Jag kollar den där gratisläroboken i Educational psychology och tycker om den resonerande tonen i avsnitt som jag inser är politiskt svårhanterliga. Gender differences in the classroom (s. 70) är ett minfält och författaren försöker verkligen gardera sig mot anklagelser om generalisering och kategorisering.

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Gender differences also occur in the realm of classroom behavior. Teachers tend to praise girls for “good”behavior, regardless of its relevance to content or to the lesson at hand, and tend to criticize boys for “bad” orinappropriate behavior (Golombok & Fivush, 1994). This difference can also be stated in terms of what teachersoverlook: with girls, they tend to overlook behavior that is not appropriate, but with boys they tend to overlookbehavior that is appropriate. The net result in this case is to make girls’ seem more good than they may really be,and also to make their “goodness” seem more important than their academic competence. By the same token, theteacher’s patterns of response imply that boys are more “bad” than they may really be.

At first glance, the gender differences in interaction can seem discouraging and critical of teachers because they imply that teachers as a group are biased about gender. But this conclusion is too simplistic for a couple of reasons.One is that like all differences between groups, interaction patterns are trends, and as such they hide a lot ofvariation within them. The other is that the trends suggest what often tends in fact to happen, not what can in facthappen if a teacher consciously sets about to avoid interaction patterns like the ones I have described. Fortunatelyfor us all, teaching does not need to be unthinking; we have choices that we can make, even during a busy class.

Vi har val att göra – även i besvärliga klasser.