On 11/22/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Puppy wrote:
<snip> > *GENDER BIAS IN STUDENT/TEACHER INTERACTIONS* >
Obviously you're not aware of the problems surrounding males in education then, and how they're falling seriously behind their female peers.
That's true, but they still get more attention - in fact, they get even more attention from male teachers because there is concern about male achievement. I'm in a field which is overwhelmingly female at the undergrad level, predominantly female at the grad student level, and predominantly male at the tenured faculty level. And it isn't because the demographics have shifted recently, it's because of retention of women in grad school and in academia beyond grad school. And a large part of it has to do with the fact that professors are more encouraging to male students and junior faculty. While the best students are usually female, it's the one male student who performs well who gets most of the attention. Of course, it's also the male students who are socialised to take the initiative and chat with the professors.
I've spent a lot of time in classroom situations, both as a student and as a teacher. Over the course of the semester you get to know certain groups of students who you can chat with as you wander around the lab. Somehow there are always more knots of male students who talk to you than there are groups of female students (the lab I teach is mostly non-majors, and it's about even in terms of gender ratio).