THE IMPACT OF GENDER ON PRIMARY TEACHERS EVALUATIONS OF CHILDRENS DIFFICULTIES IN SCHOOL

Background. More boys than girls receive provision to meet special edu cational needs. It has been suggested that teachers' evaluations of ch ildren's difficulties in school may be subject to gender bias. But the evidence is inconsistent, and the methodology of some work that repor ted bias has been criticised because the type of rating task that was used may have encouraged stereotypic thinking (Langfeldt, 1993). Aims. This study investigated whether gender of child would still have an i nfluence on teacher's judgments ifa fuller context was provided for th e stimulus and there was a more realistic rating task. Samples. The sa mple comprised 523 teachers in 79 primary schools in London, the home counties and the North-West of England. Methods, Participants complete d questionnaires on what action might be required in their school for children with difficulties who were described in short vignettes. The children's gender was varied systematically. The construct of 'serious ness', which had generally been left vague in earlier research, was gi ven a concrete definition. Results, It was found that, when the experi mental task was contextualised in this way, the gender-of-child effect disappeared. Teacher characteristics such as gender did not influence the results. Conclusions, These findings should be treated with some caution as they relate to the small and restricted range of types of d ifficulty that were included in the study and to a sample of primary s chools in one society. However, they give support to an emphasis on 'r ealism' in the method of investigation that is used for exploring teac hers' judgments.