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Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage? A Report on Research on Schools
... Teaching has long been considered to be a "feminized" profession (e.g., Apple, 1985;Carrington and McPhee, 2008;Goldstein, 2014), fitting neatly with traditional societal expectations regarding women's role as caretakers (Strober and Tyack, 1980;Grumet, 1988). Indeed, teaching was often seen as a natural extension of these expectations with female teachers serving as nurturers of children's minds (Weiler, 1989;Nelson, 1992). ...
... Frames placing women in the classroom and men in the principal's office were and continue to be reinforced in schools with women often being actively discouraged or disallowed from taking on administrative roles (Strober and Tyack, 1980;Sanchez and Thornton, 2010). Like many male dominated professions, school leadership is often described as an "old boys club" with males receiving formal and informal mentoring to succeed and women receiving fewer supports (Peters, 2010;Muñoz et al., 2014). ...
This study utilized a comparative case study analysis to investigate how gender influenced the experiences of participants in a leadership development program (principal preparation program) designed to lead public K-12 schools identified as requiring turnaround. We closely focused on two participants, a man and a woman, and compared the ways each participant made meaning of his/her experiences as developing leaders in the program. Although both participants conceptualized effective leadership in similar communally-oriented ways, the way they came to construct their identities as leaders varied greatly. These differences were largely influenced by different and, what appeared to be, gendered feedback occurring during the program and when participants entered the job market.
... This conclusion may be due to the perception that females are more empathic and forgiving than are males (Broidy et al., 2003), while males are often considered to more dominating than women. In addition, Strober and Tyack (1980) suggested that mothers were "better teachers than males" and were more supportive of one another because they were patient, understanding, and nurtured one another. In their comments, the Saudi Arabian educators who were asked about this topic mentioned that they believed that innate and acquired gender inequalities and their power associations could be at the root of this critical finding. ...
This research aims to explore the autonomy orientation of English language teachers in the western province of Saudi Arabia, home to numerous secondary schools. The study, grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), examines the impact of two primary variables: the teachers' genders and their levels of teaching experience. A cohort of 102 Saudi secondary school language teachers participated in the study, with 10 engaging in a qualitative follow-up. Data were collected via a questionnaire and analyzed using statistical techniques such as t-tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The findings indicated that the autonomy orientation among Saudi language teachers was moderate, with female teachers showing more supportive tendencies towards their students. Moreover, the study uncovered a discrepancy between the teachers’ autonomy orientations and their perceptions of the concept, attributing their perceived constraints and roles to the national education system. In light of these findings, the study advocates for pre-service and in-service training programs designed to enable English language teachers to foster an autonomy-supportive environment for their students. Additionally, the study calls for further research to deepen the understanding of English language teachers' autonomy orientations in Saudi Arabia and the interplay between autonomy orientation and teachers’ perceptions of autonomy.
... Females' communication skills and their ability to create more equally distributed social relations, while males tend to be more dominant, might also be presented as an explanation as to why females can be more autonomy supportive (Merchant, 2012). Furthermore, Strober and Tyack (1980) argued that by being mothers, women need to be patient, nurturing, and understanding, all of which cause them to be more supportive and "better teachers than men" (p.496). In their responses, Turkish teachers in this study also claimed that inborn and later gained characteristic differences between males and females, as well as their power relationships, may be the reason behind this significant result. ...
The present study aimed to explore autonomy orientations of English language teachers' work at an intensive language school in Turkey. The autonomy orientations of the teachers were analysed through self-determination theory. The study also investigated if these orientations vary according to the teachers’ gender, years of experience, and department of graduation. The investigation was carried out through an autonomy orientations questionnaire. Data were collected from 111 language teachers, 11 of whose opinions were utilized for further analysis. The results showed that teachers had moderate autonomy supportive orientation, which was reported to be risky. Moreover, gender was the only variable that had a significant effect on the autonomy orientations. The teachers mainly blamed the education system for restricting their adoption of the autonomous orientations. The results imply the necessity of explicit training on how teachers can be encouraged to have more autonomy supporting orientations.
... This gender imbalance is generally seen as problematic, as it contributes to persistent gender wage inequality (Blau & Kahn, 2000, 2007Mandel & Semyonov, 2014;Alskins et al., 2004;Strober & Tyack, 1980), and perpetuates differing career aspirations and trajectories between genders (Farmer, 1987;McWirther, 1997;Chevalier, 2003), including the difficulty attracting male education graduates to the profession (Apple, 2013;Mills et al., 2004;Roulston & Mills, 2000;Drudy, 2008). Some studies point out the wider implications of this gender imbalance. ...
Across countries, almost all primary and pre-primary teachers are women while few men in the occupation tend to specialise in secondary schooling and administration. We investigate the decision to become a teacher versus alternative occupations for graduates in Australia over the past 15 years. We find that this gender distribution reflects relative returns in the labour market: women with bachelor qualifications receive higher returns in teaching, while similarly educated men enjoy substantially higher returns in other occupations. We also find evidence that schools which can, and do, make higher wage offers successfully attract more male teachers as well as more female teachers with a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These results are consistent with the predictions of theoretical models of self-selection of intrinsically motivated workers.
... Feminist scholars, however, have also pushed back on this overly reductionist characterization of women's lives (Kanter, 1977;Lopata, 1993;Hoyt, 2010;Schultheiss, 2013), suggesting that it diminishes the range of work women engage in, fails to account for the various influences that inform women's career choices, and important to this study, fails to account for the historical shifts in social sentiment about a women's place in the world. Rather than point to a supposed contentiousness between women's public and private lives, feminist voices instead suggest that women's professional choices are in many ways deliberated, negotiated, and ultimately constructed in accordance with the prevailing gender norms around women's paid work over time (Strober and Tyack, 1980). Along these very same lines, the current study seeks to further engage with this last point by exploring the relationship between historical sentiment on women's professional leadership and how those sentiments inform women's perspectives on the superintendency. ...
The current study utilizes feminist life course theory to examine the perspectives of women who have aspired or have entered into the superintendency in the United States. Life course theory suggests that our “role histories” often inform our choices about careers. The role histories reflect instantaneous responses to the social cues of our external world. Consequently, it offers opportunity to understand how patterns of socialization may impact real-life decisions over career possibilities (and impossibilities) and the historical conditions in which career decisions are made. Using survey responses from current and aspiring female superintendents (n = 133), we engaged in descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. We contextualized these findings further through the four principles of life course theory, historical time and place, timing in lives, linked lives, and human agency. Our findings indicate women’s perspectives on the accessibility of the superintendency have shifted as narratives around women’s executive leadership roles have also changed. Importantly, the women in this study view accessibility to the superintendency as a largely contingent decision – a strategic, individual-level assessment focusing on the favorability of district work conditions to their success as leaders. Simultaneously, we see where issues of social networking, leadership “tapping,” and district “fit” emerge as normative expectations for accessing leadership roles as well as the preferred conditions upon which such choices are made. This reflects an encouraging perspective shift in which women are focusing less on “feasibility” than on “fit.” We conclude by offering recommendations for practice.
... Le déclin du statut et de l'autonomie de l'enseignement primaire, la diminution des effectifs des enseignants masculins et l'exploitation du travail féminin sont les effets que, le processus a produit. (Bradley, 1989) (David, 1980) (Grumet, 1981) (Purvis, 1991) (Strober ve Tyack, 1980). Au cours des dernières années, ce cadre s'est enrichi d'une perspective comparative et internationale. ...
This article aims to provide a gender analysis of Village Institutes by which a new mixed education model has been initiated at the village level. In this perspective, this work is organized in three main parts. The first part outlines the relevant theoretical approaches to gender and education. The conceptual framework enables us to understand the means by which a ‘domestic ideology’ (Rogers, 2006) has been transposed, represented, negotiated and reproduced through Institute’s curriculums. Additionally, this part is indispensable to demonstrate girls’ education at the Institutes was both a conservative force and a force for change. The second part presents the gender perspectives of Institutes’ founders, teachers or executives through their own speeches and relevant texts. This part aims to demonstrate the founders’ views with regard to various reasons of girls’ schooling: future mothers, good wives and / or good citizens with the same rights with the male sex…etc. Despite their ambiguous visions of female education, almost all defended the idea that it was essential to educate girls and encouraged the directors to take the initiative to increase the number and ratio of girls in the Institutes. The third part examines how Institute’s education programs contribute to the reproduction of a traditional gender-stereotyped division of labour. Additionally, this part consists in analysing published memories to demonstrate how students internalized the stereotypical gender attitudes and perceptions. This last part examines how Institutes generate the reproduction of the patriarchal structure and bourgeois sexism.
... Larger number of female respondents should be included in similar studies as they could be used as peer educators for spreading awareness among the public. [43] ...
Context: The growth in the solid organ transplant has not been able to keep pace with the global requirement for organs, with great differences among countries. No previous studies about public awareness related to organ donation over two-decades have been conducted. Aim: The paper focuses on studying the difference in the knowledge and attitude among the Indian public about organ donation, over two decades. The study further probes into the impact that public knowledge has on organ donation rates. Settings and Design: This is a cross-sectional study conducted from 1998 to 2017. The first 10 years of the study (Group-I) was administered physically, whereas in the next 10 years (Group-II) online tools were used to conduct the survey. The total number of respondents in the two decades was 3914. Subjects and Methods: It contained a structured questionnaire with ten multiple choice questions and basic demographic details. The survey questions were the same for both the periods of the study. Statistical Analysis Used: The data entered was analyzed using SPSS v. 19. The knowledge on organ donation was compared between the two decades and if in any increase in awareness was reflected in the organ donation rate. Results: The increase in awareness on the organs and tissues that can be donated was high among Group-II and it was statistically significant (P < 0.001). More importantly, the proportion of respondents who were aware about the “organ donor card” more than doubled from 23.7% in Group I to 63.7% in Group II; and this was statistically significant (P < 0.001). The deceased donation rate was 0.08 per million population in 2004, whereas it had increased to 0.34 pmp in 2014 and 0.8 pmp in 2016. Conclusions: There has been an increase in awareness in the two decades, and this is also reflected in an increase in the donation rate in the country. Creating more awareness can be one of the factors to increase the organ donation rate in India.
... Larger number of female respondents should be included in similar studies as they could be used as peer educators for spreading awareness among the public. [43] ...
Context: The growth in the solid organ transplant has not been able to keep pace with the global requirement for organs, with great differences among countries. No previous studies about public awareness related to organ donation over two-decades have been conducted. Aim: The paper focuses on studying the difference in the knowledge and attitude among the Indian public about organ donation, over two decades. The study further probes into the impact that public knowledge has on organ donation rates. Settings and Design: This is a cross-sectional study conducted from 1998 to 2017. The first 10 years of the study (Group-I) was administered physically, whereas in the next 10 years (Group-II) online tools were used to conduct the survey. The total number of respondents in the two decades was 3914. Subjects and Methods: It contained a structured questionnaire with ten multiple choice questions and basic demographic details. The survey questions were the same for both the periods of the study. Statistical Analysis Used: The data entered was analyzed using SPSS v. 19. The knowledge on organ donation was compared between the two decades and if in any increase in awareness was reflected in the organ donation rate. Results: The increase in awareness on the organs and tissues that can be donated was high among Group-II and it was statistically significant (P < 0.001). More importantly, the proportion of respondents who were aware about the “organ donor card” more than doubled from 23.7% in Group I to 63.7% in Group II; and this was statistically significant (P < 0.001). The deceased donation rate was 0.08 per million population in 2004, whereas it had increased to 0.34 pmp in 2014 and 0.8 pmp in 2016. Conclusions: There has been an increase in awareness in the two decades, and this is also reflected in an increase in the donation rate in the country. Creating more awareness can be one of the factors to increase the organ donation rate in India.
... The four of us continue to make up a minority presence in the still white male dominated profession of school administration (Shakeshaft, 1993). Demographically, although we now have many more women studying in educational ad ministration programs than in years past, we continue to have a situation in education in which women primarily teach and men manage schools (Strober and Tyack, 1980). In 1990, although nearly 69 percent of the teachers in U.S. schools were women; women composed only 25 percent of the school administrators of whom 12 percent were female secondary principals and 34 percent were female elementary school principals (Jones and Montenegro, 1990). ...
This paper focuses on the autobiographical stories of one Caucasian and three African-American female doctoral students during their rites of passage in departments of educational administration. A rite of passage has been defined as the student's journey toward the completion of the dissertation. While not generalizable, the four stories offer different perspectives and experiences of nontraditional doctoral students and may provide new insights for those who advise and teach diverse graduate students.
... Several bodies of scholarly literature have examined the significance of gender in shaping the institutional structures of, and participatory politics within, the American teaching profession. Most notably, a rich corpus of historical and sociological analyses has chronicled how new economic opportunities for men in American industry, along with changing attitudes toward the classroom as an appropriate work space for women, facilitated the "feminization" of teaching, or the influx of women into the profession's ranks over the 19th century (Apple, 1986;Hoffman, 1981;Perlmann & Margo, 2001;Prentice & Theobald, 1991;Strober & Tyack, 1980;Tyack & Strober, 1981;Weiler, 1989). Against this backdrop, several scholarly works have examined how women teachers resisted male-dominated educational bureaucracies and asserted the significance of their work amid the sexist devaluation of teaching as a predominantly female profession (Crocco, Munro, & Weiler, 1999;Munro, 1998;Oram, 1996;Prentice & Theobald, 1991;Weiler, 1988). ...
Background/Context
Over the past decade, a growing chorus of educational stakeholders has called for the recruitment of more Black men into the American teaching profession, casting these men as ideal surrogate father figures for Black youth who may lack adult male role models in their families or communities. Although a small body of scholarly work has begun to examine the gendered forms of culturally relevant pedagogies enacted by Black male teachers, critical analyses have yet to emerge on how these men negotiate the gendered power dynamics and professional culture of a traditionally female workplace.
Focus
This article presents several sets of findings from a more broadly framed study on the identities, pedagogies, and experiences of Black male teachers. Using Black masculinity studies as a conceptual framework, this article focuses specifically on Black male teachers’ negotiations of workplace gender politics with women colleagues and administrators.
Participants
The 11 Black male teachers whose narratives are explored in this article were middle or high school teachers in a predominantly Black urban school district on the East Coast of the United States.
Research Design
The study described in this article was grounded in life history narrative inquiry and employed a three-interview regimen for in-depth interviewing to enable participants to construct rich and nuanced narratives of their lived experiences as Black men and as Black male teachers. Focus groups also allowed participants to co-construct understandings of the challenges and opportunities they faced as Black men in the teaching profession. Transcriptions were coded and analyzed for recurrent themes within each participant's narrative as well as across participant narratives.
Findings
Participants’ life narratives revealed patriarchal gender ideologies that produced an inattention to male privilege, fueled conflictual encounters with women colleagues and administrators, and informed a desire for more male-centered spaces and interactions within the profession.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Patriarchal gender ideologies contributed to contentious gender politics in the workplace for the men in this study. Future research should attempt to develop deeper understandings of how these ideologies may influence the experiences of Black men throughout the American teaching profession. Additionally, inquiry efforts should explore strategies for engaging Black male teachers in examinations of their complicated relationships to patriarchy and for applying a critical awareness of gender to their negotiations of gender politics in the workplace.
... Kadın öğretmenler bu çerçevede öğretmenlik rollerini erkeklere göre daha fazla içselleştirmiş olabilirler. "Kadın öğretir, erkek yönetir" düşüncesi (Strober & Tyack, 1980) Türkiye gibi birçok ülkede hala geçerliğini korumaktadır. Buna bağlı olarak öğretmenlik kadın mesleği olarak görülmektedir (Altınkurt & Yılmaz, 2012;Coronel, Moreno & Carrasco, 2010;Cubillo & Brown, 2003). ...
... As the year went by, women taught more than men. However, the position of principal a position of greater status than that of teacher in most grade schools remained male-populated (Strober& Tyack, 1980:493; Tyack, 1976: 263). During this century, the teaching profession became more dominated by women, especially among the primary grades. ...
The women status and their role in society are very important for the progress of developing countries. As women constitute almost half of the human resources. The role of women in development is closely related to the socio- economic progress which can be achieved through education. Moreover, women can perform the best part for the development of contemporary society. But the status of women in Pakistan especially Pakhtun society is different as compare to western countries. Women are often considered to be a weaker and vulnerable group in society in term of education, employment and business opportunities, legislation and decision making. Gender discrimination may have an adverse impact on a number of valuable development goals. As gender inequality in education and access to resources may prevent a reduction in child mortality, fertility, and an expansion of education for the next generationwhile in the past decades much attention had been paid towards women problems in all over the world. The right of education has become an important and hot burning issue international level and socio-political on domestic level as well.
DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p2116
... The addition of a dummy indicating a rural area, as in column 4, shows that teachers in rural areas earned less than those in cities, but the gender gap in earnings increased slightly. Myra H. Strober and David Tyack (1980) argued that in rural areas, more schools were ungraded (that is, not formally organized according to age-based grade levels), and the gender gap in earnings was smaller in ungraded schools than in graded schools. The sign of the coefficient on the interaction of the female dummy and the rural dummy in column 5 is consistent with their argument, but the coefficient is not statistically significant at conventional levels. ...
This paper draws on the 1915 Iowa State Census Report to decompose the gender gap in earnings into explained and unexplained parts. A novel feature is that the decomposition is performed not only at the mean but also over the entire distribution of earnings. In addition, an entire state, rather than a few cities, is considered. This paper finds that at least 25.6 percent, and probably more, of the gap is unexplained by the main observable characteristics at the mean. More interestingly, the unexplained part grows moving up the distribution of earnings, which indicates the possibility of a glass-ceiling effect for women. Results provide new insight into gender wage gaps among the highly educated, theories and empirical analysis in labor economics, and quantification in the history of education.
The pandemic adversely affected the employment of child caregivers, exacerbating already existing inequalities. The authors offer an integrated framework that considers the interdependencies between unpaid and paid child caregiving and the construction of the childcare sector as a devalued and fractionalized group. The authors outline the prepandemic positioning of mothers, childcare teachers, preschool teachers, and primary school teachers. Then, using cross-sectional and panel data from the Current Population Survey, the authors describe how the pandemic affected these four groups of child caregivers’ employment between January 2018 and December 2022. Black, Brown, and non-college-educated mothers were hit particularly hard during the pandemic. Primary school teachers were in a better position prior to the pandemic and fared much better than childcare teachers during it. The authors argue that an integrated framework helps us understand the disparities in the impact of the pandemic between child caregivers as partly a by-product of the fragmented and devalued organization of child caregiving.
With over 3 million teachers working in the US public school system, teaching attracts considerable attention from sociologists. Many issues have been explored. Dominating the field are questions concerning teachers’ roles, quality, professional status, training, gender composition, pay, staffing, and placement. Teachers play multiple roles in the educational process. First, teachers impart academic skills and knowledge (human capital). Second, teachers socialize children in the lifestyles, values, and cultures of society (cultural capital). The importance of the academic, social, and cultural dimensions of this work for children raises one of the foremost questions in research on teachers: Does teacher quality matter? Early research studying the impact of teacher credentials and experience largely indicated that teacher quality did not consistently relate to student achievement. More recent exploration reveals that teacher preparation, particularly subject‐matter knowledge, does positively impact student achievement.
With over 3.1 million teachers working in the US public school system, teaching attracts considerable attention from sociologists. Many issues have been explored. Dominating the field are questions concerning teachers’ roles, quality, professional status, training, gender composition, pay, staffing, and placement. Teachers play multiple roles in the educational process. First, teachers impart academic skills and knowledge (human capital). Second, teachers socialize children in the lifestyles, values, and cultures of society (cultural capital). The importance of the academic, social, and cultural dimensions of this work for children raises one of the foremost questions in research on teachers: Does teacher quality matter? Early research studying the impact of teacher credentials and experience largely indicated that teacher quality did not consistently relate to student achievement. More recent exploration reveals that teacher preparation, particularly subject‐matter knowledge, does positively impact student achievement.
Historical policy stories that situate teachers as the root cause of problems in public schools have long accompanied educational reforms, including No Child Left Behind. This article portrays the history of teacher blame as a defining component of the grammar of American educational reform. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformers identified teacher quality—a later trademark of NCLB—as a panacea for school improvement, but it remained an amorphous idea bound up in gendered and racialized assumptions. The historical results were a swirl of policies that increased standardization across the schools. This article concludes that teacher blame was a critical driver for federal intervention in local public education, and that the roots of that intervention extend far deeper than historians have allowed.
This essay explores the relationship between feminist pedagogical theory and the student-centered legacy of progressive education around the specific issues of classroom gender relations and the construction of the female teacher's authority. Are feminist pedagogies basically just “good teaching”? And if so, why is a specifically feminist pedagogy necessary? The essay is in four parts. It first discusses contemporary applications of progressive educational theory to issues of gender, as well as to other forms of inequality. Then, beginning with a discussion of the legacy of Dewey himself in relation to his writings on women, it focuses on an issue that holds specific problems for women teachers, namely that of the teacher's authority in the classroom. Finally, through a few classroom examples, it suggests how thinking about gender and other aspects of difference as forms of unequal power relations can help reframe the grounds for the teacher's authority, giving her (or him) grounds for active intervention in the power dynamics of the classroom in the name of a reformulation of democratic teaching.
In the face of noticeably low interest in K-12 teaching among young Asian American students, interviews first were conducted with undergraduate Asian American students in teacher education programs and then those same students conducted interviews themselves with a variety of Asian Americans in several California communities. Findings suggest the pivotal influence of the traditional Chinese role of teachers in undermining the confidence and interest needed for the choice of a K–12 teaching career by Asian Americans. The main sources of resistance to teaching as a career were identified as: intense pressure from parents to strive for positions perceived as having higher status, greater financial rewards, and stability; a sense of personal inadequacy due to standards set by Chinese culture for what it means to be a teacher; and fear of working outside a comfort zone defined by language, diversity, respect, responsibility for other people's children, and separation of private from public selves. The majority of informants saw race-matched teaching as not valuable or necessary. Differences in American and Chinese traditions of K-12 education are discussed.
This article summarizes the results of an exploratory research project that investigated what demographic trends and changes have, or have not, occurred in the elementary and secondary teaching force in the U.S. over the past three decades, from 1987 to 2018. Our main data source was the Schools and Staffing Survey and its successor, the National Teacher Principal Survey, collectively the largest and most comprehensive source of data on teachers available in the U.S. These surveys are conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The results show that the teaching force has been, and is, greatly changing; yet, even the most dramatic trends appear to have been little noticed or understood by researchers, policy makers, and the public. This article summarizes seven of the most prominent trends and changes that we found. The U.S. teaching force is: larger; older; less experienced; more female; more diverse, by race/ethnicity; consistent in academic ability; unstable. For each of the trends, we explore two broad questions: 1. What are the reasons for and sources of the trend? 2. What are the implications and consequences of the trend?
The article examines the personal backgrounds and professional lives of Canada’s earliest special education teachers. It considers the approximately 340 women and men who, between 1910 and 1945, taught special education classes in the public elementary schools of Toronto and Vancouver—the first two systems in the country to offer special education programs. Twelve selected special educators are discussed in more depth based on traces of their lives found in an eclectic array of sources, including school reports, the census, and vital records. The article considers early special educators’ gender; teacher training, certification, extra qualifications, and length of service; and their relationship as non-disabled adults to children with disabilities. It discusses each of these factors in light of what it can tell us about the uniqueness of early special educators and what in turn the personal and professional stories of these individuals can tell us about the history of special education.RésuméCet article explore les antécédents personnels et la vie professionnelle des premiers enseignants en éducation spécialisée au Canada. Il prend en compte les quelque 340 femmes et hommes qui, entre 1910 et 1945, ont donné des cours d’éducation spécialisés dans les écoles primaires publiques de Toronto et de Vancouver — les deux premiers systèmes scolaires au pays à offrir des programmes d’éducation spécialisée. Cet article s’intéresse particulièrement au profil de douze éducateurs spécialisés dont il est possible de suivre la trace à partir d’un ensemble de sources éclectiques incluant les rapports scolaires, les recensements, et les registres d’état civil. Il prend en compte le genre des premiers éducateurs spécialisés, la formation des enseignants, la certification, les qualifications supplémentaires, le nombre d’années de service, ainsi que la relation de ces adultes non handicapés avec des enfants ayant une limitation fonctionnelle. Chacun de ces facteurs est analysé à la lumière de ce qu’ils peuvent révéler à propos du caractère unique des premiers éducateurs spécialisés, de même que ce que leurs histoires personnelles et professionnelles révèlent sur l’histoire de l’éducation spécialisée.
While extant work demonstrates the impact of teacher and student identities on student achievement, less attention has been directed to how educators situate themselves with their identities and their work. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 21 elementary educators, I argue that educators’ approaches to their students may be partially a reflection of their identities, students’ identities, and their organizational and professional contexts. When drawing upon identities, their actions sought to combat inequalities, issues, and stereotypes confronting their students. The results offer insight on educators’ rationale in interactions with children and suggest that it is worthwhile to further examine educators’ self-reflections about their identities.
RESUMO Embora o professorado tenha se feminizado a partir de meados do século XIX - em praticamente todos os países ocidentais - os postos mais altos da administração e a condução intelectual da instrução pública permaneceram dominantemente masculinos. Neste artigo, fazemos, preliminarmente, uma breve aproximação à historiografia que nos informa sobre os processos de feminização do magistério primário nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. Em seguida, colocamos o foco no Teachers College da Universidade de Columbia, instituição que, criada com foco na mulher, passa em curto tempo ao controle masculino. Por fim, apresentamos casos de brasileiros e brasileiras que estudaram no Teachers College entre as décadas de 1920 e 1930. Esses expressam, em suas trajetórias, as condições desiguais de profissionalização e ascensão na carreira.
AERA’s centennial provides an opportunity to reinvigorate the aspirations that gave rise to our research community in the United States: hope and determination that research can strengthen public education, society’s most democratic institution. The first AERAers sought to produce scientific knowledge to improve large, increasingly diverse urban school systems—a pursuit that continues today. Yet over the century, we’ve learned that achieving equity in our diverse democracy is as much about public perceptions and politics as it is about science. Research-based knowledge and practices to make education equitable are often overpowered by cultural norms and politics. As present-day inequalities bear uncanny resemblances to those of 1916, we must heed a vital (though often ignored) precept of John Dewey’s—one that calls on researchers to act as public scholars. Engaging with publics to raise awareness of common problems is a central charge for researchers, one that holds great promise for fostering democratic, public problem solving.
The claim has been made that a high proportion of female teachers in the state schools could disadvantage some children. This paper takes a historical perspective to suggest that such a claim has little basis in fact. Although this article concentrates on one particular paper which presents this claim, there is also awareness that comment about the large number of female teachers compared with males in the teaching service and implications for the future is now widespread. The assumptions underlying such comment clearly need close appraisal.
During the early years of the Progressive Era, women teachers in urban centers across the United States bound their fight for equal pay and voice within the schools to a broader social and political activism, each propelled by an image of the professional woman: independent and autonomous in and outside the schools. Without the right to vote, these women turned cautiously toward organized labor to achieve their goals. However, the union between labor associations and organized teachers was troubled from the start and complicated by gender and class. As this article chronicles, affiliation with labor brought increased power and visibility to teachers nationwide but also thwarted the aspirations of early teachers as it severed the connection between teachers’ labor organizations and women’s political activism.
This chapter examines patriarchal assumptions of leadership in superintendencies in American public education. Using feminist critical policy analysis as a guiding framework, we first present historical trends of sex segregation in education, noting that while teaching has historically been feminized, higher positions in leadership are most often occupied by White, heterosexual men. We note shifts: as women have recently begun to fill more principal positions, this has been accompanied by a solidification of men’s dominance of the superintendency. We unpack the historical cultural assumptions of gender embedded in influential cultural texts, including the Bible and political discourse. These texts provide important insight into the prevailing underrepresentation of women in higher leadership positions they depict women as naturally subservient and in need of men’s protection. Thus, biblical and political speech reinforce and perpetuate traditional gendering of educational leadership. We conclude with a call for further integration of feminist theory and practice into educational leadership.
In this study of nine participants in a turnaround principal preparation program,
Jennie Miles Weiner and Laura J. Burton explore how gender role identity shaped
participants’ views of effective principal leadership and their place within it. The
authors find that although female and male participants initially framed effective
leadership similarly, their conceptualizations of themselves as leaders, the feedback
they felt they received regarding their skills, and their access to employment were
sharply divided based on gender and had real implications for how women viewed
their leadership capabilities and potential success as school leaders.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of the ways in which gender inequity in educational treatment began to be recognized and the processes that were put in place to reduce these differences and thus provide a more equitable schooling experience for girls and boys. The history of the girls in education movement began slowly in the latter half of the twentieth century with the dawning recognition of the different sorts of educational experience and outcomes relating to girls’ education when compared to that of boys. Schooling, it was claimed, did not provide girls with an adequate preparation for fulfilling their potential to become active participants in society. The claim was based on comparisons with boys’ experience of schooling and included attention to time in school, subjects studied, roles undertaken, and appropriate preparation for a post-school career or further study.
Marshall Conant was principal in the 1850s of the Bridgewater State Normal School in Massachusetts, one of only a handful of such institutions. A former district-school teacher and head of a private school, Conant had also run the topographical department of the Boston Water Works and served as a consulting engineer for both a railroad and cotton gin company. While his route to the principalship had been circuitous, Conant’s sense of the normal-school mission was straightforward; he explained, “I have sought to awaken the conscience to feel the responsibilities and duties that devolve upon the teacher …”1 In this statement, Conant captured the spirit of the preceding three decades of advocacy for teacher education. Education reformers of the early to middle nineteenth century sought to awaken the conscience of the public and state legislators to the importance of teaching and teacher training, and to establish state normal schools as the primary vehicle for shaping a professional teaching force. For more than a quarter-century following the establishment of the first one in 1839, however, state normal schools did little more than “awaken the conscience.” They remained an unpopular option among many for the education of teachers, and their methods of teacher training lacked substance. Early state normal schools did succeed in instilling future teachers with the sense that they were undertaking a consecrated mission and, in the process, they also awakened students’ consciousness of the wider world.
When Abby Dodge joined the faculty of the Hartford Public High School (HPHS) in 1854, she reported that the school was housed in “a fine three-story brick building, classical department on the first floor, general assembly room on the second, gymnasium on the third, laboratory, dressing-room, etc., in the basement. Everything is entirely different from any private school I was ever in…. There seems to be much more machinery” Dodge had worked for two private female seminaries and the economic support for the coeducational public high school clearly stood out. Noting the quality of the building and the classroom, Dodge correctly determined that Hartford residents were interested in the school and “spent their money freely.”1 Committed to boosting Hartford’s standing in New England and providing a thorough education for all students, several influential citizens had contributed sizable amounts to found the school. In addition to money, the supporters of the school also took a keen interest in selecting teachers and in establishing the qualifications for admission to HPHS. After the school opened in 1847, a school visiting committee made up of city residents was charged with monitoring the progress of both scholars and teachers alike.2
From the eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, school teaching in the United States transformed from a predominantly male to a predominantly female occupation. In an attempt to explain why education systems change over time, recent studies of education and state formation have focused on the interactions between the state and communities in the development of public schooling.1 Unfortunately, this approach tends to overlook or ignore transformations in schooling that have occurred in the comparative absence of state intervention. In contrast, this chapter examines the shift from male to female teachers that occurred in two states from 1800 to 1850, a period that preceded the expansion of large public school systems in the United States.
John Dewey’s educational theories have long been widely and sometimes wildly misconstrued.1 Dewey is referred to as the “father of progressive education,” but his educational ideas differ in many ways from those called “progressive” in his time and since.2 In Experience and Education, Dewey made the case that his ideas belonged in a domain that was neither “traditional” nor “progressive.”3 Likewise, while the Laboratory School is often referred to as a “progressive” school, Dewey was careful to distinguish it from such schools in light of its focus on “the social phase of education,” which was “put first” at the school. Contrary to progressive schools that “exist in order to give complete liberty to individuals” and that are “ ‘child-centered’ in a way which ignores, or at least makes little of social relationships and responsibilities,” the Laboratory School was, according to Dewey, “community-centered.”4 And while a common criticism of the philosopher is that his work on education ignores the importance of academic content, at the Laboratory School, teachers’ “subject-matter” expertise was central to the school’s organization.5
"Die Lebensverhaltnisse von US-amerikanischen Lehrerinnen und Lehrern, 1860-1910". Most of the historical research on the daily lives of US teachers relies on qualitative sources such as diaries, letters, memoirs, and missionary reports. Using the US census data from 1860 to 1910, this paper attempts to go beyond sketching impressions of their daily lives, focusing instead on the living arrangements of teachers by region, gender, and race. The main result is that about 70 percent of teachers lived in a nuclear family and 15 percent of them lived with non-relatives; this is more or less true regardless of regions, genders, and races. In addition to descriptive analyses, a multinomial logit model is applied to provide a more systematic way of finding the determinants of the living arrangements and measuring the sizes of their effects. This paper demonstrates a possibility of deepening our understanding of the daily lives of teachers in the past by combining nationally representative data with topics of daily lives.
Social historians have demonstrated that although men comprised the majority of teachers in North Carolina schools and academies during the early national period, women predominated by the end of the nineteenth century. This study concludes that among the music teachers who taught in academies and venture schools, women gained a majority decades earlier. In an effort to understand some of the underlying social processes that contributed to this shift, the following discussion analyzes the changing proportion of men and women in a sample of 65 music teachers, tracks the tuition they charged in a free market, and compares this to the tuition charged by teachers of Latin and Greek. The shift to women among music teachers in North Carolina presents an intriguing case, because it does not fit well with some earlier theoretical models of feminization among nineteenth-century teachers. The data suggest that women came to predominate among music teachers because a changing market for music instruction in venture schools and academies triggered a process of occupational abandonment and succession.
It is my aim in this article to carry out a thorough examination of the basic elements, ideology and symbolic representations which constitute the identity of a generation of schoolmistresses belonging to a crucial period in Spanish history: that of the intermediate Francoism, during the process of modernization which took place at the end of the 1950s. The investigation is based on live testimonies of schoolmistresses between the ages of 65 and 70. First, I will point out the antecedents of the profession of schoolmistress in Spain and show how circumstances made her role gradually and increasingly more important. Then I will reveal what kinds of opposition and obstacles schoolmistresses came up against and had to overcome in order to obtain professional equality with male colleagues. Finally, I will contextualize and interpret, in cultural terms, the attitudes, images and motivations, which turned out to be very symbolic, that arose during the interviews with these women. This article, which fills a large gap in research on this subject, concentrates on a very particular and decisive moment. It is my intention to invite the reader to reflect on a social phenomenon of great importance today: that of the feminization of teaching, which can be seen in most countries and whose influence can be observed, not only in a country's educational system, but in the economic, political, religious and cultural spheres as well.
Following the Second World War, women teachers filled a labour shortage in schools and Canadian newspapers rushed to feature their presence. One caption even called the teachers "pretty enough to send dad to school with junior." Envisioned as shining examples of "proper" femininity, female educators were expected to produce a new generation of housewives for a strong democratic nation. Democracy's Angels is a daring exploration of the limitations of that vision, which ultimately confined women to teaching a model of citizenship that privileged masculinity and reduced women's authority. In an analytical tour-de-force, Kristina Llewellyn unravels the ideological underpinnings of democracy as the objective for postwar education. Schools were charged with producing rational, autonomous, politically engaged citizens, but women were not associated with these qualities. Claims to scholarly knowledge, professional autonomy, and administrative positions were reserved for male teachers. Using rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship and extensive interviews with former teachers, Llewellyn reveals the ways in which women negotiated and even found opportunities within these troubling limitations. An unflinching look at the difficult realities of women's work experiences in postwar Canada, Democracy's Angels illustrates the intrinsic connections between gender, education, and democracy.
In this article, Christine Murray provides an analysis of teacher professionalization using a case study of the Rochester (New York) City School District. She examines the conceptual and practical changes that have occurred for teaching as a profession during three distinct time periods: the turn of the century and its growing urban school settings, the 1960s and the rise of teacher unions, and the reform movements of the 1980s. Her analysis provides a general overview of national trends, while using the Rochester case to detail changes in teacher professionalization in the context of a large urban school district.
This article examines the legal and political significance of teacher unionization in rural and suburban school districts between 1960 and 1975. While most historians focus on the growth of unions in urban areas, strikes in outlying districts played a determinative role in the development of public sector labor law, particularly in the arbitration of professional rights and democratic oversight. After summarizing the relationship between unions and school boards in rural and suburban school districts, the article describes the legal impact of teacher strikes in those areas. It concludes with a discussion of the changes to public sector labor law during the 1970s and a brief reflection on the importance of small-town teachers’ unions today.
In this article, Kathleen Weller reflects on the historiography of Country Schoolwomen, her recent study of women teachers in rural California. Using a broad definition of feminist research, Weller summarizes some of the most salient issues currently under debate among feminist scholars. She raises questions about the nature of knowledge, the influence of language in the social construction of gender, and the importance of an awareness of subjectivity in the production of historical evidence. Using several cases from Country Schoolwomen, Weller discusses the importance of considering the conditions under which testimony is given, both in terms of the dominant issues of the day - for example, the way womanliness or teaching is presented in the authoritative discourse - and the relationship between speaker and audience. She concludes that a feminist history that begins with a concern with the constructed quality of evidence moves uneasily between historical narrative and a self-conscious analysis of texts.
In the History of Education, religion has largely been ignored in the last 20years in the need to incorporate class, gender, and race relations into historical analysis. Consequently in Australia, Catholic schooling and in particular those run by female religious orders remains relatively untouched. In this paper I initiate an analysis of the roles played by female religious principals and the contradictions inherent in such a lifestyle. I focused my research on the period 1880-1925, because it was then that Catholic female religious had the opportunities to open and develop school representing a wide socio-economic range in South Australia. Irish Dominicans, English Dominicans and Sister of Mercy established superior school, in addition to their ‘poor school’, in the city, suburbs and country towns of South Australia between 1869-1925. In these early y ears, when communication and transport were very difficult, the resulting geographic isolation from authority both at home and overseas, resulted in a great deal of scope for individuality. In addition opportunities for potential leaders were provided by the Orders ‘forms of governance, their need for economic and business acumen, and the professional qualities required in the development and maintenance of their school. Furthermore in the History of Education, it b generally argued that “women teach and men manage”. My analysis of female religious principals qualified this notion, because this was not so in Catholic convent high school. There was no such division of labour in these school. In fact there were several avenues leading to opportunities for supervisory status, culminating in a principal's position. Evidence available demonstrates the regular and significant use of resourcefulness and initiative in the fulfilment of the vision and ambition of many such women. Whilst we may not always agree with their goals or the strategies employed, nevertheless this paper will provide several examples of out spoken dynamic women, sometimes manipulative, but always with considerable authority, providing spiritual or professional direction in their varied and changing roles.
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