Teacher Attitudes and Expectations

Teacher Attitudes and Expectations

Since Sandler and Hall coined the term ‘chilly climate’ in 1982 and documented the various subtle ways males and females are taken care at school, a lot has been said and discussed in the field of women’s education. Yet, after twenty-five years their findings are still worth bearing in mind to understand the condition of girls at school today. The characteristics of the chilly climate are listed as such:

·               Girls and women get typically less attention, less eye contact and less encouragement.

·               Females are more likely to be praised for their attractiveness or neatness, whereas males are more likely to be praised for their work and creativity.

·               When males speak, teachers often engage in a dialogue with them, whereas girls and women are more likely to receive the ubiquitous “uh-huh”.

·               Female students may be interrupted more often and be called on less often in many classes.

·               Teachers are more likely to call on males, even when females raise their hands.

·               Men and boys are more likely to be called by their name than females.

·               Teachers are more likely to ask males the harder, higher order “thinking” questions, such as “Why did the revolution occur?” By contrast, females are more likely to be asked factual, lower-order questions, such as “When did the revolution occur?” ( Routhledge, 2005 : 481)

It is possible to cite countless studies conducted in many different countries since those times that have reached the same results. Unfortunately, these findings have become common sense knowledge among the people who have the slightest interest in the field.

To change attitudes implies changing perceptions, understanding, expectations, beliefs and language, all of which are deeply rooted in one’s experience, inherited socio-cultural value system(s), prevalent modes of thinking, peer pressure, personal hopes and fears, and so much more, which is often difficult if not impossible to express. (UNESCO, 2000,130)

In their study Walkerdine and Walden (1990) found that teachers despise the qualities of being nice, kind and helpful but still expect them from their students. The girls with those qualities were described as lacking the spark although they were hard working. Ironically, these girls will probably grow to become teachers because the same teachers described themselves as little girls with those qualities. They also add that, the success of girls in mathematics is undermined by claiming that what they do is rote level learning, that they are not as risk taking and assertive as boys. As a result, the teachers might start to expect and demand less from girls. However, as women teachers “…we need to demand more, not less of women, both for the sake of their futures as thinking beings, and because historically women have always had to be better than men to do half as well.” (Rich, 1985, 27)

Describing an elementary school classroom Jackson (1983) mentions the teachers function to make judgments of students’ work and behavior and comments that “typically, in most classrooms students come to know when things are right or wrong, good or bad, pretty or ugly, largely as a result of what the teacher tells them” (1997:44). For him the points that teachers get angry about are not the failures about the subjects but the “violations of institutional expectations. This point may be related to negative feedback on non-intellectual matters which is received more often by boys.

There are two similar studies supported by research and experiment findings. One by Lich and Dweck (1983) and the other one by Serbin (1983).  In both of these studies researchers first ascertained the nature of teacher attitudes against boys and girls and then in experimental studies treated some students  the way that the boys are treated and some others the way that girls are treated. The results showed that teacher expectations are self fulfilling prophecies since the students, regardless of their sex, gave the reactions boys give when treated like boys and vice versa. This finding also proves that teachers are able to override the internalized sex-typed behavior of their students when they are aware of their own attitudes and spend effort to change them. The first study will be reported briefly since its findings explain the varying attitudes of teachers against boys and girls and its far-reaching implications.

The series of studies by Lich and Dweck (1983) on the achievement orientations of the two sexes are quite effective in showing the effects of teacher attitudes toward pupils. It has been observed that the nature of feedback boys and girls receive in elementary school level differs. Boys receive more negative feedback on non-intellectual traits while girls receive positive feedback of the same kind. In time, the students who receive more negative feedback attribute it to teacher’s negative attitude against themselves and not to their failure. On the other hand, the ones who receive more feedback especially on non-intellectual matters attribute positive feedback to again teacher’s attitude against themselves. The effect of positive feedback after negative feedback on non-intellectual matters is confidence boosting. Boys’ attitude of attributing failure to external reasons is also reinforced by teachers who attributed it to insufficient effort of boys eight times more than they did with girls. This finding is important since it reveals the confidence building effect of the feedback boys receive. Belief in one’s achievement is one of the most important determinants of success and it is highly related to self-confidence.

On the other hand there are teachers who are actively engaged in creating an atmosphere to foster the learning of girls. The equality and equity frameworks are the two choices of teachers who want to create a gender sensitive learning environment. The teachers adopting the former framework may take the students individually and ignore the gender stereotypes whereas the teachers who adopt the latter framework are aware that one gender is less empowered and needs to be treated in a special way. The three methods employed by teachers for the creation of gender equitable environment are using non-sexist language, cooperative tasks, and organizing the class environment to mix the sexes. (Streitmatter, 1994).