Are too many teachers women?

freshpopcorn

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

How does it make it invalid?
I am not saying there is no male infant teachers at all, I am saying there is nearly no infant teachers.
Between my two kids 3 creches and two primary schools not a single make teacher in any of them.
Come seconday school the numbers shift a little but still very much female dominated.
We are looking to all the reasons why men do not look at teaching as a viable career move.

They are lots of reasons in my experience men just don't like the idea of being a room full of screaming children for a day is the main reason.

ShowMeTheCash

freshpopcorn wrote: »

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

How does it make it invalid?
I am not saying there is no male infant teachers at all, I am saying there is nearly no infant teachers.
Between my two kids 3 creches and two primary schools not a single make teacher in any of them.
Come seconday school the numbers shift a little but still very much female dominated.
We are looking to all the reasons why men do not look at teaching as a viable career move.

They are lots of reasons in my experience men just don't like the idea of being a room full of screaming children for a day is the main reason.

And?
At no point did anyone argue there wasn't, actually at no point did anyone argue this is even the main reason, but we seem to have some people trying to argue what reasons or concerns men don't have.

evolving_doors

Chrongen wrote: »

I don't know when or where the change occurred but in my primary school (2nd to 6th class) out of 21 teachers there was only 1 female.

In my secondary school out of approximately 25 teachers only 4 were females.

At a guess ...your secondary wasnt all girls. And highly competitive in terms of field sports!

salonfire

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

When I finally got my CID, four of us that year, yes FOUR were given a contract of 17hrs 40 so as to avoid paying us full pay. 20 minutes extra on the contract would give full pay and we would teach full hours. Instead ETB tried to shaft us all out of 15% of our contract.

How does that work?

Is it cheaper for the employer to have two part time teachers rather than one full time teacher?

I am not involved in teaching but could never understand why schools offer so many part time roles instead of full time.

ShowMeTheCash

salonfire wrote: »

How does that work?

Is it cheaper for the employer to have two part time teachers rather than one full time teacher?

I am not involved in teaching but could never understand why schools offer so many part time roles instead of full time.

Maternity could be a reason?

byhookorbycrook

Jake Orange Molecule wrote: »

I do outreach work where I'm around small kids in schools and again it would never even enter my head to be concerned about it. Its worrying over nothing imo.

Did you ever hear of a male teachers life being ruined due to a false accusation? I haven't and you can be sure it would be all over the news if there was an accusation.

Actually, yes I have. The teacher was completely exonerated but many of the parents took the "no smoke without fire" approach, so he retired shortly after.

byhookorbycrook

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

My neighbour was a primary school teacher. If he had to carry a child home that was sick or hurt, he would have to take three children in his car, the sick child and two other children so he would never be alone with one child in his car after dropping off the first child.

It is definitely an issue.

Female teacher here and we do the same.

freshpopcorn

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Female teacher here and we do the same.

Not to derail the thread but does carrying children in your car that you teach increase your insurance much?

freshpopcorn

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Not to derail the thread but does carrying children in your car that you teach increase your insurance much?

I'd be amazed if any teachers declares this, I'd even argue it doesn't need to be any more than giving your kids friends a lift.

freshpopcorn

Jake Orange Molecule wrote: »

I'd be amazed of any teachers declares this, I'd even argue it doesn't need to be any more than giving your kids friends a lift.

I know teachers who used drive kids and it used not be an issue up until a few years ago but then insurances companies started adding a loading for carrying children/driving whilst at work. They could lie about the it but most I've spoken to say if anything went wrong and they weren't covered it would be a lot of hassle so they simply don't drive children anymore unless they pay the extra amount.
I've even heard of Boards of Managements telling staff not to drive kids because of it.

mirrorwall14

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

Maternity could be a reason?

We weren’t all female, nor all in relationships or even in the same subject fields so not maternity anyways. I’ve no idea considering part time was not the norm in years gone past. I believe it’s
A) more part time teachers = more extra curricular and yes men teachers desperate for full time
laziness to organise a timetable around full time staff
C) complete lack of awareness, empathy or acknowledgement for the consequences of part time employment on staff both financially and in other ways

spurious

salonfire wrote: »

How does that work?

Is it cheaper for the employer to have two part time teachers rather than one full time teacher?

I am not involved in teaching but could never understand why schools offer so many part time roles instead of full time.

Keep them keen.
Part-time year after year and your money stays the same. If you had a contract of some sort you would get increments. One senior wholetime teacher retiring and being replaced by three part timers could save a lot of money.

"Maybe next year they will give me more hours if I say I will stay behind unpaid and organise x, y, z." You should see the amount of extra work some unfortunates take on. Scandalous.

freshpopcorn

freshpopcorn wrote: »

They are lots of reasons in my experience men just don't like the idea of being a room full of screaming children for a day is the main reason.

I worked as a kindergarten teacher abroad, and it was a lot of fun. So much fun that I did it for three years afterward, and actually got a child psychology diploma to help my teaching. I did try to get kinder jobs here in Ireland when I returned, but no joy there. Even though they were crying out for teachers, the jobs were usually filled by a female teacher a few weeks later or left vacant. I don't recall seeing any of the jobs being filled by another male teacher.

I've since revised my original plan of kinder teaching from perspectives by family members who do teach at kinder and primary levels. It's just too damn 'dangerous'. There's little demand for male teachers at those levels because of the public perception of abuse towards children by men or priests. Oh, sure, there are anti-discrimination laws, but you're never given your gender as a reason for refusal. Instead, it's a non-committal response, wait by the phone and the job is taken later by a female. I went through that 12 times before I went looking elsewhere for work.

Perhaps it's different at secondary levels. I suspect it is... Although everything points to horrible working conditions outside of the normal job requirements, and university positions are well saturated.

evolving_doors

salonfire wrote: »

How does that work?

Is it cheaper for the employer to have two part time teachers rather than one full time teacher?

I am not involved in teaching but could never understand why schools offer so many part time roles instead of full time.

1. Schools are assigned a certain amount of teacher posts. So say there was a teacher going on job share and there were 11 hrs available, you can't advertise a full time permanent job. (as a very basic example).

2.In terms of 'so many part time'. It's down to teachers taking leave for whatever reason (Maternity leave, Sick leave, Secondment to work for the DEPT, Career Break, gone AWOL !!!).

3. As the numbers of female teachers are high then maternity leave, parental leave, job share is more common. In my experience of teaching i've never come across male teachers who take parental leave or jobshare, although I presume it happens. (Don't get me wrong either... parental leave etc is necessary and should be open to all workers).

4. Also permanent teachers retiring (or leaving) might have had 2 subjects.So the school might decide to kill off those hours and reassign them to another subject.. hence more part time.

5. It suits some schools to have as many hungry part-timers as possible, as they'll be stabbing each other in the back just on the whiff of a promise of fulltime hours. It makes it a piece of cake for timetabling too.

6. "cheaper for the employer "... doesn't cost the employer a cent.

Actually it's not that far off from zero hours contracts in Dunnes Stores. Except it rolls on from year to year rather than week to week.

freshpopcorn

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Perhaps it's different at secondary levels. I suspect it is... Although everything points to horrible working conditions outside of the normal job requirements, and university positions are well saturated.

The guys who I knew who wanted to be teachers were fine with older kids 5th/6th class but they just couldn't bare to be with younger kids. They were fine with pay/etc. I'm just bashing it on people I know. I know a good few teachers. Awkward
parents are another issue.
I know of two local primary principals who only wanted to take on a male teacher hoping it with deal with the fighting in the staff room.

ShowMeTheCash

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

We weren’t all female, nor all in relationships or even in the same subject fields so not maternity anyways. I’ve no idea considering part time was not the norm in years gone past. I believe it’s
A) more part time teachers = more extra curricular and yes men teachers desperate for full time
laziness to organise a timetable around full time staff
C) complete lack of awareness, empathy or acknowledgement for the consequences of part time employment on staff both financially and in other ways

Was not suggesting the only reason but there must be a % out there somewhere.

I remember my secondary school, my French teacher was really there for 1 year in the 5 years I was at that school, she simply had kids back to back.

I know of few temp teachers right now who currently are looking a full time role so they can start a family.

One eyed Jack

evolving_doors wrote: »

Actually it's not that far off from zero hours contracts in Dunnes Stores. Except it rolls on from year to year rather than week to week.

Could you explain the idea behind 'co-location' of teachers? It's something I've come across recently where I thought there must be some advantage to it in that a teacher in one day could have to travel between three different schools in the area. I just can't think of any advantage to anyone except that they may actually prefer variety in their working day?

freshpopcorn

freshpopcorn wrote: »

The guys who I knew who wanted to be teachers were fine with older kids 5th/6th class but they just couldn't bare to be with younger kids. They were fine with pay/etc. I'm just bashing it on people I know. I know a good few teachers. Awkward
parents are another issue.

My parents were both teachers. My mother was a primary school principal and my father an Irish teacher in a secondary school. My sister is a primary school teacher. So you can guess I know plenty of teachers too.

I know of two local primary principals who only wanted to take on a male teacher hoping it with deal with the fighting in the staff room.

I know nothing about that. I've taught in kinder, primary and third level abroad. The stress and hard work of teaching doesn't bother me. I've done it before. And honestly, it's hardly worse than dealing with abusive customers in credit control. Although, Kinder is definitely high energy work and requires finely tuned empathy.

Nah. Those male teachers I do know, they're becoming more and more uncomfortable with being a male teacher around children (regardless of age or gender). It's a social pressure brought about by parents, the media etc. I know three male teachers who left schools they loved and switched to sales because they don't feel any real security. Not job security, but that they won't be fingered for some innocent gesture or remark. They weren't that afraid of being found guilty exactly, but they understood that any accusation would finish their lives at home.

mirrorwall14

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Could you explain the idea behind 'co-location' of teachers? It's something I've come across recently where I thought there must be some advantage to it in that a teacher in one day could have to travel between three different schools in the area. I just can't think of any advantage to anyone except that they may actually prefer variety in their working day?

As far as I’m aware this is really someone trying to get a full time job. I don’t know anyone doing collocation because they want to. They’re doing it so that between the hotch potch of hours they are getting a full pay cheque as opposed to part time

mirrorwall14

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

Was not suggesting the only reason but there must be a % out there somewhere.

I remember my secondary school, my French teacher was really there for 1 year in the 5 years I was at that school, she simply had kids back to back.

I know of few temp teachers right now who currently are looking a full time role so they can start a family.

To be fair if you think about it, that teacher would have been full time for probably 30 solid years after that. I don’t think it’s fair to judge someone for having kids, same thing happens in every profession. Nor would I judge someone for wanting to be full time and CID’d before taking maternity. It’s good sense to want some security for your family before you have kids. And don’t get me started on the judgement for ‘Timing it’. We can have all the plans in the world to maximise maternity (who wouldn’t to be fair) but conceiving is odds on 30% in a perfectly timed month so it doesn’t always work like that. I miscarried a baby that would have been ‘perfect’ timing from a leave perspective and haven’t managed to conceive since. If I happen to get pregnant again and it is good timing I know there will be those saying ‘look at her timing it’ when the reality is I have been trying for 8 cycles now with no success and I wouldn’t give a crap when a baby was due leave wise.... and deep breaths and get off your hobby horse 😂

Although i’ll Take the point that in a female dominated profession maternity is obviously more common. I’ll just argue that it’s one period in a 40 year career

jimbobaloobob

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

I miscarried a baby that would have been ‘perfect’ timing from a leave perspective and haven’t managed to conceive since. If I happen to get pregnant again and it is good timing I know there will be those saying ‘look at her timing it’ when the reality is I have been trying for 8 cycles now with no success and I wouldn’t give a crap when a baby was due leave wise.... and deep breaths and get off your hobby horse ��

I hope you will be successful soon. Thoughts your way.

On another note reading through the posts here i think its a sad reflection on society that male teachers feel that the fear of accusation isn't worth the love of a profession.

mirrorwall14

jimbobaloobob wrote: »

I hope you will be successful soon. Thoughts your way.

On another note reading through the posts here i think its a sad reflection on society that male teachers feel that the fear of accusation isn't worth the love of a profession.

Thanks.

And I completely agree. I know a few male teacher in primary teacher training and it would make me very sad to see them leave teaching (excellent ones with a love of it) because of this kind of fear

ShowMeTheCash

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

To be fair if you think about it, that teacher would have been full time for probably 30 solid years after that. I don’t think it’s fair to judge someone for having kids, same thing happens in every profession. Nor would I judge someone for wanting to be full time and CID’d before taking maternity. It’s good sense to want some security for your family before you have kids. And don’t get me started on the judgement for ‘Timing it’. We can have all the plans in the world to maximise maternity (who wouldn’t to be fair) but conceiving is odds on 30% in a perfectly timed month so it doesn’t always work like that. I miscarried a baby that would have been ‘perfect’ timing from a leave perspective and haven’t managed to conceive since. If I happen to get pregnant again and it is good timing I know there will be those saying ‘look at her timing it’ when the reality is I have been trying for 8 cycles now with no success and I wouldn’t give a crap when a baby was due leave wise.... and deep breaths and get off your hobby horse ��

Although i’ll Take the point that in a female dominated profession maternity is obviously more common. I’ll just argue that it’s one period in a 40 year career

I do not understand why an observation quickly becomes a judgement, we where talking about why there are so many temps vs full teachers.
Temps in many professions are usually used to cover full time staff that will be returning two biggest factors are sickness and maternity.

Again the "timing" is not a judgement it is an observation, two things a lot of people do not do before they become full-time in any profession 1. have kids 2. buy a house.

I suggest deep breaths maybe try and stop being so defensive.

But lets say 30 years of working, you have 10 female teachers. I am not sure the whole 2.4 children thing is still the average but for argument sake let say it is. 24 kids which could see a teacher out for an entire year?

24 years of the 30 years you will need at least 1 temp for every 10.

mirrorwall14

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

I do not understand why an observation quickly becomes a judgement, we where talking about why there are so many temps vs full teachers.
Temps in many professions are usually used to cover full time staff that will be returning two biggest factors are sickness and maternity.

Again the "timing" is not a judgement it is an observation, two things a lot of people do not do before they become full-time in any profession 1. have kids 2. buy a house.

I suggest deep breaths maybe try and stop being so defensive.

But lets say 30 years of working, you have 10 female teachers. I am not sure the whole 2.4 children thing is still the average but for argument sake let say it is. 24 kids which could see a teacher out for an entire year?

24 years of the 30 years you will need at least 1 temp for every 10.

I literally wrote ‘deep breaths’ in my post

It’s a decent argument in terms of temps but it’s not near the reality. In my seven years part time I never covered maternity hours for example. Maternity leaves were part and parcel of teaching long before the ‘hours’ culture came in.

Now to try and turn off my silly insomniac brain for the third time tonight and get some sleep

SterlingArcher

Permabear wrote: »

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Not only that op. The government has set up a new equality justice league. That are now going to tackle the issue of yes yes too many pesky male professors.

Yes the drive for less of the best person for the job and more " hey we are right on". will be coming to a university near you. That's right the the irony of an all female "equality justice league" has been lost on all in government. Yayyy awesome. ignore all complexity in any given situation for a simple 50/50. Till of course it becomes 70/30 female to male then it's cool that isn't an issue....

Warning do not ask the " equality " justice league why it is imperative to focus on female to male ratio. But never the other way around i.e your topic. The word "equality" has been officially hijacked.

Permabear

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

So I had a little time to look more into this research. There are a few things that jump out at me pretty quickly.

Firstly then report does not suggest that the gender influence is across the board. Rather it affects certain subjects. As the Washington post says "raised the achievement of girls and lowered that of boys in science, social studies and English.". What about the other subjects?

Another thing that jumps out is a lot of the conclusions are based on "self-reported perceptions by teachers and students" which does not strike me as a good thing. There are plenty of better methodologies than basing things on self reported perceptions.

Under the banner of self reported perceptions a line like "For example, with a female teacher, boys were more likely to be seen as disruptive. Girls were less likely to be considered inattentive or disorderly." becomes a little more problematic for me. This sounds like the gender bias of the teachers in question - more than any objective actual differences in behaviours caused by the gender of the teachers.

Other similarly worrying lines from the paper that jump out at me that could distort results are things like " in general, female teachers are less likely to be assigned to high-achieving classes" and "female math teachers are roughly 5 to 6 percentage points less likely to say their class achieves at a higher level relative to others at the school.".

Interesting too the people who are not buying into the study or it's conclusions. A president of the "National Women's Law Center, which works to advance the progress of women." finds the conclusions "far from convincing" and that the paper was "questionable and inconsistent".

What also strikes me from the self reporting is that girls with male science teachers report themselves to be less likely to think science useful for their future. That could be unpacked without thinking that girls need female science teachers. Rather than requiring a female teacher, perhaps having a female teacher is just _one_ way in which a girl can be shown women in science.

Perhaps, in other words, what is required in teaching is to modify teaching and curriculum content to not just feed the information to students about a subject, but to actually expose them to testimony and pictures and evidences of that subject being relevant to and containing people of both genders in that field.

For example if a science teacher was showing videos like this one here to their students - of both genders - would we be giving a good impression of the role of women in science?

So in short I think not only is the paper a little iffy as to what it says and what it implies - but I also think where the effects observed are actually real they go much deeper and further than the mere gender of the teacher directly in front of them. It in fact goes to the material presented - how a given subject is represented - and how already existing societal gender biases affect the student before - during - and after class time.

Correlations can be unpacked - distilled - and acted upon without the simple assumption that assigning boys to men - and girls to women - is the fix all solution the study implies it is.

I am also not sure exactly what part of the paper the news article was talking about when it referred to "4%".

Permabear

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Permabear

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Absolutely agree - which is why I merely noted her voice was interesting. I did not draw any implications other than that. It was but a tiny side note in the greater post.

Your quote from Alan Smithers is more in my line of thinking. That a mix of teachers is useful. I would myself extend that past gender diversity too. I think there are other diversities any given school would benefit from on top of that.

But as I said my two main issues with this study is firstly the nature of self reporting in much of it and secondly the instant leap from correlation to a direct causation that the article about the report suggests.

I think there is more than merely diversifying the teaching quota that needs to be played into here. Rather there is a greater issue around gender that comes into play.

I think the example I gave is worth repeating. If girls having a female teacher makes science feel more relevant and useful to them for their future then _why is that_ exactly?

IF it is solely because seeing a woman at the front of the class makes the girls think that women are relevant in science then the way to address that in girls with a male science teacher would not be merely to assign them a female one - or to worry about gender quotas.

No - the solution _there_ would be to present the material in such a way as to represent the genders well in it. To show gender relevance of science as an integrated part of the material and the delivery of the material.

This is how to make such studies useful for me. A study that merely shows some performance correlation with students and the gender of their teacher is entirely useless. Distilling out _why_ that variance occurs and then finding ways not just to counter act it but go even better than counter acting it is where utility would come from.

Merely worrying about gender diversity in the teaching staff therefore would seem more like a knee jerk quick fix solution/reaction rather than sitting back and saying "Ok why might this be - and are there solutions that might go one better than the obvious fixes?"

I think we are on the same page with gender sterotyping though. That tendency we have both noted of teachers putting more negative relative judgements on the "other" genders is something that should be addressed in itself - rather than the mere assumption that therefore such kids would do better with teachers of their own gender.

So yes I think there are issues here for sure - but the issues and their fixes are much deeper and complex than the news paper article would leave a reader thinking.

One eyed Jack

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I think I understand where you're coming from PB, and the issue isn't one so much of gender equality, as opposed to gender representation, and providing role models for young boys. If they are inspired by male teachers who encourage them in school, they are more likely to want to emulate that experience as adults themselves for the next generation.

The issue of representation has come up time and time again in many areas and this is where the liberal left as you observed in your post does an awkward shuffle and remains silent on the issue, because to acknowledge it would mean that they would also have to acknowledge the fact that for Muslim students for example, they have very little representation in the teaching profession in Ireland. I can't find the article on the Irish Times website now, but it was an interesting piece from a teacher who is Muslim, teaching in a school in Ireland, and she made the same point about the lack of representation for young Muslim students in Irish schools.

Given the way the Irish system of education in particular is almost unique in it's lack of diversity and representation of minorities, and this does spill over into the gender debate on the lack of male role models in teaching in Ireland, it's hardly a surprise to anyone, or rather it shouldn't be, that because of the influence of women in liberal academia which influences policy on education, we would tend to see policies implemented which favour outcomes for young girls, and young boys are expected to model the behaviour of young girls, as to do otherwise is an expression of their "toxic masculinity".

Basically identity politics has seeped into the discourse around Irish education, where it appears that education means a number of different things to different people, and they are more concerned with representation in education than they are interested in academic education.

It's something I don't see being addressed any time soon tbh, but whether it's a problem or not, depends upon which side of the fence you're on, and indeed whether you consider it a worthwhile endeavour to fight for representation amongst all the other competing stakeholders in education. It's one of the reasons why more and more people are opting for home schooling their children, and it's fast becoming a more popular choice for parents in Ireland too.

c_man

Chrongen wrote: »

I don't know when or where the change occurred but in my primary school (2nd to 6th class) out of 21 teachers there was only 1 female.

In my secondary school out of approximately 25 teachers only 4 were females.

I didn't have a male teacher until I was in second year of secondary school.