Topic

Gender, gender stereotypes and perceptions in the classroom and in our school community

Questions (from my proposal)

This remains a running list

• Are gender stereotypes in our classrooms reflective of those that we see regularly in our world today?
• Do gender stereotypes affect how we perceive our teachers and administrators?
  • Do said perceptions affect how we learn and behave in a classroom, and how our school community interacts?
• Do gender stereotypes and their effect on our perceptions of teachers change as we age?
• How do gender stereotypes affect student-teacher, teacher-teacher, student-administration, and teacher-administration relationships?
• Does the gender of the student and the teacher affect the relationship or the that the student and the teacher have? The age? Is the student’s performance affected? The teacher’s behavior, the students behavior?
• What are the expectations we have for the performance of girls and boys in the classroom?

--> Do gender stereotypes of our day and age affect how we learn in the classroom, interact in the school community, and primarily, how we see our teachers and administrators?

Thesis/Hypothesis (from my proposal) (also constantly changing)

My hypothesis is, that yes, gender stereotypes do affect our perceptions of our teachers, how we learn, and how we establish community at our school.

The Other Question: Why?

Why am I pursuing this research?

I am not doing this research to prove that everyone is blatantly sexist, or that the students, teachers, or administrators at this school are sexist, or that this school is bad or anything like that. I am also not here to point fingers at any individuals or to make people feel bad. This project is not a personal attack by me from the school. (In fact, I am most likely part of the problem when it comes to the way we treat our administrators. More on that later). I am conducting this research to shed some light on the way we interact in this community. I hope that my research can be an eyeopener and something that can help and unite our community, not divide it. I think we need to open up the conversation around gender, not only in political spheres but in our community as well. Of course, what I do in this semester will definitely not change anything to the extent that things need to change, but maybe I will be able to change at least one person's mind on why this society needs feminism, or at least needs to start talking about feminism.

Here are some links that have helped me decide on this project and have inspired its reasoning:

Brangham, William, and Daniel Bush. "Does Gender Bias Explain Why Hillary Clinton Has

Fared So Poorly With White Male Voters?" PBS. PBS, 28 July 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.

<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/hillary-clinton-poorly-white-male-voters/>.

Pious, S. "Frequently Asked Questions: Ambivalent Sexism." Understanding Prejudice. Social

Psychology Network, n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2016. <http://www.understandingprejudice.org/asi/faq>.

Chapman, Amanda. "Gender Bias in Education." Critical Multicultural Pavilion. EdChange, n.d.

Web. 02 Dec. 2016. <http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/genderbias.html>.

Martin, A., and H. Marsh. "Motivating Boys and Motivating Girls: Does Teacher Gender Really

Make a Difference?" Australian Journal of Education 49.3 (2005): 320-34. Web. 9 Jan.

2017. <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000494410504900308>.