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

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775718307714

by yasp • 6 years ago

181 87 6 years ago

fortran77• 6 years ago

Maybe we need more male teachers for kindergarten and the younger grades. Perhaps some sort of affirmative action or preferential hiring for male teachers for k through 6th grades?

baskire4• 6 years ago

I’ve actually been suprised feminist aren’t pushing for this. It’d help their overall narrative.

You have similar gender gaps in nursing as well.

goatinaboat• 6 years ago

You have similar gender gaps in nursing as well.

British teaching unions shot it down - said it was misogynistic to hire men as it implied women weren’t doing a good enough job. This logic of course doesn’t apply to tech.

MyHypatia3• 6 years ago

I think some feminists do push for this in the name of gender equality, and caretaking not only being a female responsibility.

At the same time, the idea that mainly women should solve the problem of "young boys need positive male role models" seems ironic. I'm sure many women do care because they want their sons to thrive, but men want their sons to thrive too, right?

HarryHirsch2• 6 years ago

I thought in nursing the gender gap is closing because it's one of the few careers that actually pays off these days. At regional colleges the nursing major is usually the one with the highest salary, you can check that on the Department of Education's website. High school leavers seem to be directed towards it, especially first-generation students.

MyHypatia3• 6 years ago

There are various initiatives to attract more male teachers, but research suggests that the low status and pay of teaching deter men from entering education.

Raising the respect and salary of teachers would be a good starting point. Preferential hiring to balance the gender ratio of role models in a school may be helpful as well.

https://www.edutopia.org/male-teacher-shortage

ed25519FUUU• 6 years ago

I’ve heard from a friend whose a special ed teacher that there effectively is a strong desire for male teachers in these grades. But there’s also so much need in this space that there’s a desire for any credentialed teacher.

It’s not really like software engineering where people have to know algorithms and do whiteboard exercises. It’s about credentials and desire.

joshuaissac• 6 years ago

Quotation from the paper:[1]

I find that the gender bias does not differ by teachers’ gender in literature, and only marginally in math. In this subject, female teachers are less biased in favor of girls than male teachers

So adding more male teachers might marginally increase the discrimination rather than decrease it.

1. http://ftp.iza.org/dp10343.pdf

MyHypatia3• 6 years ago

That's interesting thanks for sharing. I guess that begs the question: even if there are some documented negative effects, does it outweigh the benefit of young boys experiencing positive role models in the classroom? Measuring the benefit of role models is really hard to quantify, but role models definitely influence people.

newsclues2• 6 years ago

Maybe we need robot teachers to remove the bias?

adrianN• 6 years ago

Now we only need to figure out a way of making bias free AI.

etempleton4• 6 years ago

Elementary and middle schools in the United States would welcome more male applicants. The issue is there are not many males that major in education at the undergraduate college level and so there are not many male applicants to choose from.

This is a societal / financial issue.

Societal because boys see education as a woman's job, which is reinforced through their educational experience of having mostly female teachers.

Financial because as much as Americans like to think that they live in a progressive society, males are typically expected to be the primary income earner. Education simply does not pay well; particularly when you consider the education and credentials required. Education in the United States has added increased prerequisites to become a teacher in a public school. In all likelihood, your child's teacher either already has or is working on their master's in education to maintain their teaching credentials. If they have aspirations of being an administrator they are likely working on a doctorate. This to earn a maximum annual salary of less than $100,000 and only after decades of working for a school district.

jdbernard• 6 years ago

Another reason is that American society today often assumes there is something wrong or creepy with men who choose to spend their time with children. I don't think this is a valid assumption, but it is a common one, at least in my experience as a father.

worker767424• 6 years ago

The issue is there are not many males that major in education at the undergraduate college level and so there are not many male applicants to choose from.

This is like the mythical pool of untapped female engineering talent VPs of Diversity and Inclusion imply exists.

baskire4• 6 years ago

“ Without teachers’ bias in favor of girls, the gender gap in choosing a science track would be 12.5% larger in favor of boys.”

Does this not mean we have a gender bias towards females in STEM at the education level?

If so it’d turn around a long held belief that STEM education is biased towards men. At least in grade school.

mdorazio• 6 years ago

Yes, it does. It also implies that women not seeking engineering degrees likely has other factors that go mostly ignored or dismissed today.

etempleton4• 6 years ago

Girls typically abandon STEM at the high school / undergraduate level. I do not pretend to know all of the factors that go into that, but one such reason I have heard is that the gender bias in STEM tends to strongly favor boys at this level and perhaps a bigger component to that is not the teachers' bias, but the bias of peers and society that students at the high school level will be increasingly aware of.

caseysoftware2• 6 years ago

If women freely choose to pursue other areas of interest - no matter the area's importance or the women's interests - we've reached the point where the only acceptable cause to claim is "sexism".

It's disappointing because it takes away agency and becomes a form of control.

sprt• 6 years ago

If so it’d turn around a long held belief that STEM education is biased towards men. At least in grade school.

No, you can't infer this conclusion from that paper.

Yes, the paper claims that there exists some bias towards girls (from teachers' grading). And the sentence you quote claims that without that specific bias, the gender gap would be in favor of boys ("12.5% larger"). However, we do not know if this figure is free of bias (IMO, fair to say probably not). Therefore, there might be other biases in STEM in favor of boys that could explain the gender gap in their favor.

tupputuppu3• 6 years ago

It's unlikely. You're suggesting there's an even bigger bias but one which we've been unable to quantify scientifically to even a limited extent (compared to this study, which provides clear evidence)

throwawayay02• 6 years ago

There are a number of misconceptions with that common belief. First, it's a US experience only, there are many countries where females are in similar numbers of other students in engineering courses. Second, it depends widely on course: it is not uncommon to have a male majority in computer science and mechanical eng., and a female majority in chemical eng., physics, math, aerospace eng., medicine, pharmacy, etc

baskire4• 6 years ago

Is there a country with balanced gender ratios in STEM employment? I wasn’t aware of such

hirundo• 6 years ago

See the "gender-equality paradox": "Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976177417...

Obviously the validity of this is highly controversial.

centimeter• 6 years ago

That belief is only held by people who are deeply programmed to expect equal outcomes across any arbitrary demographic partition - i.e. they expect that career interest and fitness is completely independent of cultural background, sex, etc. For people who weren’t successfully beaten over the head with a standard US progressive education, this is obviously a priori very unlikely.

baskire4• 6 years ago

People beaten over the head with a progressive education is concerning. The leaders of today are the bigots of tomorrow. The future requires us to think for ourselves

CJefferson4• 6 years ago

I've read this paper in the past. Like many papers, it has some powerful results, but I think it overclaims on correlation vs causation.

What is true is teachers overrate girl's performance earlier in school compared to boys, then girls catch up and overtake, often approaching their teacher's predictions. This might well be a case of matching expectations. Another, to me reasonable, explanation for the results is that teacher's grading includes potential, based on their experience. It's hard to know, and would be very hard to ethically test.

This area deserves more research, and less sgouty arguments, but there isn't a clear cut answer.

grayhatter• 6 years ago

I remember reading a study that asserted the best predictor of success is if your teacher believes you're capable. Teachers were told a group of students we're 'gifted' and those students ended up improving more than their peers. Unfortunately, all students were randomly assigned to either the gifted, or non-gifted groups.

Actually being brilliant is much less important than if someone believes in you.

rewq43216• 6 years ago

Affects similar to the "relative age effect"[0] are really important. Kids that just so happen to get ahead early (whether by a slight age advantage, or any other) often end up being put into some sort of "gifted" track where they have access to better teachers/resources, which compounds until they are well ahead of the others. Even without any sort of gifted program, the self-confidence that gets built around being "the smart kid" is a powerful motivator. The fight for self-confidence in school classrooms is zero-sum.

What surprises me is that, from what I've read, the IQ literature doesn't seem to take this basic compounding affect into account. So it seems like some skepticism should be held for the idea that IQ is ~50% genetics and ~50% environment. It could be 5% genetics that compounds into 50%. That would seem to be in line with the observation that the measured heritability of intelligence increases with age.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect

im3w1l• 6 years ago

best predictor of success is if your teacher believes you're capable.

It's important to look at the mechanism here. I'd guess it's mediated by pushing those students harder. Which is a double-edged sword; there is a reason we don't just push everyone harder.

thaumasiotes• 6 years ago

What is true is teachers overrate girl's performance earlier in school compared to boys, then girls catch up and overtake, often approaching their teacher's predictions. This might well be a case of matching expectations. Another, to me reasonable, explanation for the results is that teacher's grading includes potential, based on their experience. It's hard to know, and would be very hard to ethically test.

Girls overtake boys in terms of grades assigned by teachers, but they don't in terms of scores on standardized tests. You can make the argument that the grades are just another method of overrating girls' performance.

CJefferson4• 6 years ago

I only know the UK -- in standardised exams to go to University, and then at University, girls do better on average.

julianmarq2• 6 years ago

Another, to me reasonable, explanation for the results is that teacher's grading includes potential, based on their experience. It's hard to know, and would be very hard to ethically test.

Before discussing this, I'd like to make sure I don't strawman the point you're trying to make: the only way I can interpret this, as of now, is that you think it's "reasonable" to believe that girls inherently have more potential than boys. And, even disregarding that, that it would be reasonable to grade based on "potential" than on actual performance.

I ask to make sure because there's no way I got that right. Mind you, some groups of people say stuff like that in earnest so I'm not sure if this is an instance of that or, I hope, I misinterpreted.

CJefferson4• 6 years ago

My personal belief (which does not yet have enough evidence) is that boys have a greater variation, and indeed in general society encourages girls -- but this particular paper overclaims (while providing interesting evidence).

It could be one gender does have greater mental potential -- certainly one has greater physical potential, but the gap is much smaller and certainly not yet decided.

stjohnswarts• 6 years ago

Teachers definitely can be biased. My anecdote for this was our teacher instantiated a "hierarchy" of readers in several "colors". This was in 3rd grade. I was one of the poorer kids in class and she placed me in the lowest tier which of course made 3rd grade me pissed off. I knew I was one of the best readers and spellers (if not the best) in the class at the time and I was furious to the point of almost crying when I found out which "color" I was. The only thing I could figure at the time was that I was one of poorest brown kids in the class and she just didn't like me. I promptly worked my way through all the "exercises" until I beat most of the rest of the class to the "end" time-wise, other than the ones who started out in the highest "colors" to begin with. She even accused me of cheating at one point and watched me as I completed one and got a perfect score on it like I had most of the others. Teachers are human just like the rest of us and can show bias for lots of reason based on race, gender, etc.

austincheney• 6 years ago

It appears to cost money to access the actual paper and the abstract does indicate the means by which this bias is applied. Without that important detail this only points to speculation and assumptions.

gwern• 6 years ago

There's 3 copies of the preprint in Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14339668929271894... And it's 2020, you should know how to use Sci-Hub/Libgen by now.

Yetanfou• 6 years ago

Just feed the DOI to Science Hub and be done with it. I have official access to a number of journals but use Sci-Hub even for those as the process of getting access is so much easier than running the Wiley gauntlet.

JdeBP• 6 years ago

bArray4• 6 years ago

Reading this makes me sad and bitter. You have groups of activists such as feminists that claim to be for equality of all (scope creep), but yet they are silent on important subjects such as this. Don't be convinced that feminism simply doesn't care about men's rights, they sometimes actively work against them [1]. To suggest that men may experience oppression weakens their perceived oppression, therefore it's in their interest to fight against it.

It's no surprise that men are outnumbered in higher education too. There is always talk of increasing the number of women in STEM fields, but never any talk of increasing the number of men in the arts, English or the -ologys.

Don't get me wrong, I am very happy to see equal opportunity. I am glad to see the riddance of "toxic" environments that discourage people from fulfilling their objectives based on arbitrary characteristics. But I also look at the future young men of today with genuine concern.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO_X4DkwA_Q

OCASM3• 6 years ago

Also, to modern feminism equality doesn't mean treating everyone the same but rather to give advantages to what they consider "historically oppressed minorities".

rewq43216• 6 years ago

I think the idea is simply to give resources to those based on what they need rather than to give to everyone equally. It costs more to educate a kid from a poor/disadvantaged background.

It doesn't really make sense to "treat everyone the same", since different people have different needs. Not everyone needs a wheelchair, but some people do, for example.

rewq43216• 6 years ago

There is always talk of increasing the number of women in STEM fields, but never any talk of increasing the number of men in the arts

On this particular point, I think it's because STEM-like fields are quite economically useful compared to the arts. On average, it would probably "hurt" men (in financial/power terms) to encourage more of them to go into the arts.

bArray4• 6 years ago

I don't argue against STEM fields typically yielding higher paid careers. But there is more to consider than finances: For example I think mental health is a major issue (suicide, prison, depression, etc). I don't see encouraging men into other fields where they learn to express themselves as a detractor. Putting more men into the arts for example doesn't mean less men in STEM fields.

A lot of the male prison population usually have mental illness, sexual assault histories, were raised by a single parent (often the mother) or more generally a broken home. It's not ideal, but if we encouraged more male teachers into the early education system, perhaps young boys would have a good male role model to look up to.

hosh• 6 years ago

Reading this, it is easy to get into the weeds: how to keep teachers from being biased; culture wars on which way that bias should swing, etc.

Viewing it from the the frame of regenerative education though, this particular problem is lessened. In this frame, children are not taught from a curriculum that the adults choose. There are no standards, or grading. Instead each child chooses something meaningful to make a contribution. Children are given a framework in which they can understand whatever it is they set out to do. They learn how to problem solve, critically think, and reflect, as they go about trying to make meaningful, real-world contributions that have real consequences. Teachers are there as resources. The feedback doesn't come from teachers, but rather, when they are trying to accomplish something that has real world consequences. You're not graded by an external source against a standard, but instead, you evaluate whether the outcome was really what you set out to be. It folds within it "grit" and "growth mindset", but not for its own sake.

In such a setup, it is no longer about gender bias (conscious or unconscious), or even equal opportunities.

Furthermore, achievement is reframed from effort rewarded in external praise and material gains from society and inverted to what you meaningfully add to the community and society. What develops is intrinsic motivation and purposeful action. There isn't an exhortation to "apply yourself", or the "when you grow up and have to pay your rent and etc". The childhood dreams, aspirations, and imagination is redirected towards something meaningful, instead of being crushed by the grind of adult living. Your ambitions are not about getting your just rewards for working hard, or winning the lottery, or exploiting opportunities.

It doesn't have to be big things. There are ways to develop this from when a child is a toddler, starting with small contributions. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...

SpicyLemonZest2• 6 years ago

I think this is a great education model for happy kids in a stable environment, but I'm worried it would compound inequality if applied universally. Many kids don't have much in the way of family or friends encouraging them towards learning. If we take away the structure of a curriculum and the grading expectations of success, will it still be possible for them to succeed?

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

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