Having a teacher of the opposite sex hurts a student's academic progress?

[oberliner]

WASHINGTON - For all the differences between the sexes, here's one that might stir up debate in the teacher's lounge: Boys learn more from men and girls learn more from women.

That's the upshot of a provocative study by Thomas Dee, an associate professor of economics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar at Stanford University. His study was to appear Monday in Education Next, a quarterly journal published by the Hoover Institution.

Vetted and approved by peer reviewers, Dee's research faces a fight for acceptance. Some leading education advocates dispute his conclusions and the way in which he reached them.

But Dee says his research supports his point, that gender matters when it comes to learning. Specifically, as he describes it, having a teacher of the opposite sex hurts a student's academic progress.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060827/ap_on_re_us/boys_girls;_ylt=Arm8jqLDwX1T17dBqpVJRwWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I vehementally disagree with this thesis.

It depends upon how you are TREATED and the gender of the teacher or professor is irrelevant.

When I attended an an independent women's college, I was expected to have my reading ready in order to participate in class and to challenge other students. No extention of deadlines on papers. No excuses for missing a class or not participating in lecture. We had to work and the professors made it clear we were at college TO WORK and TO LEARN. They were not going to cut us any breaks and we were going to work like we have never been demanded to before. Men and women professors had high expectations of us and rarely compromised. We were treated as, well, ADULTS.

The gender of the professor made no difference to me. I learned as well as the professor was able to teach as an individual.

[bumblebee1]

4. I forgot where I saw this:

If you think your teachers are demanding, try a boss!!

[no_hypocrisy]

9. Friend, please don't get me started on the topic of bosses.

Because my boss screwed up and I wanted to fix it, I spent last week-end, and three work days in this endeavor. On Wednesday afternoon, I was called to sit down in his office (with the door closed) and my boss reamed me for "not getting any work done" (meaning his dictation). I was apoplectic and could not find the words to rebut this amazing accusation. I didn't expect gratitude; I didn't expect to get recognition, period. But I also didn't expect to get a tongue-lashing for going above and beyond my job description on his behalf and being condemned. Shit, even the client and the other attorney called me to thank me for my efforts.

[bumblebee1]

28. I'm sorry you had a bad time

Yes, there are bosses that can be quite the idiot.

[devilgrrl]

2. Tall people are smarter than short. Skinny over fat...

girls suck, boys rule, blue eyes are more attractive than brown. blaa blaa blaa blaa blaa...

So what else is wrong with everyone?

[depakid]

8. Star-bellied sneetches

are the best sneetches on the beaches!

[slackmaster]

3. Tagged for interest

I'd like to see a link to Professor Dees' methodology and conclusions.

[tocqueville]

5. complete bull

it's the teacher's abilities that make the bottom line. If Dee is right, the US faces a SERIOUS gender relation problem. Maybe he based his study on Bush and Condi. It's true that Bush hasn't learned anything in foreign politics, but he didn't previously under Colin either...

[PresidentWar]

6. What a ludicrous thought

Most of my teachers in elementary school and university were women. Most of my bosses and supervisors in my career life have been women. I work for a woman CEO right now. Most people I've played music with have been women. Contrary to having a negative impact on my education here on this blue orb, I would say I owe them almost everything.

[ulysses]

11. I work better under women.

(Get your minds out of the gutter.) I've known this about myself for years - most of my bosses have been women, and I get along with them better. Same with teachers, although I've had great teachers of both genders. Most of my male bosses have been incompetent blowhards.

[LWolf]

34. I've had great experiences with both genders.

Working experiences, of course, lol.

Colleagues, bosses, students...I've had great experiences and not-great experiences with both genders. Over the years, if I stop to remember the the biggest problems, here is what I come up with:

Bosses--I can only think of one that I was not able to work with. He lost my respect early on and never regained it. A man.

Colleagues--3 men. They came as a unit, together from another school. One was next door; we grew tired of his constant screaming and verbal abuse of his students. He left after a year to pursue his administrative credential. One was a bully who turned his wrath on female coworkers; he was fired after 3 months, and convicted of sexual harrassment of female students. One was a grumpy old guy who was fine, as long as you weren't around the moment he "snapped," and then he was nasty and verbally abusive. He went to work for the independent study program, putting packets together, sending them home, and grading them when they came back.

Students--none.

Parents--women. Mothers of daughters. Three that I can remember over the years. One got off to a bad start when she threw a big fit on the first day of school over her daughter's seating arrangement, and she just never got over it. Things were strained all year. One because she didn't like the part her daughter got in the winter performance. She held a grudge. One because she had psychological and emotional issues, and I was the most convenient target to blame for everything. Three isn't bad in 12 years.

As a student I had teachers of both genders I really liked; no preference. The only teacher I can remember not liking was my geometry teacher; a man. His gender had nothing to do with it, though.

In the big picture, I think that students need gender, race, age, and cultural diversity in their teachers.

[depakid]

7. Another economist straying outside his field of competence.

I've read and debunked this one before, too- LOL.

Just like the "height = intelligence" study that was recently posted (also by an economist) the connections made here are spurious.

Also, the question he poses in the latest iteration of this research:

Should teachers get more training about the learning styles of boys and girls? Should they be taught to combat biases in what they expect of boys and girls?

Is a no-brainer....

[Nikki Stone 1]

21. Can you put some links to the debunking?

Thanks

[depakid]

36. I'll have to search the DU threads

This came up about six months or so ago, I think. Same research.

[pooja]

10. I would disagree with this statement as well.

My mother has been working with children for years. It is the approach and not the gender. She comes from an older generation of teachers (not the new and improved ready to a/b/c/d our children). She pushes kids farther than the books go. The younger teachers don't understand how she gets the class to go to the next level.

Currently, she works as a para, but because she is at a small school outside of a lot of scrutiny, she teaches most of the math to most of the gradeschool children. This school is small (same one I attended). It is k-8... When the kids go off to highschool, they all report back to my mother that everything they are learning they had learned by the 7th grade. Now, tell me who is dumbing down our children. The govt... they do not want especially smart children. They want them programmed to work, spend, and not pay any attention to the govt. No child left Behind simply makes copied programs of the same thinking entity ready to sumbit to the whims of the govt.

If you have children, read their school books. Read their essays. Ask them what a noun is, a preposition, sentence structure. If they are interested in history, delve into it with them. If they are interested in science (take them outside and let them explore). If they are good at math and enjoy it, get them logic books and move their mind beyond the calculator... have you ever been in a fast food place and see the kids that cannot give back correct change (I had this one kid fight with me.. my total was 8.33--I gave her 10.35 she gave me change back for 1.65--I told her she owed me back 2.02... she had to have the manager come over and explain that I was owed 2.02 back.)

[dogday]

12. Horse Hocky

I had both wonderful Male and Female teachers... Each brought their own special unique quality to the classroom.. To judge it by sex is so dumb... It is the person that makes the teaching experience unique.....

[ulysses]

13. researchers trying to justify their own existence.

All this is.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

14. Honestly, I never liked many of my female teachers.

Most of them treated me like crap. It was the male teachers who gave me a chance and helped me to flourish in the classroom. And while that was true in High school, it was most true in college..
Duckie

[Igel]

15. That's his findings.

They looked ok, and they varied by subject. Boys suffered more frequently and worse than girls for some subjects by having women teachers, girls suffered a bit less frequently.

Similar kinds of research underly the idea that students do best with teachers of their same racial/ethnic backgrounds. Possibly for similar reasons.

The sex-based research is controversial; disagreeing with the race-based research is controversial. Seems like a silly asymmetry to me.

I'd like to see a debunking that shows the conclusions of such studies are wrong, not merely saying they're less strongly supported than the authors make them out to be.

[Yupster]

16. We all agreed years ago

that it was important for kids to have role models in their schools that looked like them other than janitors and schools have made Herculean efforts to recruit minorities bacause of this.

Today boys are lagging girls horribly in schools, and there are many elementary schools where the only man is the janitor, yet suggesting boys need role models who look like them I guess makes you a sexist.

When I was teaching we were constantly having inservices pointing out that boys and girls learn differently and here's the things you need to do to encourage girls to participate more. Now we have the opposite where it's the boys in all kinds of trouble, but any research coming out trying to say why is automatically maligned here on DU.

A few months ago our loal paper had an interesting juxtaposition. There was a story about how badly boys were doing in school measured by teats scores, graduation rates, college attendance, behavioral problems, suicides, and anything else you can measure.

Then on the front page of the same day's paper there was a story about a special program the school district was promoting to encourage girls to go onto college especially to study the sciences. I was thinking, "are you guys reading your own paper here?"

[Odin2005]

17. Good post

I've heard something similar. Women-dominated elementary faculties have a negative impact of male students. Aprently Women teachers are better at understanting young girls then young boys.

[countingbluecars]

18. Does that go for moms too?

[Yupster]

25. Well look at statistics of boys that grow up in homes

without fathers and you'll see those kids are in much greater danger of everything bad happening to them than boys growing up in homes with their dads.

No that doesn't mean that single moms can't raise boys, but the statistics are stark.

Boys who grow up in homes without fathers are much more at risk. Then you go to inner city neighborhoods where there aren't any dads around. Then you go to the elementary school and the only men are janitors, and you've got to see we have a problem.

It's important that boys have role models that look like them.

[Yupster]

26. Hardly a surprise

Pretty intuitive that teachers will tend to use techniques that they learned best by. Since I was taught boys and girls learn differently, this research is hardly a surprise.

[alcibiades_mystery]

23. If you measure boys by "teats scores" they will always lag behind girls

:-)

[Yupster]

27. Measure them by

graduation rates, college attendance, drug problesm, disciplinary reports, report cards, number of valedictorians or any other way you wnat to measure them. Boys are in significant trouble in society today.

[alcibiades_mystery]

24. OK, now for the serious response

The problem would seem not to be the gender of the instructor, but the style of pedagogy as it attends to (thoroughly arbitrary but culturally enforced) gendered learning styles. Let's be serious: elementary school faculty has long been dominated by women. So that alone cannot account for the rise in achievement among girls, nor in the sudden drop off among boys. I suspect that much wider cultural forces are at work, but let's assume that at least one these forces is as you say, the massive push with the success of feminist critique of education to attend to both the learning styles and typical classroom behavior of girl students. Obviously, this push had consequences, but it also had real causes: the shortchanging of girls in the classroom that went along with the roles established for women in broader society. As those roles changed (not by some gift, but through intense struggle), the struggle for more equitable classrooms also pushed forward. So now we say boys are shortchanged. Fine.

But why wouldn't it be the case that the same attention to teaching and learning styles could be focused on boys? Why would it be the case that the teacher's gender determines the way they handle the problem, rather than the teacher's training? It's almost a ridiculous assertion, since it was those same female dominated elementary schools that were shortchanging girls' education for all those years! Unless you have some idea that the elementary school faculties were packed with men until 1975 or so, and suddenly the ranks filled with women? Now, you know that's not true, right?

[Yupster]

29. A few points

1. Cultural effects are for sure vital. The fact that such a much larger percentage of boys are now being raised in homes without their fathers has got to be a key cause in my opinion.

2. It's true that women have always dominated the elementary classroom, but there have been changes from 30 years ago. If I can a story from my youth about 40 years ago.

I was in third or fourth grade and had just earned my cub scout tote badge. So I was at my seat sharpening a pencil at my desk with my pocketknife when the teacher screamed (40 year old memory), grabbed me and hauled me off to the office. The principal was an older guy and in my office he asked me about cub scouts, looked at my knife and told me I shouldn't take it out in that teacher's class since it bothered her. That was that.

So how would that scene play out today, and would it have mattered if that principal was a woman back then as he/she would likely be today?

There have been other changes that have harmed boys more than girls. Schools are reducing PE and recess times where boys traditionally run around. The time they do have is changed also as PE is no longer so much of chasing each other and wrestling around, but is more likely to be lessons in healthy living.

Zero tolerance rules are catching boys much more than girls.
_____________________________________________________________
The point you make about girls being shortchanged 30 years ago is very valid, and the educational establishment made massive changes to change that fact, and the results have been gratifying. Now boys scores are suffering worse than girls ever were. It's time for the educational establishment to put their heads together again, as another course adjustment is needed.

[alcibiades_mystery]

30. Hmmm...

Everything you say below the line is precisely my point. It also goes to the point that the actual gender of the faculty has no bearing on the question; it is a matter of approach, and little more. And it wasn't just "30 years ago" that girls were being shortchanged; it was, rather, pretty much all of recorded time up until the changes wrought by feminist educational activism started to take effect, I'd say within the last 10-15 years. Until that time, boys never really had to compete academically with girls on a fair playing field. Needless to say, this was a shock to the system, akin to the Harlem Globetrotters suddenly playing the deadly earnest Miami Heat rather than the Washington Senators. One suspects that the Globetrotters may lose a few games under such conditions, and one should be suspicious of those calling that a disaster, for perhaps they like the old system better, and the old system, well, fucking sucked.

Everything above the line makes me extremely nervous, since it approximates the typical reactionary response: "Yes, the faculties of elementary schools have always been women, but the administration used to be done by males, and that's the important point." Apart fromt he fact that this is by and large untrue, it also betrays what these people really think about order and rank in society. OK, fine. A story is just a story. Your female teacher got hysterical over your knife, while your male principle, steady, reassured, and square-jawed understood the culture of boyhood, etc. I won't touch it, really, other than to say it's a nice anecdote.

[Solo_in_MD]

19. I too have read those studies, and I for one am not ready to dismiss them

out of hand. The body of work is large enough and the results are indeed statiscially signifiacnt. However, the basic causal factors are not understood. The best we can say is that we have indentified a symptom or outcome. We still do not know why. All we have is a phenomona.

The other thing is the tremendous variability between teachers. Some are magnificient and do wonders with childern others consider difficult and problematic. For others it one of the few jobs they could get with a liberal arts degree and little more.

[Nikki Stone 1]

20. Why is an economics professor doing studies in education?

That could explain why his conclusions are so odd.

[dsc]

22. Honestly this isn't all that surprising

that on average people would do better with teachers of the same gender. I think the larger issue though is that boys are having an increasingly tough time in school. While some boys are doing quite well on average by any objective measure boys are doing massively worse than girls in school. Boys are suspended more often, drop out more often, are retained more often, are massively more likely to be in special education classes, and are outnumbered on college campuses 3 to 2.

By no means is the above solely a function of a lack of male teachers. But unless we solve this problem and solve it soon, we are going to have an unworkable society.

[seabeyond]

31. i agree

not that i would do anything about the way things are, but i dont see why anyone would be angry or bothered by this. i concluded last year, my oldest in 5th grade that it was about time he had a male teacher. this teacher was the best for him. (i guess it also matters on the individual. a bad teacher male or female is going to produce bad). but i loved seeing son have a male teacher and the changes in him with a male teacher. why not

my youngest in 2nd had a male substitute. i asked him how he liked it, and if there was a difference from a female teacher. there was. we talked it

this year my oldest has a couple male teachers and i am excited for him

makes perfect sense that males would understand the male, and females would understand the females better.

and no way would i want changes, or segregate classes. just seems to be something that the males have to deal with. (since the majority of the teachers in younger grades are female). but i do understand a difference.

[Francine Frensky]

32. Sounds like an excuse for boys. My daughter loved her male teacher

and had hated the female teacher the year before. And my son had a male teacher and did NOT do as well in his class as he has in other classes taught by females.

Comeon, if you think about it for even two seconds, a GREAT teacher of either sex is always going to be better than an average or worse teacher of the opposite sex. And I'm sure boys can learn from great female teachers and I'm sure girls can learn from great male teachers. This study is like comparing teachers by race or eye color or hair color or economic background. You might find a statistical anomoly somewhere, or if you used a small enough sample you might "find" whatever you wanted. But at the end of the day, both men and women are capable of being good OR lousy teachers.

[ThomWV]

33. Anecdotal Evidence ... You Know What Its Worth?

[Yupster]

35. If the race of a teacher doesn't matter

then can my school district stop spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars each year flying all over the country trying to recruit African-American teachers?

I believe race does matter. So why wouldn't gender?