Gender and Teachers' Work

This article reports data that provide insight into teachers’ perspectives regarding the impact of personal-life factors on their work lives. Open-ended questionnaires were used to collect data from 200 teachers. The data were analyzed according to qualitative methods for grounded theory research. Thirteen categories reflecting positive and negative effects were identified in the data. These categories are discussed in terms of three general classifications: interpersonal personal, and socioeconomic. Finally, conclusions and implications are drawn regarding gender as well as personal and professional development issues.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1163034.pdf

The Impact of Teachers’ Personal Lives on Professional Role Enactment: A Qualitative Analysis

The Limits of Making Teaching a Profession

As I thought about a suitable opening for this chapter, my eyes fell on an article published in the Times Educational Supplement of June 24, 1994 (Budge, 1994). The Times Educational Supplement is a weekly newspaper published in London that deals with educational issues and events in Britain and is read by teachers, academics, and others concerned with schooling. The topic was \"gender imbalance in the classroom.\" But this was not another article about why so few girls study science or why teachers give disproportionate attention to boys. Instead, the focus was on teachers themselves. \"The profession,\" Budge reported, \"is more overwhelmingly female than ever,\" and, consequently, \"school staffrooms—particularly in primaries—are increasingly becoming 'no go' areas to men\" (1994, p. 12). The author went on to consider reasons for this trend, including low salaries in comparison with other professions men might enter and the possibility that women simply \"like children more.\" All of the four academic experts quoted were, like the author, male. One argued that women teachers \"may have been gradually, and unknowingly, moulding education and assessment to suit their gender\" (e.g., by putting greater stress on course work than on examinations) (Budge, 1994, p. 12). Budge gave suggestions for attracting more men into teaching, including raising midcareer salaries, taking pastoral (counseling) roles away from teachers and giving them to specialized professionals, and practicing positive discrimination for men in admissions to teacher education courses.

Chapter 3: Gender and Teachers’ Work:

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/spq/2/3/191.pdf

Sari Knopp Biklen

Papers

Can Elementary Schoolteaching Be a Career? A Search for New Ways of Understanding Women's Work.