EPSE 307/308 Assignment on Gender Bias

Gender Bias

Christine Grippo

EPSE 307

Nov.15^th/13

During my two-week full-time practicum I was fortunate to have the opportunity to observe many interesting, diverse events. One situation in particular struck me. I took my 22 grade three students to music class in the morning, around 9:00 am for their first block of instruction. During the thirty minute class there was an ongoing incident regarding gender constructs and sexual identity.

There are more boys than girls in my class. No classroom is ever going to have an equal divide of boys and girls, nor should a classroom need to be. But it is important for teachers to be aware of the gender constraints of the society in which their classroom is. It is also important for teachers to be sensitive to the issues that may be caused due to such constraints.

In the music class I observed, the boys and girls were partnered up with the opposite sex in order to learn a dance. The dance had a male role and a female role. Because there were too many boys, some boys had to be paired with the same sex and therefore one of the boys had to be the female role for the dance moves. I do not believe that dances or other lessons should be avoided if they have gendered roles, but it is important to handle the lessons delicately. The teacher assigned a few boys to play the female role in the dance, and lined these boys up with the girls in order to teach them their parts. Then the teacher called the boys playing girls “fake girls” for the entire period. When she was giving instruction to the students doing the female dance role, she said “girls and fake girls”. When the teacher was giving instructions for the male role she said “real boys”. In another class this could have gone unnoticed and not have caused any problems, but in this class with these students it did cause a problem. The “fake girls” were teased by the “real boys” and were misbehaving all class. Even though I had not spent much time with my students I was quick to notice that some of the boys who are usually not trouble makers at all were all of the sudden disobedient and behaving very poorly in class. I suspect this was mostly, though maybe not completely, due to the fact that they were forced to play this gendered role they were not comfortable with.

The teacher unfortunately created this particular situation I decided to reflect upon. The boys and girls of the class did not react well to the circumstances created by the vocabulary chosen by the teacher. The teacher kept having to redirect the “fake girls” but did not seem to notice or care about the reasoning for the lack of attention.

It is noted that gender identity is an important part of children’s self-concept and a powerful source of self-esteem (Woolfolk & Perry 2012). It is difficult enough having to represent a gender identity in order to ‘fit in’ at school. The authorities at school, being the teachers and staff should be completely open and accepting of any gender identity and sexual orientation.

Upon reflection of this particular incident I began to think about all of the ways my practicum school is gender biased. I made a note that there are no posters or resources displayed to dispute the socialization of girls as being inferior to boys. Even the lesson in which the incident occurred had an undertone of gender bias embedded in it. In order to complete the task at hand, one first had to be a “boy part” or a “girl part”. There was no other option given if students were uncomfortable being forced into these societal structured roles. It was only after witnessing this lesson that I truly understood Chapman’s remark that “gender bias is part of the curriculum of lessons taught implicitly to students through every day functioning of their classroom” (Chapman, 2010, p.65).

Bibliography

Chapman, A. (2012). Gender Bias in Education. Critical Multicultural Pavilion/Research Room, ed. by P. C. Gorski.

Woolfolk & Perry (2012). Chapter 7 – Social Emotional Development in Early Childhood (pp. 267-276).