Gender and teacher-student classroom interaction : An ethnographic study in a secondary school in Greece

Abstract

This study explores classroom teacher-student interaction in a secondary, urban, working-class school in Greece and throws light on the connections between teachers' behaviour and their ideas about gender.

It is a qualitative ethnographic study. For the collection of data the following methods were used: oral history interviews, classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and documents. Five teachers participated in this study, four female and only one male. They taught different subjects: modern Greek, physics religious education, English and mathematics. They were all observed teaching one group (B3) which consisted of eleven students, eleven female and eleven male.

Although the sample was small and there were many variations, the findings of this study suggest that overall teachers behaved differently towards girls and boys. Teachers' general lack of awareness or low level of awareness of gender as an organising and categorising factor in students' behaviour and generally in schooling as well as the teachers' tacit assumptions about gender influenced the way that teachers related to girls and boys in the classroom.

Other issues such as a lack of teachers' training on equal opportunities, the low status of the school, and the principal's lack of involvement in the promotion of gender equality in the school might have had an impact on teacher-student interaction.

Further research on these issues and on a wider scale is advocated.

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