Why are students silent? Using written reflections and interviews, Mary M. Reda examines students’ perceptions of speaking and being silent in a first-year composition classroom, and explores how their teachers, classroom relationships, and their own sense of identity shape their decisions to speak or be silent. By challenging many firmly held beliefs about those quiet students in the back of the classroom, Between Speaking and Silence offers the new vision that silence is not necessarily problematic.

Listening to the silences in our classrooms: a study of quiet students -- Considering the problem of silence -- Locating myself: between speaking and silence -- Situating the study -- "What teachers want": exploring teaching practices -- Identity and community: negotiating ethos and audience -- Learning to see in a whole new light: reimagining the silences in our classrooms.