Seitova D., master of 1 course

on specialty "Pedagogic and psychology"

Supervisor: Akhmetova G.K.,

doctor of pedagogical Sciences, Professor

THE INFLUENCE OF TEACHER GENDER ON STUDENTS: AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESEARCH

Over time, teachers as pedagogical agents have begun to be considered as actors themselves, rather than tools. Whereas in earlier research, the focus was on the different peculiarities of the learner as an actor, now characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, appearance, and other such variables are being considered as affecting the teacher’s implicit social relationship with the learner. Some have suggested that young students, who are overwhelmingly taught by female teachers, might be affected by this situation. Certainly, even when older students are not more likely to choose to work with a teacher of a particular gender, they report greater satisfaction with performance and with the activity with male teachers over female ones. [1] This paper will examine this and other influences gender has on pedagogical communication.

Baylor and Kim’s study on the effects of teacher qualities found that the gender of a teacher led to significantly more reported self-regulatory behavior from undergraduate university students if it was a male than if it was a female. The effect similarly held true for self-efficacy, and found that students perceived male teachers to be significantly more interesting, intelligent, and overall better teachers than female teachers. The authors note that this is somewhat surprising for two reasons. First, the Black teachers in the role of expert generated more favorable results from students as opposed to the White teachers. They believe this to be the case because agents that represent non-traditional roles are given greater attention and focus. Similarly, then, a female teacher as an engineer who was also acting in a non-traditional fashion – outgoing and very physically attractive – got significantly more attention from students than the popular stereotype of the female engineer – introverted and unattractive – garnered. Second while previous research had shown that teachers with less intelligence lead to greater self-efficacy, and one part of the experiment showed that females (who were perceived as less intelligent than the males) led to greater self-efficacy, even when this was not the case male teachers could get greater self-efficacy and also be seen as more intelligent. This shows the bias that students have toward male teachers overall.

The similarity attraction hypothesis (SAH) claims that people are more attracted to those who match their characteristics, including personality and gender [2]. At least for gender, however, this seems to not be particularly true. Many questions have been asked about the gender model that holds boys to be better taught by men and girls are better taught by women. While gender certainly carries with it some effects as outlined above, these effects tend to be the same on students regardless of gender. Boys in particular do not do better with male teachers rather than female teachers, despite the consistent call for more male teachers in the lives of boys. Boys and girls both express preference for a good teacher rather than a specific gender teacher in relation to academics. When it came to emotional and personal development perspective, the gender of the teacher begins to become an issue. This implies that the gender stereotype model is incorrect, and the similarity attraction hypothesis does not really apply in the case of gender. Instead, a gender-invariant model applies for most academic factors motivation and engagement factors.

A study of Greek students according to age found that teacher gender produced some effects in terms of student achievement and other factors [3]. Several interesting findings emerged. In elementary schools, both male and female teachers were equally good at evaluating men and female students’ interpersonal behavior, male teachers evaluated male students as having more frequent interpersonal behavior problems than their female colleagues did. There was an interaction between teacher gender and students’ general school performance, but not with very low or very high achieving students. Only with average students, male teachers evaluated them to have more problems than female teachers did. Perhaps in a related effect, students generally perceived themselves better in classes with female teachers in areas such as – physical appearance, school performance, and learning ability. However, low achieving students reported more problems in their relationships with their parents in classes with female teachers, and perceived themselves as having more problems in physical abilities and peer relationships. In general, these relationships held true in secondary school, however opposite sex peer relations were better in classes with male teachers than with female teachers. Boys reported a low self concept in classes with male teachers and worse relationships with same sex peers. Females reported similar but less pronounced differences in reverse. Perhaps because both male and female teachers are traditional in their sex-role orientation, they reinforce teacher-gender differences as part of a process of reinforcing gender stereotyping. This may not be intentional, which is why there is only a disparity when it comes to children’s self-concept of various areas, rather than their evaluations of their peers.

Despite the above studies, there is a particular area where there is a gender disparity in students that is thought to be influenced by teacher gender: Mathematics. Research indicates that female teachers’ math anxiety will cause girls’ math scores to be relatively lesser, but not have the same effect on boys [4]. This is because gender, gender stereotypes and gender-appropriate behaviors are noticed and adopted by children very early on. Female teachers who have math anxiety confirm stereotypes and impacts girls’ math scores. These girls are not learning math less well, they are confirming traditional gender roles that they are not as good at math than boys are. The issue is not that teachers with math anxiety are making the children perform worse, but that female elementary school teachers (in the US, the vast majority are female), are making the girls think that being poor at math is what girls are supposed to do. Boys are not affected by this and consequently are not bothered by the problem of teacher anxiety.

Modeling gender roles can be more important in ethnic contexts. While the notion of more male teachers needed to combat the poor performances of boys is generally not given much credence by studies, as shown above, this idea can have even more resonance in ethnic minority contexts [5]. In elementary school contexts in particular, there is particular need for change because while the influence of a male teacher is desire, there is a strain of homophobia that views any man wanting to teach young children as gay. As a result, administrators will often place males in the later grades, even if they need to move a female teacher to early grades. Male teachers need to show a particular strength of masculinity to prove that they are not gay. Yet even though they are macho, many men are still seen somewhat incredulously for wanting to teach younger children. It is assumed that they will rise to an administrative position. This is true even if they are not very competent or committed to their jobs. But for black male teachers, because they are seen in a role model sense, they have a lot of pressure to be role models in a personal conduct sense.

The fact that much of the time, women teachers support gender roles is ironic. While direct arguments about women’s inability to do some tasks or be educated properly have lost credibility, making women not be confined to the home, teaching was one of the first institutions where women move into in high numbers. However, male administrators made women in larger schools subordinate. Using feminist post structuralism to see how gender is constructed in language, knowledge, and power, the ideology of language in traditional pedagogy can be deconstructed [6]. Discourses that describe teachers as “mothers” or the school as an extension of the home, the feminization of teaching, is an ideological feminization that makes teaching a closed feminine pursuit, that keeps men out and women in. Female teachers can be mothers too, and they can see how their children act according to how they do or do not perpetuate traditional gender roles in their own personal lives. The parallels that are drawn to the way students act can be seen as an impetus to reform their own behavior, or to delve further into what they were doing. Ideology that sees teachers as mothers and teachers as women can lead to teachers taking essentialist approaches to men and women both as children and adults. Women have to be perfect, simultaneously mothers and virgins, and men are not expected to do as well in all circumstances, and have their masculinity questioned. The point here is that gender is not only something that affects students, but that teachers themselves are aware of their genders and the gender roles of their own society. At times they try to challenge them, and at other times they settle into them. This paradox is sometimes not something that they are fully aware of, but they are aware of the stereotypical images they run into and the extent to which they feel they can or should challenge them. Teachers therefore have an important role in the production and reproduction of gender in society. In order for teachers to promote gender equity, they need to first have a firm understanding of it with the theoretical background needed to make pedagogical decisions that are helpful to both boys and girls.

Referenses

1. Baylor, Amy L., and Yanghee Kim. "Pedagogical agent design: The impact of agent realism, gender, ethnicity, and instructional role." Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2004.

2. Moreno, Roxana, and Terri Flowerday. "Students’ choice of animated pedagogical agents in science learning: A test of the similarity-attraction hypothesis on gender and ethnicity." Contemporary Educational Psychology31.2 (2006): 186-207.

3. Hopf, Diether, and Chryse Hatzichristou. "Teacher gender‐related influences in Greek schools." British Journal of Educational Psychology 69.1 (1999): 1-18.

4. Beilock, Sian L., et al. "Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107.5 (2010): 1860-1863.

5. Wayne Martino & Goli M. Rezai‐Rashti (2010) Male teacher shortage: black teachers’ perspectives, Gender and Education, 22:3, 247-262.

6. Kahn, Michele. "The Irony of Women Teachers’ Beliefs About Gender." Teacher Identity and the Struggle for Recognition: Meeting the Challenges of a Diverse Society. R&L Education, 2014.