a conference room at IATEFL and to a class in Russia, whose teacher is one of the Hands Up project volunteers. His talk brought home the power of video conferencing as a means to create authentic contexts for children to speak English and to develop meaningful inter-cultural links. He painted an inspiring picture of the possibilities facilitated by this readily available technology, even for teachers operating in such difficult circumstances.

Takeaways:

• Use Zoom for video conferencing. It works better than Skype in areas with limited internet connectivity. It is easy to record sections, which you then have available as an MP4. You can also share your screen easily.

A final word

Before the day, the event had attracted criticism for its (highly regrettable) all-male line up, which had been acknowledged by the Educational Writers Group Chair and Secretary as being rather problematic. With the work done by the Fair List, promoting gender balance in UK ELT events, it might be hoped that gender imbalance like this on panels and plenaries was a thing of the past. Unfortunately, this may have put something of a dampener on enthusiasm for the event, which was otherwise welcoming, relevant and informative.