Teacher interaction with individual male and female pupils in junior‐age classrooms

Summary A number of educational researches have shown that in mixed‐sex classrooms boys take more part in discussion and receive more attention from the teacher than girls in the same class, although the extent of this male predominance varies considerably in different studies. The present study, based on systematic observation in 34 second‐year junior classrooms, finds that boys receive a higher average level of individual attention from their teachers but that the difference between boys and girls is much less dramatic than is sometimes claimed. Further analysis shows that the higher average figure does not result from a uniform pattern in which most boys receive more attention than most girls, but from the fact that a higher proportion of boys have learning and behaviour difficulties together with a small number of other boys receiving very high levels of teacher attention. It is suggested that the imbalance in the amount of teacher interaction with boys and girls should be seen as a problem of classroom management rather than of sexist bias.