Motivating boys and motivating girls: Does teacher gender really make a difference?

Abstract

We explore the impact of student gender, teacher gender, and their interaction on academic motivation and engagement for 964 junior and middle high school students. According to the gender-stereotypic model, boys fare better academically in classes taught by males and girls fare better in classes taught by females. The gender-invariant model suggests that the academic motivation and engagement of boys and girls is the same for men and women teachers. We also examine the relative contribution of student-, class-, and school-level factors, finding that most variation was at the individual student level. Of the statistically significant main effects for gender, most favoured girls. In support of the gender-invariant model, academic motivation and engagement does not significantly vary as a function of their teacher's gender, and in terms of academic motivation and engagement, boys do not fare any better with male teachers than female teachers.