Motivating Boys and Motivating Girls: Does Teacher Gender Really Make a Difference?

We explore the impact of student gender, teacher gender, and their interaction on academic motivation and engagement for 964 junior and middle high school students. According to the gender-stereotypic model, boys fare better academically in classes taught by males and girls fare better in classes taught by females. The gender-invariant model suggests that the academic motivation and engagement of boys and girls is the same for men and women teachers. We also examine the relative contribution of student-, class-, and school-level factors, finding that most variation was at the individual student level. Of the statistically significant main effects for gender, most favoured girls. In support of the gender-invariant model, academic motivation and engagement does not significantly vary as a function of their teacher's gender, and in terms of academic motivation and engagement, boys do not fare any better with male teachers than female teachers.

[1]  M. Strube.  An Analysis of the Self-Handicapping Scale , 1986 .

[2]  J. Eccles,et al.  School as a Context of Early Adolescents' Academic and Social-Emotional Development: A Summary of Research Findings , 2000, The Elementary School Journal.

[3]  Andrew J. Martin,et al.  Self-handicapping, defensive pessimism, and goal orientation : a qualitative study of university students , 2003 .

[4]  Stephanie T. Lanza,et al.  Changes in children's self-competence and values: gender and domain differences across grades one through twelve. , 2002, Child development.

[5]  Patricia Kowalski,et al.  Individual Differences in the Effects of Educational Transitions on Young Adolescent’s Perceptions of Competence and Motivational Orientation , 1992 .

[6]  Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower,et al.  The “Boy Turn” in Research on Gender and Education , 2003 .

[7]  J. Connell,et al.  A new multidimensional measure of children's perceptions of control. , 1985, Child development.

[8]  Tim Urdan,et al.  Predictors of Middle School Students' Use of Self-Handicapping Strategies , 1995 .

[9]  C. Midgley,et al.  If I don't do well tomorrow, there's a reason : Predictors of adolescents' use of academic self-handicapping strategies , 1996 .

[10]  Barbara A. Greene,et al.  Engagement in Academic Work: The Role of Learning Goals, Future Consequences, Pleasing Others, and Perceived Ability , 1996, Contemporary educational psychology.

[11]  P. Pintrich,et al.  Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. , 1990 .

[12]  Kenneth J. Rowe,et al.  Multilevel Modelling in School Effectiveness Research. , 1996 .

[13]  Andrew J. Martin.  The Student Motivation Scale: A Tool for Measuring and Enhancing Motivation , 2001, Journal of Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools.

[14]  Andrew J. Martin.  The Student Motivation Scale: Further Testing of an Instrument that Measures School Students' Motivation , 2003 .

[15]  M. Patton.  Qualitative research and evaluation methods , 1980 .