The Role Of Gender Challenging Role Models

Society’s understanding of gender roles debate about gender equity and have always been connected to the social roles that men and women we assigned to shape Americans views of education for girls and boys. What has also been affected is race and social class between females and males who attend schools. Ideas of what women and men are suppose to be and do have cut across different classifications. Ending unfairness in schools has rested on change to gender roles mainly women.

“It is early indeed that children show an awareness of the message that… females are generally less interesting and important than males are… The (often inadvertent) bearers of this message include parents, peers, and teachers.” (Lips, 1979, p. 128.) The absence of gender equity can be damaging to both males and females. Surprisingly most of the teachers and administrators are unaware of this problem. Organizations such as the American Association of University Women (“Gender equity,” 2003.) strive to create programs that will improve equality within schools. The purpose of this research paper is to identify gender equity issues in the classroom and explore strategies for teachers to incorporate equitable

Over time there has been a change in gender success throughout education “coming into the late 1980’s girls were less likely than boys to obtain one or more A-levels and were less likely to go on to higher education however 1990 's there was a sudden reversal girl were doing better than boys and In 2006 10% more females were obtaining 2 or more A-levels than males (Trueman,2016)”. In today’s society feminist’s doubt that the topic in school want girls to achieve less like the model also considers that gender stereotyping may still be in society as boys are believed to fit better in the workforce than girls. The distinction between girls and boys are often sketched on sex and ideas of biology Dr Zuleyka mention that “Sex are the biological traits that societies use to assign people into the category of either male or female, whether it be through a focus on chromosomes, genitalia or some other physical ascription." (Zevallos), Gender does not depend on biological personality it is an idea that describes how societies determine and manage sex categories also determined by what an individual feels and does. Girls are more conscientious and mature while boys are seen as a liability student. A parent who spends less time reading to their son impact their son to achieve a lower grade. Many jobs tend to be dominated by one gender for example nursing which is seen as a female job. Girls do consistently better than boys at all levels and likely to get higher grades

There are a number of professions that traditionally have been oriented towards women: teaching, especially younger children; certain carative professions; and, of course, nursing. Of the 2.1 million Registered Nurses in the United States, for instance, less than six per cent are male, and men make up only 13 percent of the new crop of nursing students (Chung).This trend is not just centered in the United States. In much of the developed world, males account for only 1% or less of teachers of early childhood grade levels, down from about 4% in the 1980s. At least one educator noted that this is a clear tragedy for millions of children who can benefit from simply having a male perspective in the classroom. "As a result many children who have no man at home, find no man at preschool and no man at primary school, and never meet a stable, reliable male figure in all their preteen years. Girls never experience nurturing from a trusted older male. Boys, cared for only by women, learn that nurturing is no part of the male job description. And in the absence of reliable men, too many of these boys learn their male role from violent television and music videos, and on the street" (Ballantyne).

the first things we as a society need to confront is two truths that I think our largely mollycoddling society tries vehemently deny. The first being that boys and girls are different and that gender is not a social construct, it's a biological one. Boys are naturally wired to want to move around, one way some have suggested would be to have them do more moving around in class. That could be as simple as having them using their hands to make triangles when learning geometry (Dixon). They also naturally crave competition, which is why the decline of recess and renaming games actually have an effect on these boys. More male teachers would have a marked effect, first they understand the way boys learn and secondly it would give boys without a strong male role model to look up to a healthy male influence, a thing many of them lack. An extreme measure that's been suggested has been gender segregated schools, which might not be a bad idea, if a curricula could be devised that work for boys. Maybe something like vocational high schools where they spend half their day on academic pursuits and then half working on engines or computers or tinkering with robotics and stuff boys tend to like. The graduation rates for boys from these schools is typically vastly higher with more student engagement than traditional schools.

The question I am planning to contest in my dissertation is “Why is there a lack of male primary school teachers in the UK?” One in four primary schools in England still has no male registered teacher, which has led to questions about positive male role models. The General Teaching Council for England statistics show that in March 2013, only 26,208 men were working as primary school teachers, compared to 185,023 women - and the proportions are virtually unchanged since last year. In Scotland only 8% of primary school teachers are male, while about 15% are male in Northern Ireland.

While in fact, in today's society, more often than not, these gender roles have switched. I believe that in order to create a change we need to start to teach children more flexibility in applying gender-role

Although it is very important to support the empowerment of women, we shouldn’t forget about what is happening in the other side with males. Males are facing a lot of issues and impediments that are preventing them from succeeding in the society. For many years women's groups have protested that boys have more benefits from the school’s regulation than girls do, but now girls are experiencing a kind of psychological foot-binding. Over the past decade in the American education, boys were annoyed about being obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls. This perspective has been indorsed in schools by teachers as they feel that girls need more protection. It is obvious that males are the leaders in our society and in most of the

Thinking back to even before I started reading this chapter, I knew that most of the people seen in the education field consist of mostly women. Many of whom do not hold high positions nor are required to have advance degrees such as math, sciences or english. Although this is not through for high school as there seems to be an equal number of men and women teachers, when it comes to the younger grade levels, there are more female teachers than males in the classroom. From this chapter it becomes easier to understand the different biases in the world and why people view them the way they do. Not everyone is given the chance to understand that there are other options out there, most people are born into one way of society and spend the rest of their lives there never branching out.

According to Groundwater-Smith, Ewing & Le Cornu, gender is a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon and there has been many debates in Australia that curriculum, assessment policies and practices have either advantaged boys or girls. One major gender issue began in the 1980s and early 1990s, which was the lower performance of girls when compared with boys, particularly in the subjects maths and science. The effect of gender on learning and achievement is constructed by culture. Paechter (2007) discusses Martino's (2004) study, which suggested that many teachers consider gender and schooling in terms of normalising assumptions that initialises particular ways of behaviour for boys and girls. Boys and girls are set in oppositional positions in terms of perception of the educator: Girls are expected to behave more passively than boys and boys are expected to be active and curious, often to the point of getting into trouble, which is considered normal and acceptable behaviour.

There are a number of professions that traditionally have been oriented towards women: teaching, especially younger children; certain carative professions; and, of course, nursing. Of the 2.1 million Registered Nurses in the United States, for instance, less than six per cent are male, and men make up only 13 percent of the new crop of nursing students (Chung, 2001).This trend is not just centered in the United States. In much of the developed world, males account for only 1% or less of teachers of early childhood grade levels, down from about 4% in the 1980s. At least one educator noted that this is a clear tragedy for millions of children who can benefit from simply having a male perspective in the classroom. "As a result many children who have no man at home, find no man at preschool and no man at primary school, and never meet a stable, reliable male figure in all their preteen years. Girls never experience nurturing from a trusted older male. Boys, cared for only by women, learn that nurturing is no part of the male job description. And in the absence of reliable men, too many of these boys learn their male role from violent television and music videos, and on the street" (Ballantyne, 2008).

Gender stereotyping and gender preferences have been a problem in society for many years. Modern day society has only just emerged from the ideology and mind-set that males are the dominant gender. However, some of this still lingers within the educational system. Hatton (1998) states that boys have been the preference over girls in the classroom as boys are more lively and interesting. Teachers rely on the good behaviour of the girls, which makes them ‘less interesting’, so that the time can be spent with the boys (Hatton, 1998). Gender is the distinguishing biological aspects of a person that considers them to be a male or a female (Davies, 1998). However, in this modern society we live in, ‘gender’ cannot so easily be labelled this black and white. In Australian schools today, the schools experience transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) young people (Ullman, 2015). This is to say that there are some young people who do not conform to what society biologically says they are. A metaphorical theory that Ferfolja, Diaz and Ullman (2015) discuss called the ‘unseen half’ perfectly places this social unjust issue of gender inequality. This theory states that diversity, individual or communities, within the educational system often undervalued or found difficult to understand are rendered ‘invisible’ in day-to-day practices (Ferfolja, Diaz, & Ullman, 2015). As recent as 1979, women were

In our schools currently, a cornucopia of gender biases is inhibiting the good education of students. Women have been trained to be ‘feminine’ ever since preschool, always being told to be less assertive and be ‘girlier’. These ideas of femininity have created the bias

A teacher is an important key element in the educational system as well as a role model. Some teachers hold traditional gender stereotypes about their students’ views of what is expected of them. Many children develop social

The importance of social justice is universal across educators. According to Vigliante (2010, pp.1), promoting values of compassion, respect and dignity for others is highly held by educators as a goal for their view of social justice. According to Hawkins (2014, pp. 726) classrooms and early childhood settings may be shared among indigenous Australian, Anglo-Australian, European Australian, Middle-Eastern Australian and Asian Australian classmates (to name a few) from varying religious, political, cultural and economic backgrounds. To which ‘an optimist may claim that these contexts are a rich source of cultural exchange’. However this ‘melting pot’ often breeds severe discontent (SirajBlatchford 1995). It is therefore evident that sexism is an issue in society today.