Less Experienced Teachers Influenced To Grade Kids By Gender Stereotypes

When your daughter grabs her lunch and heads out the door to school, you would like to think that she will be judged by her teachers on her efforts and accomplishments. But that isn’t always the case.

We like to think of teachers as fair individuals, but a new study reveals that’s not always the case -- at least when it comes to the subject of physics.

Researchers in Switzerland asked nearly 900 secondary school physics teachers to grade an exam answer. All participants were given the same exam question, and all the answers were only partially correct. But here is the tricky part -half of the teachers believed they were grading the answer of a male student, and the other half believed they were grading the answer of a female student. Would the physics speak for itself or would gender based stereotypes color the teachers judgment?

The data showed that among teachers who had taught for ten years or more, the gender of the student had no influence on the grade they gave. That’s good news.

Unfortunately, teachers who had taught for less than ten years gave girls significantly poorer grades than boys. Study leaders conclude that teachers with less experience are possibly more guided by the bias that girls are worse in physics than boys when grading.

Teachers with less experience are apparently more influenced by contextual information such as gender.

The study was conducted in Europe but it could be a concern to parents everywhere. (EurekAlert!)