Study: Teacher's gender affects learning

AP via Houston Chronicle ^ | Aug. 27, 2006 | BEN FELLER AP Education Writer

[isom35]

better headline: Female Teacher's hot-ness level affects learning.

[Rumple4]

I'd like to see both sexes go up against nuns with wooden yardsticks. No contest.

[paudio]

Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker...

[MARTIAL MONK]

Mah grammer done teached me how to spell grammar.

[GummyIII]

What was the other class and teacher like? Perhaps they not so much like you as dislike the options. OTOH, are you beautiful? '-)

Ah....how does one measure beauty? Trust me, I'm not any boys daydream. However, what I teach deals with programming and computer "stuff". I know "geek speak", according to the kids. So, maybe I am? ;-)

Seriously, what I do is I treat "my kids" as individuals. It takes a bit more effort, but it's very rewarding. The other teacher lets them "play". I teach. They learn. And we still have fun while it's going on. Speaking of....need to "git".

[GummyIII]

A teacher should exercise the brain of the student, not program them. That's what television is for.

Amen!

[Amelia]

and this female additional 100% has been a highly subsidized labor pool (i.e. the primary income of their household has generally been from men, so their income to the household is supplementary)so they've tended to underbid men in the real work market, thus driving down wages.

Maybe not, because we have more single mothers now, and more "Mr. Mom's" as well, although they are still a small minority.

But we also have the women who are entering careers rather than becoming teachers, thus driving down the quality of education... ;-)

[Right Wing Assault]

Doesn't Dee realize that the establishment doesn't want to hear the truth?

I just wonder when the lynching party is going to show up for this guy.

[aculeus]

bttt

[ME-262]

I really agree.
As a male I find it fortunate that I had male teachers for fifth and sixth grades. I respected them a lot more and learned a lot more than I feel I would have from a female teacher. In third grade I had the unfortunate experience of being taught by a fat redheaded woman who yelled a lot. I found that if I stared out the window I could imagine that I was somewhere else and actually be transported in my mind to the point where I could no longer hear her. She would have to come over and physically shake me back into her world after screaming at me unnoticed from the front of the class. I mentally checked out of class that year, did none of the homework, and developed a lifelong dislike for school. The next year I was repeating third grade(much to my shame) but the school had gotten a new teacher. I really suffered through the rest of my school years because I was "hyper" and mentally not challenged by anything being taught. In high school I tested out my Junior year and went straight to college, where I finished five years of program in three and a half years. I really feel that the elementary school did me a disservice by holding back a bright student who was just not challenged by the material and did not respond positively to their raging Irish lady. My guess is that if I had a male teacher like yourself for third grade, I would have been more interested in what was going on inside the classroom and gone through school more normally instead of being the disruptive kid who already knew all the material and was not interested in relearning it.

On a separate note. being bright can be a curse when most schools only have one educational program for all students. In trigonometry, calculus, physics, statics & dynamics classes I was often graded down harshly for doing the "work" in my head and only putting down the correct answer. There were kids who put down the wrong answer who were often given more points for showing all of their flawed work. For the life of me, it was hard to try to come up with the logical steps to the answer, when to me the answer was intuitively obvious from reading the problem and crunching the numbers in my head. I found it funny that at the engineering university I was graded down on assignments for being a "true engineer" and understanding things intuitively rather than memorizing methods methods by rote to use in laboring towards the answer of like problems. Now 15 years later I'm still doing my algebra and trigonometry in my head and most of the other engineers I graduated with have forgotten their rote memorized formulas and are either going with their "gut feeling" or trying to figure out if there is any software they have that might be able to solve the question for them. Sometimes I think they get their "gut feelings" by standing around and discussing the problem with other people who are equally mystified by it.

According to the NEA my learned knowledge and lifelong retention should be the result of "Experienced teachers, good textbooks, smaller class sizes and modern equipment". But I regret to inform them we had none of that at the Christian schools where I attended. I guess I should be happy that my education was such a positive fluke!

[DH]

I never thought about this matter before I read this article. Now, that I think back over the years, for the life of me, I cannot think of a single instance where a female teacher taught me something that either changed the course of my life or affected me in any manner in the future.

I can think of at least three male teachers who taught me things that completely changed the course of my life.

Odd...never thought of this before.

[redgolum]

I thought this was common sense.

[redgolum]

Sounds like what I did to my sister's Care Bears once.

The Decepticons were not gentlemen in that encounter.

[Sacajaweau]

I think boys AND girls learn more from male teachers. Rellay, younger grades Kind-3 should be female. Grades 4 and beyond should be male teachers.

Female teachers seem to be reasonably good at teaching the basics. After that, they stink. They become too emotional and "dictators".

[redgolum]

You sound like a typical engineer.

My grade school teacher told my parents that she hated me. I was bright, and pretty bored with whatever she was saying. I also had a rather bad habit of correcting the teacher whenever she made mistakes.

But I loved books. So when it came time for the monthly book reports, most kids got assigned one or two, I got 10-12. She knew that she wasn't able to keep me engaged, but she could channel my interests into reading and have me learn anyway.

Your comment about "showing your work" made me laugh. In college, I would often find the answer and then work backwards to show the work. A fine professor realized that, and then told me "Just write down your thought process, even if you used short cuts". That helped a lot.

[IrishBrigade]

Arm Flab, mustaches, greasy hair...those are my memories of female teachers in high school...the one teacher I had who could be thought of as attractive, Mrs. Hilton, hated my guts and flunked me...

[David Isaac]

I also had a problem with a lady teacher (though am unsure her gender was a problem), in the 6th grade. She drilled us and drilled us on material that I already knew. I averaged staying home one day every week, faking illness.

The next year I had a male teacher (cosest thing I've ever seen to a gorilla in human form, though he surely did not act like one). He had a student teacher each semester, who, oddly enough for the times (early 60's), were both male. It was by far my favorite year in my entire school experience. Again, it is difficult to put a finger on the difinitive factor(s).

p.s. I used to do the math in my head also. Unlike you though, that may be why I had problems later in mathematics. Though it may also be a result of the way math was taught as much as anything else.

(ME 262, the WWII German jet-fighter?)

[Fairview]

I think it is because male teachers tend not to take a lot of crap from students where as women tend to be more patient.

To a point I'd agree with you, but I think that males and females interpret different kinds of behavior as acceptable. Male teachers tend to dislike the giggly, bitchy, passive-aggressive, arrogant behavior that girls offer up as discipline problems while they are more forgiving of the boy-type misbehavior. Female teachers are more forgiving of female misbehavior and tend to consider the normal squirminess and inattention of boys as meaning that the boys are misbehaving, perhaps even ADHD.

[PeterPrinciple]

Dee warns against drawing fast conclusions based on his work. He is not endorsing single-sex education, or any other policy.

Rather, he hopes his work will spur more research into gender's effect and what to do about it.

Well, there you have it. Don't draw conclusions and send more money...........

[taxesareforever]

I just wonder when the lynching party is going to show up for this guy.

You can bet it won't be long. And the call goes out, "Remember the Bell Curve! Take no prisoners"!