“My very own mission impossible”: an appraisal analysis of student teacher reflections on a design and technology project

Abstract

A post-structuralist perspective suggests that our social context will lead to lasting ways of viewing the world, which will be reflected in what we think, say, and write. This study aims to test whether gendered expectations of success in a technological task are reflected grammatically in reflections on the task. Eighty-seven teacher trainees built and electrically wired a doll house as a class assignment. Their written reflections on this experience were analyzed using the appraisal framework, which allows analysis of expression of emotion (affect), assessment of behavior (judgment), and assessment of artifacts (appreciation). The grammar of male students' writing reflects a comparatively positive experience of the task. A greater proportion of the interpersonal content of the male students' compared to the female students' reflections was devoted to a positive assessment of the doll's house and the course (appreciation). Female students' reflections gave more attention to negative appraisal of their own emotions (affect) and actions (judgment), indicating that gendered experience is indeed encoded in the grammar of the reflections. We interpret our findings as reflecting the anxiety and diffculty of achieving a task when we ourselves and others in our social context expect us not to be able to achieve that task.