Under the "Cloak of Invisibility" : Gender Bias in Teaching Practices and Learning Outcomes

Abstract

This paper analyzes gender bias in teaching in low-performing schools in Chile. To carry out the analyses, the authors used videotaped classes for fourth graders and coded 237 tapings. Results show a general (although not uniform) bias in teachers' actions that resulted in less attention to female students. Gender bias had an even greater effect in classrooms where the teachers had worse interactions with students. Results show that less effective teachers (according to the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, or CLASS) show a larger gender bias. Greater gender bias is also correlated with lower scores for girls in Chile's standardized test (Sistema de Medición de la Calidad de la Educación, or SIMCE). With a few exceptions, the measures of gender bias in teacher-student interaction do not show statistically significant correlations with the test scores of boys.