Gender-Specific Teacher Expectations and Stereotypes Observed in Interactions with Students

Abstract

This article is a report from research on gender stereotyping of students by teachers. The aim of the study was to verify whether teachers show a tendency to stereotype students by gender in their work. School, or specifically teacher-student interactions, was chosen as the research area because it constitutes a critical and powerful socialising agenda that provides a permanent social and physical context for children’s activities and identity formation. To analyse this phenomenon, a survey was conducted on 133 primary school teachers in Poland. The study shows that teacher gender-specific expectations affect both boys and girls in the school environment; however, their distribution is not even across all studied areas of interaction. The studied tendency was found to be relatively low for questions about gender role expectations towards children. However, an opposite trend was discovered with regard to the frequency and type of teachers’ interactions with girls and boys.