Teachers’ definitions of boys and girls: Some consequences

Abstract

In a study of two large infant schools of different social class composition it was found that there was a between-school agreement in the ways in which teachers defined the differences they saw between boys and girls as pupils. Boys were defined as rougher, noisier, more immature and more lacking in concentration. These were not the types of behaviour the teachers associated with the hypothetical successful pupil. In the working-class school, pupil sex differences in classroom behaviour were explained by social factors. In the more middle-class school, sex differences were largely thought to be psychological in origin. The teachers’ definitions had consequences for their classroom treatment of boys and girls, the behaviour of boys eliciting the greater disapproval. The between-school rating consensus was unexpected, it being though that less sex differentiation would be made at the more middle-class school. The consensus may have been due to identical definitions having different meanings for the two groups of teachers.