Gendered Conceptions of Quality Teaching in Low-Socioeconomic-Status Schools in Australia: Mavericks and Dragon Ladies

• In Event: Overcoming Inequalities of Systematically Underserved Communities From a Global Research Network: Teachers and Minority Women as Agents of Change

Abstract

While research exists on teacher gender and its impact on educational performance (Arnot et. al, 1998), less research has been conducted using a gendered lens to tease out differences in how male and female teachers and school leaders within high poverty schools are perceived by others and of their own views on quality teaching. Building on a larger research project on conceptions of quality teaching specifically in low SES schools, this paper investigates the gender codes which shape the working lives of teachers and school leaders. This slice of the larger research project examines some of the gendered differences in how a purposefully selected sample of school leaders and teachers in low socio-economic schools in Australia are both perceived and define ‘quality teaching’, asking the research question: ‘how does gender articulate with discourses of quality teaching?’

In this paper, gendered discourses are understood as social practice supported by schools, which are largely traditional institutions. Drawing on interviews with a comparable number of male and female school Principals and teachers (n=60) subtle and overt discursive and gender-specific differences emerged between how men and women talk about their work as well as how male and female participants identify quality teaching. Transcripts of interviews were analyzed using discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1993; Wodak, 1997) to examine how men and women talk about their work as teachers and school leaders. Understanding discourses around ‘quality teaching’, ‘effective teaching’ and ‘good teachers’ as socially constructed categories, gender roles in low socio-economic schools both produce and respond to social and political norms (Tannen, 1994).

In this emerging research, male and female teachers and school leaders appear to speak differently about quality teaching within low SES schools. While themes can be similarly clustered (e.g. quality teachers should be caring, strong in their content areas and good communicators) the ways these knowledges, skills and attributes are discussed are somewhat different. For instance, ‘effective’ male school leaders are often identified by others as ‘mavericks’ and ‘game changers’, whereas female principals who ‘take charge’ are referred to as ambitious ‘Dragon Ladies’. Female teachers more commonly identify quality teaching as relationship-based (“Relationships, relationships, relationships. That's what we must build in order to be able to go forward”) while male teachers focus more heavily on classroom management and knowledge content, (“They have to have control of their classes first”).

While other studies suggest teacher gender does not matter for students in their assessment of their teachers (Lahelma, 2000), the complex matters of gender we noted in our study have implications both for policy and practice, especially in a period of time when teacher quality is assessed and rewarded or punished. Gendered differences were found both in teaching strategies and in male and female teachers’ ‘ways of thinking and seeing’ (Blackmore, 2010). This research helps explain how some of the structured social practice that circulates around quality teaching is articulated in culturally grounded and gendered ways as teachers and school leaders talk about their own and others’ ‘quality teaching’.

Authors

• Jo Lampert, Queensland University of Technology

• Bruce Munro Burnett, Queensland University of Technology