Gender stereotypes and gender role self-concepts at school start as mediators of the influence of teacher's gender typing on children's reading competence and reading self-concept

• Applicant: Dr. Ilka Wolter
• Subject Area: Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 241324904

Research demonstrates that already in first grade girls have higher reading competence and correspondingly higher self concepts about their reading competence than boys. This research seeks to examine whether these differences can be explained by the degree to which a) gender related concepts of the teacher, b) learning offerings provided by the teacher, and c) the gender role self-concept of children are in accordance with gender stereotypes. Interviews, questionnaires, and performance tests will be conducted on a sample of 60 independent teacher-child dyads from English primary schools at the end of the first grade and the middle of the second grade.It is expected that a) the more gender-typed the teacher's self-description (i.e., the preponderance of feminine relative to masculine attributes), b) the more traditional her normative gender role orientation (e.g., the more she agrees that the conventional division of labour and power between the sexes is appropriate and desirable), and c) the more gender-typed the teacher's learning offerings (i.e., deviation from an equal distribution of feminine gender-typed, masculine gender-typed, and gender-neutral offerings toward a predominance of feminine gender-typed offerings), the more strongly students will be influenced by gender stereotypes. This should reflect in children a) acquiring stronger gender stereotypes about domain-specific interests and abilities (i.e., suspecting higher gender differences in interests and skills - particularly in reading) and b) describing more gender-typed gender role self-concepts (i.e., boys should describe themselves with relatively more masculine than feminine and girls with relatively more feminine than masculine attributes). This in turn should relate to more gender-typed self-concepts of own reading competence (e.g., occurrence of gender differences in self-concepts that cannot be explained by differences in actual competence) and stereotype-consistent gender differences in reading competence.In summary, the proposed research project seeks to investigate the impact of several aspects of teachers' gender-typicality on children's gender stereotypes about domain-specific interests and abilities and on their gender role self-concept and the influence of these cognitive concepts on their reading-related ability self-concepts and reading competence which will be examined in a joint mediation model. The expected findings shall help to explain early gender differences in self-concepts and competences in the domain of "reading".

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Host: Professorin Jane Oakhill, Ph.D.