This is not a surprise at all. Most people of all ages feel safer and more comfortable with those like themselves. it’s both that simple and that complicated!

by
Nick Gibbens
Boys perform better at school when they are taught by men, while girls do best when they are taught by women, a study suggests.

Stanford University researchers studied 25,000 children aged between 8 and 14 who took part in the National Education Longitudinal Survey.

They found that pupils performed about 4 per cent better in examinations when their teachers were of the same sex.

Lead researcher Thomas Dee said: “Learning from a teacher of the opposite gender has a detrimental effect on students’ academic progress.

“My best estimate is that it lowers test scores for both boys and girls by approximately 4 per cent of a standard deviation and has even larger effects on various measures of student engagement.”

The study claims that adverse gender effects may fall more heavily on boys in middle-school because most middle-school teachers are female.

According to a US Department of Education survey, more than 90 per cent of middle-school reading teachers are female, as are more than 70 per cent of the math teachers and nearly 70 per cent of the science teachers.

In addition to examining the effect of teacher gender on students’ test performance, Dee also analysed teacher perceptions of a student’s performance and student perceptions of the subject taught by a particular teacher.

When a class is headed by a female teacher, boys are much more likely to be seen as disruptive, the study found

And, when taught by a man, girls were more likely to report that they did not look forward to a subject, that it was not useful for their future, or that they were afraid to ask questions, the report added.

“Simply put, girls have better educational outcomes when taught by women and boys are better off when taught by men,” said Dee.

The study is published in the fall issue of Education Next.