Videography: investigating gendered teacher-student classroom interactions and raising teacher awareness of implicit gender bias

It is suggested that teachers work from a gender-blind position (Garrahy, 2001): teachers claim not to interact any differently with boys than with girls. However an examination of the literature base on gender imbalances in student-teacher interaction shows - at times contradicting - unequal interaction patterns for boys and girls (e.g. Beaman, Wheldall & Kemp, 2006; Jones & Dindia, 2004). Several studies emphasize the need to further investigate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at raising teachers' awareness and reflection on gender related interaction (e.g. Myhill, 2002). The results of two studies in a mixed methods research are presented. First, video stimulated recall interviews with thirteen secondary education teachers are used to investigate teachers’ gendered thoughts, images and emotions during teaching. Videotaped lessons are analysed from both the researcher as the teachers’ own perspective to help teachers become aware of possible gender bias. Second, the actual interactions between students and teachers are investigated by means of quantitative analysis of students’ classroom interaction patterns (N=180) in video-taped lessons. Analyses of the data show (a) that teachers’ implicit thoughts are negatively biased towards boys, (b) boys report significantly higher levels of feeling discriminated against and (c) boys receive significantly more negative feedback from their teachers than girls. Part of this increased level of negative feedback appears to be justified because boys are more off-task and call out to the teacher more often. We also find evidence, however, for teachers being more lenient towards girls: girls and boys talk to their neighbors equally and only boys receive negative feedback for this. Finally, (d) video stimulated recall interviewing proved to be a promising method to raise teacher awareness of these gendered thoughts and behaviors with half of the respondents becoming aware of unfair student treatments. Suggestions for using video-stimulated recall in teacher professional development and teacher education programs are discussed.