Who Make Effective Teachers, Men or Women? An Indian Perspective

The article aims to discuss the effectiveness of male and female teachers in relation to demographic factors like marital status, training, location and medium of instruction. These issues have important implications to understand and evaluate teachers’ effectiveness especially in view of the changing sex ratio of school teachers. Correlation, t-test, and ANOVA were employed on a sample of 482 teachers comprising 245 males and 237 females. Overall, male and female teachers exhibited insignificantly different effectiveness however variations were noticed with respect to different demographic factors. The paper concludes by arguing that since the quality of education being delivered, generally, has been considered as a function of teachers’ degree of effectiveness, there is a need for both substantive and methodological focus on gender specific responsibilities and requirements, in order to take out maximum from male and female teachers to produce high degree of effectiveness in their profession.