Are too many teachers women?

newport2

I remember reading this article. Interesting.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-gender-gap-why-do-boys-do-worse-than-girls-at-school-1.1591232

"The recent study, at the University of Kent, revealed that boys are falling behind girls because they are constantly being told they are not up to scratch. The research, which involved about 600 children aged four to 10, found that boys felt their teachers and parents did not expect them to do as well as girls, and lost their motivation or confidence as a result.
Tests showed belief in their own academic inferiority could translate into lower school grades among boys. The results, published in the Child Development journal, showed that by the time boys are seven years old they equate girls with higher achievement at school. Girls believe they are higher achievers by the time they have reached the age of four."

“Our research showed that from the age of four, girls thought they were better than boys at school, believing they understood their work better, did better, were more motivated and better behaved. From the age of seven, boys rated themselves collectively as worse than girls."

"“In a follow-up study,” she says, “we showed that when children were reminded of this stereotype and asked to sit a test of reading, writing and maths, boys did worse compared to a control group of similar boys who were not reminded of the stereotype.
“Girls were not affected by being reminded that they were expected to be better than boys; that is, they didn’t get better. In a second follow-up experiment, we told children that girls and boys were expected to do equally well. This made boys do better and didn’t affect girls; that is, they didn’t get worse.”"

Permabear

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Cienciano

I had women teachers throughout primary school and it didn't do me any harm. Now, where did I leave my panties?

valoren

Thinking about this and the point that there is no motivation for people in STEM subjects to actually teach due to the low pay. Taking something like Physics for example, there is a chance for them to give back and they don't actually need to be in the same country to teach someone. When time allows I watch youtube videos by someone called DrPhysicsA. He is an English guy who takes the A level and GCSE curriculum and goes through it with enthusiasm, infectious passion and makes some difficult material accessible, friendly and understandable. One of the prevailing types of comments on these videos are from people thanking him and saying they'd learned more in such 5 minutes than weeks in the class rooms, that they wish they had him as their teacher. For me that's telling. If you were to watch and study each video you could realistically get an A but you'd also maintain an active interest and enthusiasm for it because such people delivering the content love what they do.

Why not leverage that? Why have teachers assigned to Physics for example who for all intents and purposes have zero interest and zero passion and see that affect the students? Where is the equivalent of such videos for the Junior and Leaving Cert? We are now in a digital age and have access to all of these passionate people. Perhaps the Dept of Education could hire such people to create content based on the courses? And not simply giving a paying gig to some bore who says 1+1 =2 but someone who fosters interest by saying 1 + 1 = 2, isn't that incredible!?

There would then be no need for such people to see teaching as a career choice. It would be them giving back. And as it is on Youtube it can also be monetised which in itself is thinking outside the classroom. And this would apply to all subjects too obviously. While these videos present the material, someone who actually physically teaches can then leverage these videos and go through them as per normal.