Challenges Faced by the Male Primary Teacher: A Literature Review

Abstract

Previous research suggests that challenges such as the isolation of working in a predominantly female environment, the profession’s low status and salary as well as societal perceptions of sexual deviance are significant contributors to the low number of male primary school teachers (Cushman, 2005b). Further to this, Smith (2004) states that the declining number of male primary teachers is resulting in increased pressure and work for those who choose to remain in the profession. This chapter seeks to present a critical review of the literature to enable a deeper understanding of the male primary school teacher experience to be established. In doing so, this chapter identifies the challenges deterring males from entering and remaining in primary teaching and proposes directions for future research that examines the effectiveness of existing strategies and explores how these might be further enhanced. This literature review is confined to studies that apply specifically to male teachers in order to maintain a distinct focus on the male teacher experience. Considerations such as discussing why we need more male primary teachers and contextualising male teachers within the broader field of teacher identity are identified as important aspects of research in this field. These topics have been the focus of other research in this area (Day, Kington, Stobart, & Sammons, 2006; Livingstone, 2003), but are outside the specific focus of this chapter. The intention of this chapter is to discern a clear overview of the known challenges and the strategies proposed to overcome them in order to provide purposeful and distinct entry points for evaluation and development of these strategies in future research. CONTEXT Numerous countries including Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have experienced calls for increased male recruitment to and retention in the teaching profession, particularly to the primary area (Carrington, Francis, Hutchings, Skelton, Read, & Hall, 2007; Francis & Skelton, 2005; Martin & Marsh, 2005). The arguments for recruiting and retaining more men into primary teaching fall into four main categories: Academic reasons to address the perceived learning deficiencies of boys; social reasons to better cater for the social needs of boys; environmental reasons to attempt to balance the exceedingly nurturing climates of primary schools;