The Role of Gender-Biased Perceptions in Teacher-Student Interaction

Differences in teacher perceptions depending on student gender and their impact on teacher-student interaction was the focus of the study. The questions addressed were: the characteristics that teachers encourage and discourage in girls and boys; the patterns of their responses to students of different genders; perception of pupils' academic achievement, learning skills and giftedness; distribution of attention between girls and boys. The study revealed that in spite of better school results, girls' skills and talents are underestimated, expectations towards them are low and their behavior is restricted to stereotyped feminine roles. The majority of those surveyed support the idea that sex determines different abilities in different learning skills as regards school subjects. While girls, in teachers' opinion, insignificantly exceed boys in the humanities, boys entirely outdo girls in natural sciences and math. Teachers totally deny girls' abilities in sports. At the same time, most teachers are hardly aware of being gender-biased themselves.