My attempt to write more and to keep in touch with friends and family.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Recent Thought
Women are high school teachers. Men are college professors. Discuss.
5 comments:
Anonymous
said...
This is old thinking, though I'd be the last to say that college's have caught up. Bureaucracies are the hardest to change especially when women are less than 30% of the staff, especially at upper levels. Not fair to be sure.
My high school had a good mix of female and male teachers, pretty evenly balanced, even within subject areas.
What I was more surprised about was when I got to college and learned that many of my classmates had teachers in high school with PhDs. Out of my high school teachers, I think two of them were going for PhDs but the rest had bachelors or masters. None of them actually had a PhD when I was their student.
I would suggest that women are more commonly elementary school and early childhood teachers, but less imbalanced at the high school level.
I would believe that there's probably a progressive shift of the male\female teacher ratio and you migrate across the continuum of early childhood to college level educators. Probably biased toward an opposite gender on each end of the spectrum.
Is some of it explained by a gender based bias toward nurturing vs academic exploration?
You know well how imbalanced our high school experience was, though there did seem to be a bit of a gender split based on the course type (more male teachers in science and math, fewer in history, languages, and English).
What always surprised me was the contradiction between the people practicing in my fields of studdy (like special education, early childhood education, speech/ language pathology - all of which are primarily women) and the professors (which are closer to a 50/50 split). So why is it that men seem more likely to go on to get their PhD's (and also go on to be professors) as compared to women?
In my doctoral program, the current students come closer to the ratio of M:F among practitioners, but I still think men are more highly represented. I do wonder, though, how many of the women getting their doctorate in my field right now will go on to be professors and/or researchers (myself included). Hmmm.... - the sisterly one
I'm an assistant professor in the physical sciences. I like to experiment in the kitchen as well as the lab. I'm a runner. I'm eco-conscious. I'm going to try to keep this blog anonymous.
5 comments:
This is old thinking, though I'd be the last to say that college's have caught up. Bureaucracies are the hardest to change especially when women are less than 30% of the staff, especially at upper levels. Not fair to be sure.
How does this perception impact students?
My high school had a good mix of female and male teachers, pretty evenly balanced, even within subject areas.
What I was more surprised about was when I got to college and learned that many of my classmates had teachers in high school with PhDs. Out of my high school teachers, I think two of them were going for PhDs but the rest had bachelors or masters. None of them actually had a PhD when I was their student.
I would suggest that women are more commonly elementary school and early childhood teachers, but less imbalanced at the high school level.
I would believe that there's probably a progressive shift of the male\female teacher ratio and you migrate across the continuum of early childhood to college level educators. Probably biased toward an opposite gender on each end of the spectrum.
Is some of it explained by a gender based bias toward nurturing vs academic exploration?
You know well how imbalanced our high school experience was, though there did seem to be a bit of a gender split based on the course type (more male teachers in science and math, fewer in history, languages, and English).
What always surprised me was the contradiction between the people practicing in my fields of studdy (like special education, early childhood education, speech/ language pathology - all of which are primarily women) and the professors (which are closer to a 50/50 split). So why is it that men seem more likely to go on to get their PhD's (and also go on to be professors) as compared to women?
In my doctoral program, the current students come closer to the ratio of M:F among practitioners, but I still think men are more highly represented. I do wonder, though, how many of the women getting their doctorate in my field right now will go on to be professors and/or researchers (myself included). Hmmm....
- the sisterly one
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