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Soc Psychol Educ (2015) 18:467–485 DOI 10.1007/s11218-015-9303-0 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic engagement? How students’ gender enactment triggers gender stereotypes at school Anke Heyder1 • Ursula Kessels1 Received: 27 September 2014 / Accepted: 25 April 2015 / Published online: 27 May 2015 ! Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract Girls presently outperform boys in overall academic success. Corresponding gender stereotypes portray male students as lazy and troublesome and female students as diligent and compliant. The present study investigated whether these stereotypes impact teachers’ perceptions of students and whether students’ visible enactment of their gender at school (behaving in a very masculine or feminine way) increases the impact of these stereotypes on teachers’ perceptions of students. We hypothesized that teachers would ascribe more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to male students who enact masculinity as compared with male students who show gender-neutral behavior and female students. Three pilot studies (N = 104; N = 82; N = 86) yielded pretested material for a randomized vignette study of N = 104 teachers. The teachers read one randomly assigned vignette describing a male (or female) student enacting his (or her) gender (or not) and rated how likely this student would be to display behaviors that impede or foster learning in a 2 (between: target students’ gender) 9 2 (between: gender enactment [yes/no]) 9 2 (between: teachers’ gender) 9 2 (within: ascribed behavior) factorial design. As expected, male students enacting masculinity were rated as showing the lowest amount of academic engagement. Results are discussed with regard to the current debate on the causes of boys’ lower academic success. Keywords Gender stereotypes ! Masculinity ! Gender differences in academic achievement ! Teachers’ expectations ! Academic engagement & Anke Heyder anke.heyder@fu-berlin.de 1 Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany 123 468 A. Heyder, U. Kessels 1 Introduction In many industrialized Western countries, male students lag behind female students on important indicators of academic success (Buchmann et al. 2008). They earn lower grades (for an international meta-analysis cf. Voyer and Voyer 2014), receive fewer degrees, are more often held back a grade, and more often drop out of school than female students, as reports and studies from countries such as the U.S. (e.g., NCES 2009) or Germany (e.g., Hannover and Kessels 2011) show. Similarly in England, female students outperform male students at GCSE and are more likely to be entered for A-Levels than male students (e.g., Department of Education and Skills 2007). These gender differences in academic attainment have recently provoked a stereotypical depiction in the media of male students as unsuccessful and troublesome and female students as successful and compliant (Latsch and Hannover 2014). When activated, stereotypes are known to influence subsequent information processing and behavior. In the present study, we wanted to test whether students’ enactment of their gender would trigger stereotypes about male and female students in teachers. Gender enactment refers to the display of behaviors that are strongly stereotyped as being very masculine or feminine such that the person displaying them can be easily identified as a male or a female person in social interactions (cf. Goffman 1976). As school is not only a place where students can study but also a space in which they can develop an overall identity, gender enactment can be understood as a strategy for mastering the developmental task of negotiating a (gender) identity (Kessels et al. 2014; Renninger 2009; cf. Havighurst 1961). However, with a focus on teachers, this gender enactment may have unintended side effects: We argue that students’ gender enactment triggers gender stereotypes in teachers when they judge their students’ learning. More precisely, we hypothesized that boys’ enactment of masculinity would trigger teachers’ stereotypes of troublesome boys in school, resulting in more negative expectations for the learning behavior of boys who enact their masculinity in contrast to both boys who show gender-neutral behavior and girls. 1.1 Stereotypes of female and male students Stereotypes of female and male students exist with regard to their domain-specific abilities (e.g., males are thought to be better at math; e.g., Steffens and Jelenec 2011) as well as with regard to their behavior in school in general (e.g., females are perceived as more diligent than males; e.g., Krahé et al. 2007). Boys’ current overall lower rate of educational success, however, has shifted both the public debate and the focus of research from the former to the latter. Recent studies have revealed that primary school children as well as adolescents believe that girls are academically superior to boys and display better conduct and more traits and behaviors that are beneficial for learning (Hartley and Sutton 2013; Latsch and Hannover 2014). In addition, male college students characterized the stereotypical ‘‘feminine’’ way of studying as (unnecessary and inefficient) hard work, diligence, and effort, whereas 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 469 they described themselves as lazy (but clever; e.g., Jackson and Dempster 2009). The stereotypes of the hard-working girl and lazy boy are also reflected in findings on students’ and parents’ attributions of success. Irrespective of academic domain, girls think of effort as more important for academic success than boys do (e.g., Lightbody et al. 1996; Mok et al. 2011), and parents attribute girls’ success to effort more often than boys’ (e.g., Räty et al. 2002). However, only one study so far has dealt with teachers’ stereotypes of female and male students’ behavior in school in general (Jones and Myhill 2004): Interviews revealed that teachers also tend to see girls as compliant and boys as rather troublesome. Importantly, stereotypical gender differences were more often reported with respect to behavior than ability (e.g., girls were thought of as neat and as more likely to do homework, whereas boys were perceived as disruptive and immature). Whether male and female teachers differed with regard to their stereotypes about male and female students was not the focus of the Jones and Myhill (2004) study. However, a possible influence of teachers’ gender on boys’ lower academic success has been discussed and studied in other research (e.g., Neugebauer et al. 2011). As proposed by Campbell’s (1967) ‘‘grain of truth’’ hypothesis, the described gender stereotypes regarding students’ behavior seem in part to reflect actual gender differences in traits and behavior: Male students score higher on items such as being lazy or untidy, which are also included in scales measuring masculinity, and female students score higher on items such as being diligent, and such items are used to represent femininity (Krahé et al. 2007). In addition, female students have been found to score higher on agreeableness and on some facets of conscientiousness, such as dutifulness and self-discipline (e.g., Costa et al. 2001; De Fruyt et al. 2008), and have reported greater academic engagement, such as spending more time and effort on homework than males (e.g., Lam et al. 2012; Trautwein et al. 2006). Male students, on the contrary, misbehave in class more often than female students, fail to complete assignments, and seldom try to do their best work (NCES 2002; for an overview, see Kessels and Steinmayr 2013). Taken together, students of different age groups as well as teachers hold gender stereotypes representing typically male and typically female student behavior in school, and these stereotypes seem to reflect actual gender differences in student behavior to some degree. Stereotypical female students are thought to show behavior that fosters learning, such as being adjusted, diligent, and hardworking along with conforming to academic demands, whereas stereotypical male students are thought of as lazy and as showing disruptive or inappropriate behavior in class, all of which impede learning. Gender stereotypes are much more pronounced for student behavior (e.g., being lazy or industrious) than for general ability (e.g., one gender being more intelligent than the other; Jones and Myhill 2004), and studies with a focus on teachers’ gender stereotypes are scarce. 1.2 The salience of gender triggers stereotypes of male and female students Students, like all people, are members of various social categories that are characterized by attributes such as age, gender, ethnicity, or nationality. Depending 123 470 A. Heyder, U. Kessels on the context, different categories are more (or less) salient and influence information processing and behavior in social interactions at school to different degrees. In the following sections, we will summarize findings on how increases in the salience of the social category ‘‘gender’’ impact students’ and teachers’ gender stereotypes at school. 1.2.1 Impact on students’ gender stereotypes The impact of increases in the salience of gender on students has been studied within various theoretical paradigms, for example, gender schema theory (e.g., Bem 1983; Martin and Halverson 1981) or social-cognitive models of the self, such as the dynamic self-concept (e.g., Hannover 1997; Linville and Carlston 1994; Markus and Wurf 1987) or the stereotype threat paradigm (e.g., Steele and Aronson 1995). Gender schema theory posits that even young children hold gender schemas about males and females, and when these schemas are activated, they lead to increased gender stereotyping (e.g., Bem 1983; Martin and Halverson 1981). Enhancing the salience of gender in the environment is one way to trigger students’ gender stereotypes. In the school setting, experimental studies have revealed that if teachers make gender salient in the classroom (e.g., by using gender-specific language and gender-based forms of class organization), their students’ gender stereotypes increase compared with the gender stereotypes of students whose teachers do not enhance the salience of gender (Bigler 1995; Hilliard and Liben 2010). Similarly, research on the dynamic self-concept has pointed to the fact that a person’s selfconcept varies according to which part of his or her self-knowledge is activated (e.g., Hannover 1997; Markus and Wurf 1987). Against this background, it has been found that reducing the salience of gender in class (in this case, via single-sex classes over a longer period of time) makes students’ gender-related self-knowledge less accessible, which in turn results in less gender-stereotypical self-descriptions (Kessels and Hannover 2008). In addition, it has been found that subtly priming the category gender, e.g., by asking students to indicate their gender or to answer questions related to their gender, causes students to behave and perform in a stereotype-confirming manner (e.g., Ambady et al. 2001; Shih et al. 1999; Spencer et al. 1999; cf. Steele and Aronson 1995). 1.2.2 Impact on teachers’ gender stereotypes Whereas many studies have explored the impact of increases in gender salience on students in school, the impact on teachers has not yet been studied. Studies on priming and category-based impression formation in adults in general, however, support the assumption that increasing the salience of gender in school will influence not only the students themselves but also teachers’ perceptions and judgments of their students in stereotypical ways. Priming studies have shown that the high accessibility of a social category influences perception and judgment (e.g., Banaji et al. 1993; Beckett and Park 1995). For example, watching mixed sets of pictures showing men and women has been found to activate the category gender and to facilitate the retrieval of gender stereotypical knowledge (Macrae and 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 471 Cloutier 2009). Banaji et al. (1993) demonstrated in a vignette experiment that increasing the accessibility of gender stereotypes influences judgment of people. After unscrambling sentences describing typically feminine, dependent behavior, participants rated a female target as more dependent than a male target even though both target persons had been described as behaving in exactly the same way. Conversely, after unscrambling sentences unrelated to gender, male and female targets were rated equally (Banaji et al. 1993). Taken together, a large amount of research has been conducted on the conditions that lead to an increase in students’ and adults’ gender stereotypes. However, no studies have examined the factors that trigger teachers’ stereotypes of male and female students or the effect of triggering such stereotypes on teachers’ perceptions of students. 1.3 Will students’ gender enactment at school increase teachers’ gender stereotypes? In the classroom, gender stereotypes may be activated not only by features of the context such as increases in the salience of gender (e.g., Hilliard and Liben 2010) but also when the students themselves deliberately enact their gender. Gender enactment, or gender display, refers to the ‘‘conventionalized portrayal’’ of what is culturally established as gender (Goffman 1976, p. 1). It involves the display of behaviors that are strongly stereotyped as being very masculine or feminine and it helps people to negotiate their (gender) identity in social interactions (e.g., Deaux and Major 1987). By enacting their gender in school, students can make use of school not only as a place in which they can study and acquire knowledge, but also as a space and stage for mastering the developmental task of negotiating a (gender) identity (Kessels et al. 2014; Renninger 2009; cf. Havighurst 1961). Girls and boys, for example, may enact their gender by wearing strongly gender-typical clothes and hairstyles and displaying strongly gender-typical behavior in order to exaggerate their physical differences and to assure that they are easily identifiable as a male or a female person in social interactions (cf. Hilliard and Liben 2010). Such gender enactment processes are also highly plausible in school because not only do the diverging physical appearances of males and females in adolescence increase the accessibility of gender-related self-knowledge in general (Finkenauer et al. 2002), but being perceived as a ‘‘typical’’ boy or girl is socially rewarded: Students’ gender-typicality has been found to be associated with higher social acceptance, popularity among peers, and self-worth (e.g., Egan and Perry 2001; Jewell and Brown 2014; Yunger et al. 2004). If students’ gender-typicality is called into question (e.g., by receiving feedback that a student is succeeding in a domain stereotyped as inappropriate for his or her gender), they subsequently enact their own gender (Kessels et al. 2008). Whereas students seem to benefit from gender enactment in terms of identity formation, popularity, and self-worth, the effects of gender enactment on teachers’ perceptions and judgments of students have not yet been studied. According to the reasoning behind the continuum model of impression formation (Fiske and Neuberg 1990), students’ gender enactment should increase the impact of gender stereotypes 123 472 A. Heyder, U. Kessels on teachers’ perceptions of students compared with students’ gender-neutral behavior. Precisely, the model states that immediately upon encountering enough information to cue a social group membership (e.g., student labeled as male) in a social interaction, perceivers categorize the target person as belonging to a social group (e.g., male students), and stereotypical knowledge about the social group becomes accessible. If the target person is of at least minimal relevance or interest, the perceiver will then shift attention toward the target’s attributes to judge the target’s typicality with regard to the initial categorization (Fiske and Neuberg 1990). The more the target’s attributes fit the initial category, the more category-based impression formation processes will occur (Fiske and Neuberg 1990). With regard to gender enactment in school, this implies that the more a male student enacts masculinity, thereby increasing his visible fit with the male category, the more teachers will rely on stereotypes about male students to form an impression of the student (see also Hamilton et al. 1990). The same is to be expected for female students enacting femininity. Taken together, we argue that students’ gender enactment should increase the impact of teachers’ stereotypes of male and female students (Jones and Myhill 2004) on teachers’ perceptions and judgments of individual students. 1.4 Study overview and hypotheses We applied an experimental vignette study to test whether students’ gender enactment would trigger teachers’ gender stereotypes. We argue that teachers’ perceptions and expectations of students will be more strongly influenced by gender stereotypes if the student enacts his or her gender than if the student shows genderneutral behavior. As gender stereotypes are more pronounced for behavior in school than for general ability (e.g., Jones and Myhill 2004), we focused on the stereotypes of the diligent, hardworking female student and the lazy and disruptive male student. In line with these stereotypes, we hypothesized that teachers would ascribe more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a student labeled male than to a student labeled female when both are described as displaying exactly the same gender-neutral behavior (Hypothesis 1). In addition, we expected students’ attempts to enhance their visibility as members of the male or female group to increase teachers’ gender-stereotypical expectations. More precisely, we hypothesized that teachers would ascribe more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a male student who enacts his masculinity than to a male student who displays gender-neutral behavior (Hypothesis 2a) and less behavior that impedes learning and more behavior that fosters learning to a female student who enacts femininity than to a female student who shows gender-neutral behavior (Hypothesis 2b). Regarding the ongoing discussion about the influences of teachers’ gender on gender differences in various academic outcomes, we additionally explored whether students’ gender enactment would have different effects on male and female teachers. 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 473 2 Method In order to construct the material for the experimental vignette study, we conducted three pilot studies using different samples of teacher training students from one large university in Western Germany. Two pilot studies were used to develop and pretest the stimulus material (behavior enacting masculinity, behavior enacting femininity, gender-neutral behavior) and one pilot study to develop the dependent variables of the study (behavior fostering learning, behavior impeding learning). 2.1 Pilot studies for generating the stimulus material The stimulus material was developed and pretested in two pilot studies. To create an item pool of behaviors, the authors generated items describing a broad range of behaviors that could theoretically be used by adolescents to enact gender. Behaviors assumed to be gender-neutral were added to that pool, resulting in 98 different types of behaviors. Only behaviors without any direct logical connection to learning or academic achievement were considered in order to ensure that the behavior items themselves did not convey any stereotypical content regarding boys’ or girls’ learning behavior. In the first pilot study, 104 teacher training students (83 female, 20 male, one with no gender identification, age M = 24.09, SD = 3.93, number of semesters studied M = 5.34, SD = 2.27) were asked to evaluate the degree to which these behaviors reflected adolescents’ gender enactment. For each item, the participants were told to imagine a 15-year-old student performing the described behavior and to rate the behavior on a bipolar 7-point scale (1 = behavior boys use to enact their masculinity, 7 = behavior girls use to enact their femininity). The purpose of the second pilot study was to rule out any differences in social desirability between the enactment of masculinity, the enactment of femininity, and the behaviors that were considered to be gender-neutral, irrespective of whether a boy or a girl showed it. Thereby, we aimed to prevent the results of our main study from being distorted by confounding variables such as the behaviors’ social desirability. For each behavior, teacher training students were instructed to imagine a 15-year-old student performing the described behavior and to rate, on a 7-pointscale, the behavior’s degree of social desirability from an adult’s perspective (1 = very socially desirable, 7 = not at all socially desirable). In order to obtain gender-neutral behaviors that were equally socially desirable when displayed by boys or girls, two versions of the questionnaire were used and were randomly distributed to the participants. In Version 1, participants had to imagine a boy performing the masculine and the neutral types of behavior and a girl performing the feminine types of behavior. In Version 2, participants had to imagine a girl performing the feminine and the neutral types of behavior and a boy performing the masculine types of behavior. Version 1 was filled out by 42 teacher training students (29 female, 12 male, one missing gender, age M = 24.03, SD = 2.72, number of semesters studied M = 4.63, SD = 2.03), Version 2 by 40 teacher training students 123 474 A. Heyder, U. Kessels (31 female, seven male, two who did not indicate gender, age M = 24.29, SD = 4.47, number of semesters studied M = 4.89, SD = 1.64). The behavior items used in the vignettes were selected according to four criteria established in order to achieve a maximum degree of comparability between the enactments of masculinity, femininity, and gender-neutral behaviors and to control a priori for relevant and probably confounding variables. The four criteria were: (a) Items were unambiguously classified as suitable for gender enactment in Study 1 (on a scale from 1 = behavior boys use to enact their masculinity to 7 = behavior girls use to enact their femininity, items with a mean score \2.5 were regarded as behavior seen as suitable for enacting masculinity, items with a mean score between 3.25 and 4.75 as gender-neutral behavior, items with a mean score[5.5 as suitable for enacting femininity). (b) Items were rated by male and female raters equally (no gender differences in ratings). (c) Gender-neutral items were selected only when their social desirability ratings did not differ whether displayed by a boy or a girl (results from Pilot Study 2, comparison between Versions 1 and 2). (d) The final items representing the enactments of femininity, masculinity, and gender-neutral behavior were selected only if they were perceived as equally socially (un-)desirable. Criteria 1 and 2 were met by 24 behavior items for enacting femininity and 13 behavior items for enacting masculinity; Criteria 1, 2, and 3 by 14 gender-neutral behavior items. The results of Pilot Study 2, however, revealed that on average, the femininity enactment items were rated as more socially desirable than both the masculinity enactment items, t(81) = 12.11, p \ 0.001, and the gender-neutral behavior items, t(81) = 19.76, p \ 0.001 (femininity M = 4.39, SD = 0.60, masculinity M = 5.10, SD = 0.45, gender-neutral M = 5.63, SD = 0.38). In order to control for differences in social desirability (fourth criterion), we had to select femininity enactment items that were rated as relatively socially undesirable compared with other possible behavior used to enact femininity. Finally, five masculinity enactment items, five femininity enactment items, and five items representing gender-neutral behavior were selected, all of which had been rated as statistically equally socially (un)desirable (masculinity M = 5.27, SD = 0.51, femininity M = 5.17, SD = 0.78, gender-neutral M = 5.33, SD = 0.63, all ts(81) B 1.81, all ps C 0.075). The selected items are presented in Table 1. To be used in the main study, the selected items were inserted into a vignette template that consisted of a conversation between three teachers in the staff room about a student. Thereby, we constructed four different vignettes: One description of a male student enacting masculinity, one description of a female student enacting femininity, one description of a male student showing gender-neutral behavior, and one description of a female student showing the identical gender-neutral behavior. For an example of a complete vignette, see Appendix 1. 2.2 Pilot study for generating the dependent variables A third pilot study was conducted to pretest the dependent variables used in the main study (behaviors impeding or fostering learning). A pool of 61 items capturing possible student behaviors was generated by the authors. A total of 86 teacher training students (66 female, 18 male, two who did not indicate gender, age 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 475 Table 1 Behaviors selected on the basis of the pilot studies for characterizing the four students represented in the vignettes Gender enactment behaviors Gender-neutral behaviors (identical for male and female students) Male student Female student Burping loudly Showing fear and disgust when confronted with insects Jumping from the 5-meter board when many people are watching Moving in an exaggeratedly feminine way Wearing baggy clothes and a hood Having extravagantly manicured nails Sharing sex videos from his mobile Signaling to boys she was interested in them although she was not First over-dramatizing pain and then playing it down Putting on make-up in the school lavatory Refusing to do the boring part of group work Refusing to do the boring part of group work Tilting his chair Tilting her chair Not lending a pen when asked to Not lending a pen when asked to Never letting anybody copy from his work Never letting anybody copy from her work Tattling on classmates to the teacher Tattling on classmates to the teacher M = 23.96, SD = 2.8, number of semesters studied M = 5.74, SD = 2.55) were instructed to imagine a 15-year-old student performing the behavior presented by each item and to rate each item on a 7-point scale with regard to the behavior’s effect on academic learning (1 = fosters learning, 7 = impedes learning). Criteria for selection were, first, unambiguous classification as either fostering learning (i.e., a mean score \2.5) or impeding learning (i.e., a mean score [5.5); second, items rated equally by female and male raters (fostering learning: all ts B |1.55|, all ps C 0.126; impeding learning: all ts B |1.92|, all ps C 0.058); and, third, no overlapping content. The resulting two scales consisted of 10 behaviors that foster learning (M = 1.66, SD = 0.37; e.g., ‘‘does his/her homework on a regular basis,’’ ‘‘meets up with friends to study for school’’) and 10 that impede it (M = 6.08, SD = 0.58, e.g., ‘‘does not pay attention in class,’’ ‘‘does not file worksheets and loses them’’) and showed good reliability when used in the main study (impeding learning a = 0.84, fostering learning a = 0.81). The full scales are presented in Appendix 2. 2.3 Main study 2.3.1 Participants The participants were 104 teachers from two German grammar schools (56 female, 48 male). The proportion of women was slightly lower (53.8 % women) than 123 476 A. Heyder, U. Kessels reported in national statistics for this type of school (55 % women; Statistisches Bundesamt 2011). Their mean age was M = 39.4 years (SD = 11.37), and their mean professional experience was M = 10.88 years (SD = 11.32). 2.3.2 Experimental treatment The participating teachers randomly received one of the four vignettes that described either a male student enacting masculinity, a female student enacting femininity, a male student showing gender-neutral behavior, or a female student showing gender-neutral behavior. In order to control for biasing stereotypes elicited merely by particular names, the students were called ‘‘Jan’’ (male) or ‘‘Katrin’’ (female), names that have been rated as moderately and, more importantly, equally attractive and intelligent in Germany (Rudolph et al. 2007). The distribution of the four vignettes was counterbalanced for male and female participants (13–15 female teachers per vignette, 11–13 male teachers per vignette). After reading the vignette, participants rated on a 5-point-scale (1 = very unlikely, 5 = very likely) how likely the target student would be to display each of the 10 behaviors that foster learning and the 10 behaviors that impede learning, all items displayed in alphabetical order. As distractors, five items measuring gregariousness (NEO-PI-R; Ostendorf and Angleitner 2004) were intermixed. Demographics were assessed afterwards. For each participant, we calculated one mean score for the behaviors fostering learning and one mean score for the behaviors impeding it. These mean scores represented the two levels of the withinsubjects factor ‘‘ascribed behavior’’ in the following analyses. 3 Results Means and standard deviations of the behaviors ascribed to the four students described in the vignettes are depicted in Table 2. In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a 2 (students’ gender: female, male) 9 2 (teachers’ gender: female, male) 9 2 (gender enactment: yes, no) 9 2 (ascribed behavior: impeding learning, Table 2 Ascription of behavior that fosters or impedes learning to the four vignette students Male student Female student Enacting masculinity M (SD) Gender-neutral M (SD) Enacting femininity M (SD) Gender-neutral M (SD) Ascription of behavior fostering learning 2.39 (0.51) 2.77 (0.49) 2.98 (0.37) 3.22 (0.55) Ascription of behavior impeding learning 3.36 (0.46) 2.83 (0.47) 2.86 (0.32) 2.44 (0.66) N = 104 teachers. The scale ranged from 1 = very unlikely to 5 = very likely 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 477 fostering learning) MANOVA with the first three factors as between-subjects factors and the ascribed behavior as a within-subjects factor. We included teachers’ gender as a factor in our analyses to provide an exploratory test for gender-differentiated teacher responses, although no explicit hypotheses regarding teachers’ gender were stated. Two statistically significant interaction effects were found. First, an interaction between students’ gender and the ascribed behavior emerged, F(1, 96) = 33.84, p \ 0.001, Wilks’ k = 0.74, partial g 2 = 0.26. It indicated that, irrespective of whether or not the students in the vignettes enacted their gender, teachers ascribed more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to male students (behavior impeding learning M = 3.09, SD = 0.53, behavior fostering learning M = 2.58, SD = 0.53) than to female students (behavior impeding learning M = 2.66, SD = 0.55, behavior fostering learning M = 3.09, SD = 0.48). Even if the male and the female students were characterized by exactly the same gender-neutral behavior, the student labeled male was perceived as less likely to show behavior that was beneficial for learning and more likely to show behavior that would impede learning than the student labeled female (see Fig. 1). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported by our data. Second, an interaction between gender enactment and the ascribed behavior was found, F(1, 96) = 22.29, p \ 0.001, Wilks’ k = 0.81, partial g 2 = 0.19. In support of Hypothesis 2a, the results indicated that teachers ascribed more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to the male student enacting his masculinity (behavior impeding learning M = 3.36, SD = 0.46, behavior fostering learning M = 2.39, SD = 0.51) than to the male student displaying gender-neutral behavior (behavior impeding learning M = 2.83, SD = 0.47, behavior fostering learning M = 2.77, SD = 0.49, see Fig. 1). However, contrary to our expectations, a similar pattern at the expense of students who enacted their gender emerged for the vignettes about female students: Teachers also ascribed more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a female student enacting her femininity (behavior impeding learning M = 2.86, SD = 0.32, behavior fostering learning M = 2.98, SD = 0.37) than to a female Fig. 1 Mean ratings of how likely the four target students would be to display behavior that impedes or fosters learning (1 = very unlikely, 5 = very likely) 123 478 A. Heyder, U. Kessels student showing gender-neutral behavior (behavior impeding learning M = 2.44, SD = 0.66, behavior fostering learning M = 3.22, SD = 0.55). Thus, our findings did not support Hypothesis 2b. No statistically significant main effect or further interaction effect was found. This indicated that teachers’ gender had no effect on their judgments of students. Taken together, our results indicate that in line with the stereotype of lazy and troublesome boys, teachers expected male students to show less behavior that fosters learning and more behavior that impedes learning than female students. Enacting masculinity resulted in even more negative and stronger stereotype-based expectations for male students. Though gender enactment lowered teachers’ expectations for both genders, the male student enacting masculinity was judged least favorably with regard to his assumed learning behavior. 4 Discussion The focus of this study was on the effect of gender enactment on teachers’ gender stereotypes. As expected in Hypothesis 1, teachers ascribed more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a student labeled male than to a student labeled female when both were described as displaying exactly the same gender-neutral behavior, thus reflecting the stereotype of the diligent female student and the lazy and troublesome male student. Even more negative expectations regarding learning behavior were ascribed by teachers to those boys who enacted their masculinity as compared with boys who showed gender-neutral behavior, corroborating Hypothesis 2a. Contrary to our expectations, a similar pattern emerged when teachers judged female students: Teachers ascribed more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a female student enacting her gender than to a female student showing gender-neutral behavior (rejection of Hypothesis 2b). Female and male teachers did not differ in their responses. Our vignette study complements prior research on academic gender stereotypes in the classroom in two different ways: First, we demonstrated that mere descriptions of students’ gender and behavior (unrelated to learning) evoke gender-stereotypical judgments about their learning behavior, thus extending the methods used in experimental priming tasks (e.g., Ambady et al. 2001) or in changing environmental qualities (e.g., Hilliard and Liben 2010). Second, whereas previous research had focused on the effects of gender salience and stereotype activation on male and female students (e.g., Ambady et al. 2001; Hilliard and Liben 2010), the current study tested the effects on the perceivers’—in this case, teachers’—judgments. As predicted by the continuum model of impression formation (Fiske and Neuberg 1990) and previous studies on the effects of gender labeling (e.g., Condry and Condry 1976), the mere labeling of a student as male or female cued the students’ social gender group membership and led to stereotypebased expectations of male and female students in our study. Even when all other characteristics except students’ gender were held constant, the student labeled male was expected to show less adaptive learning behavior than his female counterpart. 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 479 This finding is in line with recent studies on children’s, students’, and teachers’ academic gender stereotypes (e.g., Hartley and Sutton 2013; Jones and Myhill 2004; Latsch and Hannover 2014) as well as with gender differences in self-reported academic engagement and behavior in school in favor of girls (e.g., Lam et al. 2012; NCES 2002; Trautwein et al. 2006). The lack of effect of teachers’ gender in our study implies that male and female teachers do not differ in their student gender stereotypes or in their expectations of students’ learning behavior. It indirectly supports previous studies that have reported that there is no same-gender teacher advantage in school (e.g., Neugebauer et al. 2011). In addition, our study showed that students’ attempts to enact gender have an effect on teachers’ perceptions, namely, an increase in teachers’ gender-stereotypebased expectations. Although students may benefit from gender enactment in terms of social acceptance, adjustment, and identity development (e.g., Egan and Perry 2001; Jewell and Brown 2014), our results show a detrimental effect on teachers’ expectations: if the male student enacted his membership of the social group males, teachers relied more on the stereotype of the lazy and troublesome male students to form their impression of the student (cf. Hamilton et al. 1990; Fiske and Neuberg 1990). Enacting femininity, however, also had detrimental rather than beneficial consequences for teachers’ expectations of the female students, even though stereotypes of female students as diligent and compliant have been found in previous studies (e.g., Hartley and Sutton 2013; Latsch and Hannover 2014). This unexpected finding might be traced back to the methodological characteristics of our study. In Pilot Study 2, we found that, overall, the items rated as suitable for enacting femininity were perceived as more socially desirable than both the items for enacting masculinity and the gender-neutral behavior items. In order to control for this a priori difference in social desirability in the main study, the items we selected for the enactment of femininity were perceived as rather socially undesirable compared with other items that also represented the enactment of femininity. Because of this, the feminine items used in our vignettes might not have represented the enactment of belonging to the group of females as a whole but rather to a specific subgroup of females who display more socially undesirable behavior than the average female student (for an overview on subgroup stereotypes of male and female adults, cf. Athenstaedt et al. 2008; Eckes 1994). In a Norwegian ethnographic study that identified different subgroups of male and female students, there was one group of females (the ‘‘babes’’) who enacted their femininity through dating, interest in boys, clothing, and make-up (Lyng 2009). This specific enactment matches the behavior used in the present study quite well (e.g., ‘‘moving in an exaggeratedly feminine way,’’ ‘‘signaling to boys she was interested in them although she was not,’’ or ‘‘putting on make-up in the school lavatory’’; cf. Table 1). Importantly, the ‘‘babes’’ were also characterized by rejecting school, avoiding effort, and displaying indifference toward academic success (Lyng 2009). Therefore, enacting the characteristics of a ‘‘babe’’ instead of enacting the characteristics of a female will probably trigger teachers’ stereotypical knowledge about ‘‘babes’’ and not their stereotypes about female students in general, and this difference may account for why Hypothesis 2b was not supported by our data. When compared with 123 480 A. Heyder, U. Kessels boys enacting masculinity, however, the ‘‘babes’’ still benefitted from being female (see Fig. 1). Furthermore, our findings can be embedded into the body of research on the different fit between the male and female gender roles and the student role. Although the female gender role in general is perceived as better suited to meet academic demands than the male gender role (Burke 1989; Gold and Reis 1982; Kessels et al. 2014; Kessels and Steinmayr 2013; Mickelson 1989; Orr 2011) and the least academic engagement is ascribed to male students enacting masculinity, our findings indicate that different constructions of masculinity and femininity might vary in their compatibility with academic demands. Teachers’ unfavorable stereotype-based expectations of male and masculine students might be one possible factor contributing to the current gender gap in academic success in favor of girls (e.g., Buchmann et al. 2008). Once stereotypes are activated, they are known to influence subsequent information processing and social behavior in a stereotype-confirming manner (e.g., Hamilton et al. 1990), thereby potentially contributing to social problems that result from prejudice and discrimination in the classroom. Two longitudinal studies found that male students were confronted with more negatively biased teacher expectations than female students (de Boer et al. 2010; Hinnant et al. 2009). Although self-fulfilling prophecy effects of biased teacher expectations on students’ subsequent performance are relatively small in general, moderate to large effects have been found for expectations based on students’ membership in negatively stereotyped social groups (e.g., ethnic minorities or low-income families; e.g., Jussim and Harber 2005; Tenenbaum and Ruck 2007; cf. Glock and Krolak-Schwerdt 2014). In line with recent studies on gender stereotypes about students (Hartley and Sutton 2013; Latsch and Hannover 2014), the results of our study indicate that male students— and especially those who exhibit masculinity—might be at risk of also becoming such a negatively stereotyped group. However, the more a teacher gets to know a student in everyday school life, the more the teacher’s expectations might be based on individual characteristics, and the influence of all different social group memberships should diminish (cf. Fiske and Neuberg 1990). Our study identified a situation in which stereotypes heavily influenced subsequent person perception, namely, if the social group membership corresponding to the stereotype was enacted by the target. As fictitious vignette students were judged in our experiment, the results are limited in terms of their external validity as is common in the field of social psychology. A second limitation of our study is that our sample consisted only of teachers from German grammar schools, the highest track in the German educational system. Whether our findings are representative of other types of teachers remains an open question. It seems, however, highly plausible, as stereotypes of the troublesome male student and the diligent female student have been found in samples of several Western populations and age groups (e.g., Hartley and Sutton 2013; Jones and Myhill 2004; Latsch and Hannover 2014). 123 Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic… 481 In summary, our vignette experiment showed that students’ gender enactment triggered teachers’ stereotype-based expectations regarding academic engagement to the disadvantage of students perceived as male and masculine. As not all forms of femininity and masculinity seem to be equally (in)compatible with school, it seems fruitful for future research to investigate in greater detail the ways in which different expressions of masculinity and femininity fit with academic demands. Furthermore, it remains a task for future research to develop strategies to reduce the salience of and teachers’ reliance on a student’s group membership in the school setting in order to reduce the impact of stereotypes on the processes of first impression formation (cf. Beckett and Park 1995; Hamilton et al. 1990). The present findings highlight the importance of increasing teachers’ awareness of the fact that adolescent experimentation with different facets of gender roles does not automatically imply opposing academic demands but simply serves as a way to master the developmental task of shaping one’s gender identity. Acknowledgments The current research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) allocated to the second author (KE 1412/2-1). Appendix 1: Vignette describing a student enacting masculinity Mr. Müller is a teacher in training. Today he had his first lesson in Class 9b. After the lesson, in the staff room, he met the main teacher and the sports teacher of that class. Main teacher: Teacher trainee: Sports teacher: Main teacher: Oh. Good morning, Mr. Müller. And how did your first lesson go? Did the students behave? Well, thank you. Altogether everything went very well. I already know the students a little and they know me as well. But I do have a question: This guy called Jan, what kind of person is he? For example, today, he was sitting there the whole time in his baggy clothes and with his hood on. As I turned to the blackboard, he burped loudly so everybody laughed. Does he behave like this often? Oh, he is not only like that with you. I know him from sports lessons. Jan loves to jump from the 5-meter board when everybody is watching. What else can I tell you? If he hurts himself during sports lessons, he also likes to over-dramatize pain - but then plays it down again, as if it was nothing to him. I recently had an encounter with Jan in the school yard when I was on duty. He was sharing sex videos on his mobile with his friends. 123 482 A. Heyder, U. Kessels Appendix 2: Behaviors that impede and foster learning, selected on the basis of the results of pilot study 3 Behaviors impeding learning Spends lessons counting the minutes left till the end of class using a tally sheet Looks up the solutions at the end of the book before completing the tasks by himself/herself Does not file worksheets and loses them Never reads books Secretly reads comics under his/her school desk during lessons Does not pay attention in class Copies homework Sends text messages during lessons Spends about 6 h per day watching TV Forgets his/her school supplies at home Behaviors fostering learning Continuously works on the material taught in class Continues to work through difficult tasks that he/she does not instantly succeed in Participates in class with appropriate verbal contributions Takes good notes Asks the teacher or fellow students (for help) if there is something he/she does not yet understand Prepares himself/herself systematically for tests Asks friends or siblings to test him/her to prepare for an exam Does his/her homework on a regular basis Distributes the material to be studied for a test across several days Meets up with friends to study for school References Ambady, N., Shih, M., Kim, A., & Pittinsky, T. L. (2001). Stereotype susceptibility in children: Effects of identity activation on quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 12, 385–390. doi:10.1111/ 1467-9280.00371 Athenstaedt, U., Heinzle, C., & Lerchbaumer, G. (2008). Gender subgroup self-categorization and gender role self-concept. Sex Roles, 58, 266–278. doi:10.1007/s11199-007-9288-z Banaji, M. R., Hardin, C., & Rothman, A. J. (1993). Implicit stereotyping in person judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 272–281. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.2.272 Beckett, N. E., & Park, B. (1995). Use of category versus individuating information: Making base rates salient. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 21–31. doi:10.1177/0146167295211004 Bem, S. L. (1983). Gender Schema Theory and its implications for child development: Raising genderaschematic children in a gender-schematic society. Signs, 8, 598–616. doi:10.1086/493998 Bigler, R. S. (1995). The role of classification skill in moderating environmental influences on children’s gender stereotyping: A study of the functional use of gender in the classroom. Child Development, 66, 1072–1087. doi:10.2307/1131799 Buchmann, C., DiPrete, T. A., & McDaniel, A. (2008). Gender inequalities in education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 319–337. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134719 123
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