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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic engagement? How students’ gender enactment triggers gender stereotypes at school

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Abstract

Girls presently outperform boys in overall academic success. Corresponding gender stereotypes portray male students as lazy and troublesome and female students as diligent and compliant. The present study investigated whether these stereotypes impact teachers’ perceptions of students and whether students’ visible enactment of their gender at school (behaving in a very masculine or feminine way) increases the impact of these stereotypes on teachers’ perceptions of students. We hypothesized that teachers would ascribe more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to male students who enact masculinity as compared with male students who show gender-neutral behavior and female students. Three pilot studies (N = 104; N = 82; N = 86) yielded pretested material for a randomized vignette study of N = 104 teachers. The teachers read one randomly assigned vignette describing a male (or female) student enacting his (or her) gender (or not) and rated how likely this student would be to display behaviors that impede or foster learning in a 2 (between: target students’ gender) × 2 (between: gender enactment [yes/no]) × 2 (between: teachers’ gender) × 2 (within: ascribed behavior) factorial design. As expected, male students enacting masculinity were rated as showing the lowest amount of academic engagement. Results are discussed with regard to the current debate on the causes of boys’ lower academic success.

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Acknowledgments

The current research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) allocated to the second author (KE 1412/2-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Anke Heyder & Ursula Kessels

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  1. Anke Heyder
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Correspondence to Anke Heyder.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Vignette describing a student enacting masculinity

Mr. Müller is a teacher in training. Today he had his first lesson in Class 9b. After the lesson, in the staff room, he met the main teacher and the sports teacher of that class.

Main teacher::

Oh. Good morning, Mr. Müller. And how did your first lesson go? Did the students behave?

Teacher trainee::

Well, thank you. Altogether everything went very well. I already know the students a little and they know me as well. But I do have a question: This guy called Jan, what kind of person is he? For example, today, he was sitting there the whole time in his baggy clothes and with his hood on. As I turned to the blackboard, he burped loudly so everybody laughed. Does he behave like this often?

Sports teacher::

Oh, he is not only like that with you. I know him from sports lessons. Jan loves to jump from the 5-meter board when everybody is watching. What else can I tell you? If he hurts himself during sports lessons, he also likes to over-dramatize pain - but then plays it down again, as if it was nothing to him.

Main teacher::

I recently had an encounter with Jan in the school yard when I was on duty. He was sharing sex videos on his mobile with his friends.

Appendix 2: Behaviors that impede and foster learning, selected on the basis of the results of pilot study 3

Behaviors impeding learning

Spends lessons counting the minutes left till the end of class using a tally sheet

Looks up the solutions at the end of the book before completing the tasks by himself/herself

Does not file worksheets and loses them

Never reads books

Secretly reads comics under his/her school desk during lessons

Does not pay attention in class

Copies homework

Sends text messages during lessons

Spends about 6 h per day watching TV

Forgets his/her school supplies at home

Behaviors fostering learning

Continuously works on the material taught in class

Continues to work through difficult tasks that he/she does not instantly succeed in

Participates in class with appropriate verbal contributions

Takes good notes

Asks the teacher or fellow students (for help) if there is something he/she does not yet understand

Prepares himself/herself systematically for tests

Asks friends or siblings to test him/her to prepare for an exam

Does his/her homework on a regular basis

Distributes the material to be studied for a test across several days

Meets up with friends to study for school

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Heyder, A., Kessels, U. Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic engagement? How students’ gender enactment triggers gender stereotypes at school. Soc Psychol Educ 18, 467–485 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-015-9303-0

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