Reading is for girls!? The negative impact of preschool teachers' traditional gender role attitudes on boys' reading related motivation and skills.

Ilka Wolter,Bettina Hannover,Edith Braun

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01267

Ilka Wolter, Bettina Hannover + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01267

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Abstract

According to gender stereotypes, reading is for girls. In this study, we investigated the role of preschool teachers in transmitting such gendered expectations. We suggest that boys are less motivated to read in preschool, and less competent in reading 1 year later in primary school, if their preschool teacher holds a traditional gender role attitude than if the teacher has egalitarian beliefs. In 135 independent dyads of a female preschool teacher (N = 135) and one boy (n = 65) or one girl (n = 70) we measured teacher's gender role attitude, child's reading related motivation as well as precursors of reading skills in preschool, and child's reading skills at the end of first grade in primary school. As expected, the more traditional preschool teachers' gender role attitude was, the weaker was boys' motivation to (learn to) read while girls' motivation was unrelated to teachers' gender role attitude. In either gender, motivation in preschool predicted reading skills at the end of first grade.

Highlights

Reading skills are essential for individuals to gain an understanding across subject domains in school and are an important predictor of their future socioeconomic success (e.g., Duncan et al, 2007; Ritchie and Timothy, 2013)
We suggest that boys are less motivated to read in preschool, and less competent in reading 1 year later in primary school, if their preschool teacher holds a traditional gender role attitude than if the teacher has egalitarian beliefs
Gender Differences in Reading Related Motivation and (Precursors of) Reading Skills In a first step, we tested whether our measures of reading related motivation and precursors of reading skills were invariant across the genders by comparing the measurement models via a confirmatory factor analysis approach

Summary

Introduction

Reading skills are essential for individuals to gain an understanding across subject domains in school and are an important predictor of their future socioeconomic success (e.g., Duncan et al, 2007; Ritchie and Timothy, 2013). While reading related skills have extensively been studied in samples of children in (mostly later) primary school grades and secondary school (see Morgan and Fuchs, 2007, for a review), research on emergent readers attending preschool is scarce. Precursors of reading competence, such as phonological awareness or phonological recoding in lexical access, start to develop long before school entry, i.e., during the preschool years (see Townsend and Konold, 2010; Hulme and Snowling, 2013, for reviews), with some studies reporting gender differences to already appear in these early precursor competences (e.g., Lundberg et al, 2012; Wolter et al, 2014), continuing into girls outperforming boys in their reading achievements in first and second grade of primary school (e.g., McCoach et al, 2006; Niklas and Schneider, 2012)

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