Why does teacher gender matter?

This paper shows that high school math and science teacher gender affects student interest and self-efficacy in STEM. However, such effects become insignificant once teacher behaviors and attitudes are taken into account, thus pointing towards an omitted variables bias. Teacher beliefs about male and female ability in math and science – as well as how teachers treat boys and girls in the classroom – matter more than teacher's own gender. The student fixed effects estimates also highlight that creating a positive learning environment and making math and science interesting are pivotal in engaging students in these subjects.     

Gender-related beliefs of teachers in elementary school mathematics

In this quantitative study, questionnaire data of fifty-two third- and fourth-grade teachers were analyzed using MANOVA tools. Teachers were asked to consider boys' and girls' achievement in mathematics, giving their views on the reasons for the students' successes and failures and describing their learning characteristics. Teachers thought that their average achieving girls were less logical than equally achieving boys. The girls were thought to profit less than boys from additional effort and to exert relatively more effort to achieve the level of actual performance in mathematics. Teachers rated mathematics as more difficult for average achieving girls than for equally achieving boys. With regard to girls, teachers attributed unexpected failure more to low ability and less to lack of effort than with boys. The results increase our understanding of stereotypical teacher beliefs that might help explain gender differences in achievement and in subsequent occupational choices.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teachers' Gender Stereotypes as Determinants of Teacher Perceptions in Elementary School Mathematics

This study analyzes the hypothesized biasing effect of teachers' gender stereotypes on their impressions of their students' competence and effort in mathematics. 48 teachers participated in the study and responded to the questionnaires concerning perceptions of about 300 of their third and fourth grade students. In general, teacher perceptions were consistent with stereotypes of gender differences: Boys have more developmental resources in mathematics. Furthermore, this bias in teacher perceptions of their students' resources in math is linked to the teacher's own category — based, gender role stereotypic beliefs regarding the general distribution of math talent between boys and girls. The finding is moderated by the student's performance level: It only holds for average and low achieving but not for high achieving boys and girls. In this way, students' performance level is an essential mediator-variable in the transmission of teachers' gender stereotypes.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Gender Gap and Classroom Interactions: Reality and rhetoric?

This paper examines the gender gap at GCSE in eight contrasting English secondary schools, and discusses the reality and rhetoric of classroom interactions, focusing on the views of teaching staff, the perspectives of Year 11 students, and observations of teacher-student interactions in the classroom. In an earlier paper (British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17 (3)), the authors examined the extent to which there was less positive teacher-support for the learning of boys than for the learning of girls, and this issue is reviewed in differing school contexts. Research in this broader context suggests that most teachers believe that they give equal treatment to girls and to boys, particularly in support of their learning, but focus group interviews with students and classroom observation suggest that this is rarely achieved; in most schools, boys appear to dominate certain classroom interactions, while girls participate more in teacher-student interactions which support learning. If the underachievement of some boys is to be addressed successfully, these patterns of interaction need to be challenged, to enable boys to begin to develop the very learning strategies which many girls employ effectively to enable them to learn.     

Mathematical myths: Teacher candidates' beliefs and the implications for teacher educators

Abstract

For more than 2 decades, professional, state, and federal agencies have adopted educational standards aimed at improving mathematics instruction. One way of measuring the success of these adopted standards is to examine their impact on the mathematics attitudes and beliefs of students who received their education during this reform period. How teachers approach and implement these mathematics standards is heavily influenced by what they believe about mathematics content and pedagogy. For those who seek to improve mathematics education, examining beliefs regarding mathematics and the factors that influence those beliefs is imperative. In this paper we explore the persistence of teacher candidates' beliefs in myths despite changing educational standards. The beliefs of 76 current elementary teacher candidates were compared to beliefs of 131 elementary teacher candidates from 1990. The results confirm the pervasiveness and persistence of math myths among female elementary teacher candidates.     

Competency beliefs,positive affect,and gender stereotypes of elementary students and their parents about science versus other school subjects

Iowa students and parents completed related attitude and belief questionnaires about school subjects. Grade K–3 students received simpler questionnaires than did Grade 4–6 students or parents. Among Grade 4–6 children, girls perceived higher competence in reading than did boys, but boys perceived higher competence in physical science. All children perceived physical science competence lower than reading or math competence. Parents perceived boys as more competent in science. Girls like reading more than boys did; boys and girls did not differ in liking of science. Grade 4–6 children also expected lower grades in and attached lower importance to physical science than to reading. Parents perceived science as more important for boys and expected higher performance of boys. Jobs related to math or science were seen as more male dominated. These results provided a more comprehensive picture of attitudes and beliefs about science in the elementary school than had existed and suggested that attitudinal gender differences related to physical science begin to develop by the earliest elementary school years. Policy implications are that intervention programs designed to promote gender equity should be extended to the early elementary school years and also should address parental attitudes. Additional implications for policy and research are discussed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 719–747, 1999     

Using video-stimulated recall to investigate teacher awareness of explicit and implicit gendered thoughts on classroom interactions

Teachers believe they don’t interact any differently with boys than with girls. However, an examination of the evidence base on gendered student–teacher interactions shows – at times contradicting – unequal interaction patterns for boys and girls. In this study, the videotaped lessons of 13 secondary school teachers in three schools are analysed by both the teachers themselves and the researchers. Video-stimulated recall is used to bring to the surface the thoughts, images and emotions that evoke teachers’ (re)actions in the classroom. Content analysis and thematic analysis of teachers’ recall reveal three things: (1) when recalling specific situations, gender imbalances in the thoughts and images that accompany teachers’ (re)actions come to the surface; (2) "video-stimulated recall" interviewing is a promising method to raise teacher awareness of these gendered thoughts and images; and (3) with a view to practitioners’ professional learning process, it is important for researchers to allow practitioners to co-investigate their practice.     

Boys lag behind: How teachers’ gender biases affect student achievement

I use a combination of blind and non-blind test scores to show that middle school teachers favor girls in their evaluations. This favoritism, estimated as individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measured by their national evaluations three years later, male students make less progress than their female counterparts. On the other hand, girls who benefit from gender bias in math are more likely to select a science track in high school. Without teachers’ bias in favor of girls, the gender gap in choosing a science track would be 12.5% larger in favor of boys.     

K-8 Teachers’ Overall and Gender-Specific Beliefs About Mathematical Aptitude

Teachers’ beliefs play a significant role in students’ academic attainment and career choices. Despite comparable attainment levels between genders, persistent stereotypes and beliefs that certain disciplines require innate ability and that men and women have different ability levels impede students’ academic career paths. In this study, we examined the prevalence of US mathematics teachers’ explicit general and gender-specific beliefs about mathematical ability and identified which teacher characteristics were associated with these beliefs. An analysis of data from 382 K-8 teachers in the USA indicated that overall, teachers disagreed with the idea that general and gender-specific mathematical ability is innate and agreed with the idea that hard work and dedication are required for success in mathematics. However, our findings indicate that those who believed mathematics requires brilliance also tended to think girls lacked this ability. We also found that teachers who were teaching mathematics to 11- to 14-year-old students seemed to believe that mathematics requires innate ability compared with teachers who were teaching mathematics to 5- to 10-year-old students. In addition, more experienced teachers and teachers who worked with special education students seemed to believe less in the role of hard work in success in mathematics, which could have serious consequences for shaping their students’ beliefs about their academic self-concept and future career-related decisions.

     

Predicting the Grades of Low-Income–Ethnic-Minority Students From Teacher-Student Discrepancies in Reported Motivation

The aims of this study were to investigate the effects of discrepancies between teachers' perceptions of students' motivation and students' reports of their motivation on math and English grades and to identify possible gender and ethnic differences. Participants included 215 low-income, ethnic-minority students and their teachers in academically struggling schools. Discrepancy in motivation ratings accounted for a significant amount of variation in final grades. This teacher-student discrepancy effect was larger than both the effect of students' recent standardized test scores and the effect of self-efficacy in both subjects. Girls were found to attract positive teacher bias, but their grades were not differentially affected. Differences in teacher-student discrepancy effects between African American and Latino students were not found.     

Teachers' attributions and beliefs about girls,boys, and mathematics

Thirty-eight first grade teachers were asked to identify their two most and least successful girls and boys in mathematics, to attribute causation of these students' successes and failures, and to describe their characteristics. Teachers' choices of most and least successful students were compared to mathematics test scores of their students. Teachers were most inaccurate when selecting most successful boys. Teachers tended to attribute causation of boys' successes and failures to ability and girls' successes and failures to effort. Teachers thought their best boy students when compared to their best girl students, were more competitive, more logical, more adventurous, volunteered answers more often to mathematics problems, enjoyed math more, and were more independent in mathematics.     

Gendering processes in the field of physical education

In Finnish secondary schools, girls and boys are taught physical education (PE) in separate groups. A male teacher normally teaches the boys and a female teacher teaches the girls. Focusing on PE teachers’ comments in two different ethnographic studies of seventh graders (13–14‐year‐olds), we examine the processes that reproduce or challenge the gender system and the possibilities of agency in the context of PE. Our findings suggest that the bodies of male students are regarded as strong and are, therefore, appreciated by both female and male teachers. Moreover, male teachers’ competence in PE is evaluated higher than that of the female teachers. None of the teachers questioned the male teachers’ ability to teach girls, however, heteronormativity arose as an issue. There were more doubts over female teachers’ competence to teach boys.     

Pygmalion and the gender gap: do teacher expectations contribute to differences in achievement between boys and girls at the beginning of schooling?

ABSTRACT

This study examined the role of teacher expectations in the emerging gender gaps in reading and mathematics in the first year of schooling. Therefore, we first investigated whether boys and girls differ in their vulnerability to teacher expectancy effects. Second, we analysed whether gender-specific effects of teacher expectations contribute to gender achievement gaps. Our analyses were based on 1,025 first-grade students in Germany. Among the majority of the students, boys and girls did not differ in their vulnerability to teacher expectancy effects. Further analyses examined a subgroup of students who were targets of relatively strong teacher expectation bias and who showed unexpectedly high or low achievement gains. In this specific subgroup, girls’ mathematics achievement was more adversely affected by negatively biased expectations and benefitted less from positive bias than boys’ achievement. Mediation analyses revealed that teacher expectation bias did not substantially contribute to gender gaps in reading or mathematics.     

A teacher like me or a student like me? Role model versus teacher bias effect

Several studies have found that teacher–student gender matching has positive effects on student achievement. However, the underlying mechanisms that explain this effect have not been empirically explored. This paper studies the impact of same gender teachers on academic achievement for a large sample of 8th graders in Chile. I provide evidence that girls benefit from being assigned to female teachers, while there is no negative effect on boys. More importantly, I provide evidence that the positive effect is due to role model effects and not to teacher bias effects.     

Modalités de prise de décision chez les filles et les garçons en la présence ou en l’absence de l’enseignant

How girls and boys take decisions in the presence and absence of a teacher – This work is part of an innovative approach to physical and sports education in Tunisia, and team sports in particular. It uses language studies carried out within the framework of this teaching both to generate a reflective attitude on the part of students, and to identify the effect of gender as a variable in the ways in which they make decisions. Discourse analysis highlights the importance of language output by girls and boys in football teaching when a teacher is present or absent. The teacher is an institutional authority who imposes specific uses of language, and when he/she is absent, emotional tensions predominate and may reflect the repression of ideas that occurs when the teacher is present. Although girls appear to take part in the discussion, their utterances are fewer in number, and their analytical statements less effective than those of boys. Girls never gain the upper hand over boys. The study also suggests a redefinition of social role divisions on the basis of gender – masculinity and femininity.     

Beliefs of experienced and novice teachers about achievement

The aim of this study was to examine the beliefs that experienced and novice teachers hold about school achievement. It is important to investigate these beliefs and attributions because of the significant role that teachers play in the lives of most children. A group of Greek Cypriot elementary school teachers (n = 154) and a comparable group of teacher education students (n = 159) completed the Beliefs About School Achievement (BASA) scale. It was found that, in comparison to student teachers, experienced teachers tend to attribute achievement more to factors that are biologically determined, uncontrollable by the child, and stable over time – such as intellectual ability. They also believe significantly more than student teachers that factors such as gender and family background play an important role in child achievement. In contrast, novice teachers believe more in the role that teachers play in student learning and in the importance of student effort.     

The Participation of Boys and Girls in Home Economics

This study examined whether male students dominated classroom interactions in home economics lessons and whether other classroom processes sustained gender divisions in this subject in two Form I and two Form II classes in two schools. The sample included two female home economics teachers and all the students in the four classes (34 boys and 31 girls). Data were collected during five 60‐minute observation sessions in each class (inter‐observer reliability reached 94%) and structured interviews with both teachers and 24 students (three boys and three girls from each class). Statistically significant (p < 0.001) differences were found in the number of times students were helped by the teachers (boys received 76% of teachers’ help) and in the number of reprimands they received (boys received 87%). Boys and girls received a comparable amount of praise but boys received a greater amount of interaction in all other categories (direction of teacher questions, choice of students to answer questions, call‐outs and calling students by name) although these differences were not statistically significant. There were major individual differences between students of the same sex in all the categories. More boys (19) than girls (seven) were high participants in different classroom processes. Most of the students in mixed‐gender kitchenettes co‐operated in cleaning up. Teachers expected the same standard of work from all the students but they allotted more special jobs to girls.     

The effect of same-gender teacher assignment on student achievement in the elementary and secondary grades: Evidence from panel data

We utilize information from a rich administrative panel dataset following the universe of test-taking public school students in Florida over a period of five years to estimate the relationship between same-gender teacher assignment and student achievement. We estimate how a student's achievement changes as he/she is assigned to teachers of different genders throughout his/her academic career, holding constant both observed and unobserved factors related to academic outcomes. We also provide estimates from models that evaluate how the relative performance of male and female student assigned to the same teacher or in the same classroom relates to the gender of the teacher. We find no statistically distinguishable relationship between same-gender teacher assignments and student math or reading achievement in elementary school. We find a statistically significant relationship between being assigned to a female teacher and student achievement in middle and high school, however the magnitude of the effect is small.     

Gender differences in academic and social behavior of elementary school transfer students

This study describes a tutoring program designed to help children in grades 3 through 5 who underwent an unscheduled school transfer. We examined gender differences in self-concepts, academic performance, teacher evaluations, and peer ratings. Gender differences were found in several measures, although gender did not substantially interact with the intervention. As expected, female transfer students reported lower self-concepts than males; teachers reported that boys were more popular; peers also rated boys as more aggressive and girls as more likable. Findings suggest that preventive interventions for transfer students need to account for effects of gender.