Soc Psychol Educ (2015) 18:467485

DOI 10.1007/s11218-015-9303-0

Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower

academic engagement? How students gender
enactment triggers gender stereotypes at school

Anke Heyder1 Ursula Kessels1

Received: 27 September 2014 / Accepted: 25 April 2015 / Published online: 27 May 2015
 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract Girls presently outperform boys in overall academic success. Corre-

sponding gender stereotypes portray male students as lazy and troublesome and
female students as diligent and compliant. The present study investigated whether
these stereotypes impact teachers perceptions of students and whether students
visible enactment of their gender at school (behaving in a very masculine or fem-
inine way) increases the impact of these stereotypes on teachers perceptions of
students. We hypothesized that teachers would ascribe more behavior that impedes
learning and less behavior that fosters learning to male students who enact mas-
culinity as compared with male students who show gender-neutral behavior and
female students. Three pilot studies (N = 104; N = 82; N = 86) yielded pretested
material for a randomized vignette study of N = 104 teachers. The teachers read
one randomly assigned vignette describing a male (or female) student enacting his
(or her) gender (or not) and rated how likely this student would be to display
behaviors that impede or foster learning in a 2 (between: target students gen-
der) 9 2 (between: gender enactment [yes/no]) 9 2 (between: teachers gen-
der) 9 2 (within: ascribed behavior) factorial design. As expected, male students
enacting masculinity were rated as showing the lowest amount of academic en-
gagement. Results are discussed with regard to the current debate on the causes of
boys lower academic success.

Keywords Gender stereotypes
Masculinity
Gender differences in academic

achievement
Teachers expectations
Academic engagement

& Anke Heyder

anke.heyder@fu-berlin.de
1
Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universitat Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45,
14195 Berlin, Germany

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468 A. Heyder, U. Kessels

1 Introduction

In many industrialized Western countries, male students lag behind female students
on important indicators of academic success (Buchmann et al. 2008). They earn
lower grades (for an international meta-analysis cf. Voyer and Voyer 2014), receive
fewer degrees, are more often held back a grade, and more often drop out of school
than female students, as reports and studies from countries such as the U.S. (e.g.,
NCES 2009) or Germany (e.g., Hannover and Kessels 2011) show. Similarly in
England, female students outperform male students at GCSE and are more likely to
be entered for A-Levels than male students (e.g., Department of Education and
Skills 2007). These gender differences in academic attainment have recently
provoked a stereotypical depiction in the media of male students as unsuccessful
and troublesome and female students as successful and compliant (Latsch and
Hannover 2014).
When activated, stereotypes are known to influence subsequent information
processing and behavior. In the present study, we wanted to test whether students
enactment of their gender would trigger stereotypes about male and female students
in teachers. Gender enactment refers to the display of behaviors that are strongly
stereotyped as being very masculine or feminine such that the person displaying
them can be easily identified as a male or a female person in social interactions (cf.
Goffman 1976). As school is not only a place where students can study but also a
space in which they can develop an overall identity, gender enactment can be
understood as a strategy for mastering the developmental task of negotiating a
(gender) identity (Kessels et al. 2014; Renninger 2009; cf. Havighurst 1961).
However, with a focus on teachers, this gender enactment may have unintended
side effects: We argue that students gender enactment triggers gender stereotypes
in teachers when they judge their students learning. More precisely, we
hypothesized that boys enactment of masculinity would trigger teachers stereo-
types of troublesome boys in school, resulting in more negative expectations for the
learning behavior of boys who enact their masculinity in contrast to both boys who
show gender-neutral behavior and girls.

1.1 Stereotypes of female and male students

Stereotypes of female and male students exist with regard to their domain-specific
abilities (e.g., males are thought to be better at math; e.g., Steffens and Jelenec
2011) as well as with regard to their behavior in school in general (e.g., females are
perceived as more diligent than males; e.g., Krahe et al. 2007). Boys current overall
lower rate of educational success, however, has shifted both the public debate and
the focus of research from the former to the latter. Recent studies have revealed that
primary school children as well as adolescents believe that girls are academically
superior to boys and display better conduct and more traits and behaviors that are
beneficial for learning (Hartley and Sutton 2013; Latsch and Hannover 2014). In
addition, male college students characterized the stereotypical feminine way of
studying as (unnecessary and inefficient) hard work, diligence, and effort, whereas

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 469

they described themselves as lazy (but clever; e.g., Jackson and Dempster 2009).
The stereotypes of the hard-working girl and lazy boy are also reflected in findings
on students and parents attributions of success. Irrespective of academic domain,
girls think of effort as more important for academic success than boys do (e.g.,
Lightbody et al. 1996; Mok et al. 2011), and parents attribute girls success to effort
more often than boys (e.g., Raty et al. 2002).
However, only one study so far has dealt with teachers stereotypes of female
and male students behavior in school in general (Jones and Myhill 2004):
Interviews revealed that teachers also tend to see girls as compliant and boys as
rather troublesome. Importantly, stereotypical gender differences were more often
reported with respect to behavior than ability (e.g., girls were thought of as neat and
as more likely to do homework, whereas boys were perceived as disruptive and
immature). Whether male and female teachers differed with regard to their
stereotypes about male and female students was not the focus of the Jones and
Myhill (2004) study. However, a possible influence of teachers gender on boys
lower academic success has been discussed and studied in other research (e.g.,
Neugebauer et al. 2011).
As proposed by Campbells (1967) grain of truth hypothesis, the described
gender stereotypes regarding students behavior seem in part to reflect actual gender
differences in traits and behavior: Male students score higher on items such as being
lazy or untidy, which are also included in scales measuring masculinity, and female
students score higher on items such as being diligent, and such items are used to
represent femininity (Krahe et al. 2007). In addition, female students have been
found to score higher on agreeableness and on some facets of conscientiousness,
such as dutifulness and self-discipline (e.g., Costa et al. 2001; De Fruyt et al. 2008),
and have reported greater academic engagement, such as spending more time and
effort on homework than males (e.g., Lam et al. 2012; Trautwein et al. 2006). Male
students, on the contrary, misbehave in class more often than female students, fail to
complete assignments, and seldom try to do their best work (NCES 2002; for an
overview, see Kessels and Steinmayr 2013).
Taken together, students of different age groups as well as teachers hold gender
stereotypes representing typically male and typically female student behavior in
school, and these stereotypes seem to reflect actual gender differences in student
behavior to some degree. Stereotypical female students are thought to show
behavior that fosters learning, such as being adjusted, diligent, and hardworking
along with conforming to academic demands, whereas stereotypical male students
are thought of as lazy and as showing disruptive or inappropriate behavior in class,
all of which impede learning. Gender stereotypes are much more pronounced for
student behavior (e.g., being lazy or industrious) than for general ability (e.g., one
gender being more intelligent than the other; Jones and Myhill 2004), and studies
with a focus on teachers gender stereotypes are scarce.

1.2 The salience of gender triggers stereotypes of male and female students

Students, like all people, are members of various social categories that are
characterized by attributes such as age, gender, ethnicity, or nationality. Depending

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on the context, different categories are more (or less) salient and influence
information processing and behavior in social interactions at school to different
degrees. In the following sections, we will summarize findings on how increases in
the salience of the social category gender impact students and teachers gender
stereotypes at school.

1.2.1 Impact on students gender stereotypes

The impact of increases in the salience of gender on students has been studied
within various theoretical paradigms, for example, gender schema theory (e.g., Bem
1983; Martin and Halverson 1981) or social-cognitive models of the self, such as the
dynamic self-concept (e.g., Hannover 1997; Linville and Carlston 1994; Markus and
Wurf 1987) or the stereotype threat paradigm (e.g., Steele and Aronson 1995).
Gender schema theory posits that even young children hold gender schemas about
males and females, and when these schemas are activated, they lead to increased
gender stereotyping (e.g., Bem 1983; Martin and Halverson 1981). Enhancing the
salience of gender in the environment is one way to trigger students gender
stereotypes. In the school setting, experimental studies have revealed that if teachers
make gender salient in the classroom (e.g., by using gender-specific language and
gender-based forms of class organization), their students gender stereotypes
increase compared with the gender stereotypes of students whose teachers do not
enhance the salience of gender (Bigler 1995; Hilliard and Liben 2010). Similarly,
research on the dynamic self-concept has pointed to the fact that a persons self-
concept varies according to which part of his or her self-knowledge is activated
(e.g., Hannover 1997; Markus and Wurf 1987). Against this background, it has been
found that reducing the salience of gender in class (in this case, via single-sex
classes over a longer period of time) makes students gender-related self-knowledge
less accessible, which in turn results in less gender-stereotypical self-descriptions
(Kessels and Hannover 2008). In addition, it has been found that subtly priming the
category gender, e.g., by asking students to indicate their gender or to answer
questions related to their gender, causes students to behave and perform in a
stereotype-confirming manner (e.g., Ambady et al. 2001; Shih et al. 1999; Spencer
et al. 1999; cf. Steele and Aronson 1995).

1.2.2 Impact on teachers gender stereotypes

Whereas many studies have explored the impact of increases in gender salience on
students in school, the impact on teachers has not yet been studied. Studies on
priming and category-based impression formation in adults in general, however,
support the assumption that increasing the salience of gender in school will
influence not only the students themselves but also teachers perceptions and
judgments of their students in stereotypical ways. Priming studies have shown that
the high accessibility of a social category influences perception and judgment (e.g.,
Banaji et al. 1993; Beckett and Park 1995). For example, watching mixed sets of
pictures showing men and women has been found to activate the category gender
and to facilitate the retrieval of gender stereotypical knowledge (Macrae and

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 471

Cloutier 2009). Banaji et al. (1993) demonstrated in a vignette experiment that

increasing the accessibility of gender stereotypes influences judgment of people.
After unscrambling sentences describing typically feminine, dependent behavior,
participants rated a female target as more dependent than a male target even though
both target persons had been described as behaving in exactly the same way.
Conversely, after unscrambling sentences unrelated to gender, male and female
targets were rated equally (Banaji et al. 1993).
Taken together, a large amount of research has been conducted on the conditions
that lead to an increase in students and adults gender stereotypes. However, no
studies have examined the factors that trigger teachers stereotypes of male and
female students or the effect of triggering such stereotypes on teachers perceptions
of students.

1.3 Will students gender enactment at school increase teachers gender

stereotypes?

In the classroom, gender stereotypes may be activated not only by features of the
context such as increases in the salience of gender (e.g., Hilliard and Liben 2010)
but also when the students themselves deliberately enact their gender. Gender
enactment, or gender display, refers to the conventionalized portrayal of what is
culturally established as gender (Goffman 1976, p. 1). It involves the display of
behaviors that are strongly stereotyped as being very masculine or feminine and it
helps people to negotiate their (gender) identity in social interactions (e.g., Deaux
and Major 1987). By enacting their gender in school, students can make use of
school not only as a place in which they can study and acquire knowledge, but also
as a space and stage for mastering the developmental task of negotiating a (gender)
identity (Kessels et al. 2014; Renninger 2009; cf. Havighurst 1961). Girls and boys,
for example, may enact their gender by wearing strongly gender-typical clothes and
hairstyles and displaying strongly gender-typical behavior in order to exaggerate
their physical differences and to assure that they are easily identifiable as a male or a
female person in social interactions (cf. Hilliard and Liben 2010).
Such gender enactment processes are also highly plausible in school because not
only do the diverging physical appearances of males and females in adolescence
increase the accessibility of gender-related self-knowledge in general (Finkenauer
et al. 2002), but being perceived as a typical boy or girl is socially rewarded:
Students gender-typicality has been found to be associated with higher social
acceptance, popularity among peers, and self-worth (e.g., Egan and Perry 2001;
Jewell and Brown 2014; Yunger et al. 2004). If students gender-typicality is called
into question (e.g., by receiving feedback that a student is succeeding in a domain
stereotyped as inappropriate for his or her gender), they subsequently enact their
own gender (Kessels et al. 2008).
Whereas students seem to benefit from gender enactment in terms of identity
formation, popularity, and self-worth, the effects of gender enactment on teachers
perceptions and judgments of students have not yet been studied. According to the
reasoning behind the continuum model of impression formation (Fiske and Neuberg
1990), students gender enactment should increase the impact of gender stereotypes

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on teachers perceptions of students compared with students gender-neutral

behavior. Precisely, the model states that immediately upon encountering enough
information to cue a social group membership (e.g., student labeled as male) in a
social interaction, perceivers categorize the target person as belonging to a social
group (e.g., male students), and stereotypical knowledge about the social group
becomes accessible. If the target person is of at least minimal relevance or interest,
the perceiver will then shift attention toward the targets attributes to judge the
targets typicality with regard to the initial categorization (Fiske and Neuberg 1990).
The more the targets attributes fit the initial category, the more category-based
impression formation processes will occur (Fiske and Neuberg 1990). With regard
to gender enactment in school, this implies that the more a male student enacts
masculinity, thereby increasing his visible fit with the male category, the more
teachers will rely on stereotypes about male students to form an impression of the
student (see also Hamilton et al. 1990). The same is to be expected for female
students enacting femininity. Taken together, we argue that students gender
enactment should increase the impact of teachers stereotypes of male and female
students (Jones and Myhill 2004) on teachers perceptions and judgments of
individual students.

1.4 Study overview and hypotheses

We applied an experimental vignette study to test whether students gender

enactment would trigger teachers gender stereotypes. We argue that teachers
perceptions and expectations of students will be more strongly influenced by gender
stereotypes if the student enacts his or her gender than if the student shows gender-
neutral behavior. As gender stereotypes are more pronounced for behavior in school
than for general ability (e.g., Jones and Myhill 2004), we focused on the stereotypes
of the diligent, hardworking female student and the lazy and disruptive male
student. In line with these stereotypes, we hypothesized that teachers would ascribe
more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a
student labeled male than to a student labeled female when both are described as
displaying exactly the same gender-neutral behavior (Hypothesis 1). In addition, we
expected students attempts to enhance their visibility as members of the male or
female group to increase teachers gender-stereotypical expectations. More
precisely, we hypothesized that teachers would ascribe more behavior that impedes
learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a male student who enacts his
masculinity than to a male student who displays gender-neutral behavior
(Hypothesis 2a) and less behavior that impedes learning and more behavior that
fosters learning to a female student who enacts femininity than to a female student
who shows gender-neutral behavior (Hypothesis 2b). Regarding the ongoing
discussion about the influences of teachers gender on gender differences in various
academic outcomes, we additionally explored whether students gender enactment
would have different effects on male and female teachers.

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 473

2 Method

In order to construct the material for the experimental vignette study, we conducted
three pilot studies using different samples of teacher training students from one
large university in Western Germany. Two pilot studies were used to develop and
pretest the stimulus material (behavior enacting masculinity, behavior enacting
femininity, gender-neutral behavior) and one pilot study to develop the dependent
variables of the study (behavior fostering learning, behavior impeding learning).

2.1 Pilot studies for generating the stimulus material

The stimulus material was developed and pretested in two pilot studies. To create an
item pool of behaviors, the authors generated items describing a broad range of
behaviors that could theoretically be used by adolescents to enact gender. Behaviors
assumed to be gender-neutral were added to that pool, resulting in 98 different types
of behaviors. Only behaviors without any direct logical connection to learning or
academic achievement were considered in order to ensure that the behavior items
themselves did not convey any stereotypical content regarding boys or girls
learning behavior.
In the first pilot study, 104 teacher training students (83 female, 20 male, one
with no gender identification, age M = 24.09, SD = 3.93, number of semesters
studied M = 5.34, SD = 2.27) were asked to evaluate the degree to which these
behaviors reflected adolescents gender enactment. For each item, the participants
were told to imagine a 15-year-old student performing the described behavior and to
rate the behavior on a bipolar 7-point scale (1 = behavior boys use to enact their
masculinity, 7 = behavior girls use to enact their femininity).
The purpose of the second pilot study was to rule out any differences in social
desirability between the enactment of masculinity, the enactment of femininity, and
the behaviors that were considered to be gender-neutral, irrespective of whether a
boy or a girl showed it. Thereby, we aimed to prevent the results of our main study
from being distorted by confounding variables such as the behaviors social
desirability. For each behavior, teacher training students were instructed to imagine
a 15-year-old student performing the described behavior and to rate, on a 7-point-
scale, the behaviors degree of social desirability from an adults perspective
(1 = very socially desirable, 7 = not at all socially desirable). In order to obtain
gender-neutral behaviors that were equally socially desirable when displayed by
boys or girls, two versions of the questionnaire were used and were randomly
distributed to the participants. In Version 1, participants had to imagine a boy
performing the masculine and the neutral types of behavior and a girl performing
the feminine types of behavior. In Version 2, participants had to imagine a girl
performing the feminine and the neutral types of behavior and a boy performing the
masculine types of behavior. Version 1 was filled out by 42 teacher training students
(29 female, 12 male, one missing gender, age M = 24.03, SD = 2.72, number of
semesters studied M = 4.63, SD = 2.03), Version 2 by 40 teacher training students

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474 A. Heyder, U. Kessels

(31 female, seven male, two who did not indicate gender, age M = 24.29,
SD = 4.47, number of semesters studied M = 4.89, SD = 1.64).
The behavior items used in the vignettes were selected according to four criteria
established in order to achieve a maximum degree of comparability between the
enactments of masculinity, femininity, and gender-neutral behaviors and to control a
priori for relevant and probably confounding variables. The four criteria were:
(a) Items were unambiguously classified as suitable for gender enactment in Study 1
(on a scale from 1 = behavior boys use to enact their masculinity to 7 = behavior
girls use to enact their femininity, items with a mean score \2.5 were regarded as
behavior seen as suitable for enacting masculinity, items with a mean score between
3.25 and 4.75 as gender-neutral behavior, items with a mean score[5.5 as suitable for
enacting femininity). (b) Items were rated by male and female raters equally (no
gender differences in ratings). (c) Gender-neutral items were selected only when their
social desirability ratings did not differ whether displayed by a boy or a girl (results
from Pilot Study 2, comparison between Versions 1 and 2). (d) The final items
representing the enactments of femininity, masculinity, and gender-neutral behavior
were selected only if they were perceived as equally socially (un-)desirable.
Criteria 1 and 2 were met by 24 behavior items for enacting femininity and 13
behavior items for enacting masculinity; Criteria 1, 2, and 3 by 14 gender-neutral
behavior items. The results of Pilot Study 2, however, revealed that on average, the
femininity enactment items were rated as more socially desirable than both the
masculinity enactment items, t(81) = 12.11, p \ 0.001, and the gender-neutral
behavior items, t(81) = 19.76, p \ 0.001 (femininity M = 4.39, SD = 0.60,
masculinity M = 5.10, SD = 0.45, gender-neutral M = 5.63, SD = 0.38). In order
to control for differences in social desirability (fourth criterion), we had to select
femininity enactment items that were rated as relatively socially undesirable
compared with other possible behavior used to enact femininity. Finally, five
masculinity enactment items, five femininity enactment items, and five items
representing gender-neutral behavior were selected, all of which had been rated as
statistically equally socially (un)desirable (masculinity M = 5.27, SD = 0.51,
femininity M = 5.17, SD = 0.78, gender-neutral M = 5.33, SD = 0.63, all
ts(81) B 1.81, all ps C 0.075). The selected items are presented in Table 1. To
be used in the main study, the selected items were inserted into a vignette template
that consisted of a conversation between three teachers in the staff room about a
student. Thereby, we constructed four different vignettes: One description of a male
student enacting masculinity, one description of a female student enacting
femininity, one description of a male student showing gender-neutral behavior,
and one description of a female student showing the identical gender-neutral
behavior. For an example of a complete vignette, see Appendix 1.

2.2 Pilot study for generating the dependent variables

A third pilot study was conducted to pretest the dependent variables used in the
main study (behaviors impeding or fostering learning). A pool of 61 items capturing
possible student behaviors was generated by the authors. A total of 86 teacher
training students (66 female, 18 male, two who did not indicate gender, age

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 475

Table 1 Behaviors selected on the basis of the pilot studies for characterizing the four students repre-
sented in the vignettes
Male student Female student

Gender enactment behaviors
Gender-neutral behaviors
(identical for male and female
students)
Burping loudly
Jumping from the 5-meter board
when many people are
watching
Wearing baggy clothes and a
hood
Sharing sex videos from his
mobile
First over-dramatizing pain and
then playing it down
Refusing to do the boring part of
group work
Tilting his chair
Not lending a pen when asked to
Never letting anybody copy from
his work
Tattling on classmates to the
teacher
Showing fear and disgust when
confronted with insects
Moving in an exaggeratedly
feminine way
Having extravagantly manicured
nails
Signaling to boys she was
interested in them although she
was not
Putting on make-up in the school
lavatory
Refusing to do the boring part of
group work
Tilting her chair
Not lending a pen when asked to
Never letting anybody copy from
her work
Tattling on classmates to the
teacher

M = 23.96, SD = 2.8, number of semesters studied M = 5.74, SD = 2.55) were

instructed to imagine a 15-year-old student performing the behavior presented by
each item and to rate each item on a 7-point scale with regard to the behaviors
effect on academic learning (1 = fosters learning, 7 = impedes learning). Criteria
for selection were, first, unambiguous classification as either fostering learning (i.e.,
a mean score \2.5) or impeding learning (i.e., a mean score [5.5); second, items
rated equally by female and male raters (fostering learning: all ts B |1.55|, all
ps C 0.126; impeding learning: all ts B |1.92|, all ps C 0.058); and, third, no
overlapping content. The resulting two scales consisted of 10 behaviors that foster
learning (M = 1.66, SD = 0.37; e.g., does his/her homework on a regular basis,
meets up with friends to study for school) and 10 that impede it (M = 6.08,
SD = 0.58, e.g., does not pay attention in class, does not file worksheets and
loses them) and showed good reliability when used in the main study (impeding
learning a = 0.84, fostering learning a = 0.81). The full scales are presented in
Appendix 2.

2.3 Main study

2.3.1 Participants

The participants were 104 teachers from two German grammar schools (56 female,
48 male). The proportion of women was slightly lower (53.8 % women) than

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reported in national statistics for this type of school (55 % women; Statistisches
Bundesamt 2011). Their mean age was M = 39.4 years (SD = 11.37), and their
mean professional experience was M = 10.88 years (SD = 11.32).

2.3.2 Experimental treatment

The participating teachers randomly received one of the four vignettes that
described either a male student enacting masculinity, a female student enacting
femininity, a male student showing gender-neutral behavior, or a female student
showing gender-neutral behavior. In order to control for biasing stereotypes elicited
merely by particular names, the students were called Jan (male) or Katrin
(female), names that have been rated as moderately and, more importantly, equally
attractive and intelligent in Germany (Rudolph et al. 2007). The distribution of the
four vignettes was counterbalanced for male and female participants (1315 female
teachers per vignette, 1113 male teachers per vignette).
After reading the vignette, participants rated on a 5-point-scale (1 = very
unlikely, 5 = very likely) how likely the target student would be to display each of
the 10 behaviors that foster learning and the 10 behaviors that impede learning, all
items displayed in alphabetical order. As distractors, five items measuring
gregariousness (NEO-PI-R; Ostendorf and Angleitner 2004) were intermixed.
Demographics were assessed afterwards. For each participant, we calculated one
mean score for the behaviors fostering learning and one mean score for the
behaviors impeding it. These mean scores represented the two levels of the within-
subjects factor ascribed behavior in the following analyses.

3 Results

Means and standard deviations of the behaviors ascribed to the four students
described in the vignettes are depicted in Table 2. In order to test our hypotheses,
we conducted a 2 (students gender: female, male) 9 2 (teachers gender: female,
male) 9 2 (gender enactment: yes, no) 9 2 (ascribed behavior: impeding learning,

Table 2 Ascription of behavior that fosters or impedes learning to the four vignette students
Male student Female student

Enacting Gender-neutral Enacting Gender-neutral

masculinity M M (SD) femininity M M (SD)
(SD) (SD)

Ascription of behavior 2.39 (0.51) 2.77 (0.49) 2.98 (0.37) 3.22 (0.55)
fostering learning
Ascription of behavior 3.36 (0.46) 2.83 (0.47) 2.86 (0.32) 2.44 (0.66)
impeding learning

N = 104 teachers. The scale ranged from 1 = very unlikely to 5 = very likely

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 477

fostering learning) MANOVA with the first three factors as between-subjects factors
and the ascribed behavior as a within-subjects factor. We included teachers gender
as a factor in our analyses to provide an exploratory test for gender-differentiated
teacher responses, although no explicit hypotheses regarding teachers gender were
stated. Two statistically significant interaction effects were found. First, an
interaction between students gender and the ascribed behavior emerged, F(1,
96) = 33.84, p \ 0.001, Wilks k = 0.74, partial g2 = 0.26. It indicated that,
irrespective of whether or not the students in the vignettes enacted their gender,
teachers ascribed more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters
learning to male students (behavior impeding learning M = 3.09, SD = 0.53,
behavior fostering learning M = 2.58, SD = 0.53) than to female students
(behavior impeding learning M = 2.66, SD = 0.55, behavior fostering learning
M = 3.09, SD = 0.48). Even if the male and the female students were characterized
by exactly the same gender-neutral behavior, the student labeled male was
perceived as less likely to show behavior that was beneficial for learning and more
likely to show behavior that would impede learning than the student labeled female
(see Fig. 1). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported by our data.
Second, an interaction between gender enactment and the ascribed behavior was
found, F(1, 96) = 22.29, p \ 0.001, Wilks k = 0.81, partial g2 = 0.19. In support
of Hypothesis 2a, the results indicated that teachers ascribed more behavior that
impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to the male student enacting
his masculinity (behavior impeding learning M = 3.36, SD = 0.46, behavior
fostering learning M = 2.39, SD = 0.51) than to the male student displaying
gender-neutral behavior (behavior impeding learning M = 2.83, SD = 0.47,
behavior fostering learning M = 2.77, SD = 0.49, see Fig. 1). However, contrary
to our expectations, a similar pattern at the expense of students who enacted their
gender emerged for the vignettes about female students: Teachers also ascribed
more behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a
female student enacting her femininity (behavior impeding learning M = 2.86,
SD = 0.32, behavior fostering learning M = 2.98, SD = 0.37) than to a female

Fig. 1 Mean ratings of how likely the four target students would be to display behavior that impedes or
fosters learning (1 = very unlikely, 5 = very likely)

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478 A. Heyder, U. Kessels

student showing gender-neutral behavior (behavior impeding learning M = 2.44,

SD = 0.66, behavior fostering learning M = 3.22, SD = 0.55). Thus, our findings
did not support Hypothesis 2b. No statistically significant main effect or further
interaction effect was found. This indicated that teachers gender had no effect on
their judgments of students.
Taken together, our results indicate that in line with the stereotype of lazy and
troublesome boys, teachers expected male students to show less behavior that
fosters learning and more behavior that impedes learning than female students.
Enacting masculinity resulted in even more negative and stronger stereotype-based
expectations for male students. Though gender enactment lowered teachers
expectations for both genders, the male student enacting masculinity was judged
least favorably with regard to his assumed learning behavior.

4 Discussion

The focus of this study was on the effect of gender enactment on teachers gender
stereotypes. As expected in Hypothesis 1, teachers ascribed more behavior that
impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a student labeled male
than to a student labeled female when both were described as displaying exactly the
same gender-neutral behavior, thus reflecting the stereotype of the diligent female
student and the lazy and troublesome male student. Even more negative
expectations regarding learning behavior were ascribed by teachers to those boys
who enacted their masculinity as compared with boys who showed gender-neutral
behavior, corroborating Hypothesis 2a. Contrary to our expectations, a similar
pattern emerged when teachers judged female students: Teachers ascribed more
behavior that impedes learning and less behavior that fosters learning to a female
student enacting her gender than to a female student showing gender-neutral
behavior (rejection of Hypothesis 2b). Female and male teachers did not differ in
their responses.
Our vignette study complements prior research on academic gender stereotypes
in the classroom in two different ways: First, we demonstrated that mere
descriptions of students gender and behavior (unrelated to learning) evoke
gender-stereotypical judgments about their learning behavior, thus extending the
methods used in experimental priming tasks (e.g., Ambady et al. 2001) or in
changing environmental qualities (e.g., Hilliard and Liben 2010). Second, whereas
previous research had focused on the effects of gender salience and stereotype
activation on male and female students (e.g., Ambady et al. 2001; Hilliard and
Liben 2010), the current study tested the effects on the perceiversin this case,
teachersjudgments. As predicted by the continuum model of impression
formation (Fiske and Neuberg 1990) and previous studies on the effects of gender
labeling (e.g., Condry and Condry 1976), the mere labeling of a student as male or
female cued the students social gender group membership and led to stereotype-
based expectations of male and female students in our study. Even when all other
characteristics except students gender were held constant, the student labeled male
was expected to show less adaptive learning behavior than his female counterpart.

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 479

This finding is in line with recent studies on childrens, students, and teachers
academic gender stereotypes (e.g., Hartley and Sutton 2013; Jones and Myhill 2004;
Latsch and Hannover 2014) as well as with gender differences in self-reported
academic engagement and behavior in school in favor of girls (e.g., Lam et al. 2012;
NCES 2002; Trautwein et al. 2006). The lack of effect of teachers gender in our
study implies that male and female teachers do not differ in their student gender
stereotypes or in their expectations of students learning behavior. It indirectly
supports previous studies that have reported that there is no same-gender teacher
advantage in school (e.g., Neugebauer et al. 2011).
In addition, our study showed that students attempts to enact gender have an
effect on teachers perceptions, namely, an increase in teachers gender-stereotype-
based expectations. Although students may benefit from gender enactment in terms
of social acceptance, adjustment, and identity development (e.g., Egan and Perry
2001; Jewell and Brown 2014), our results show a detrimental effect on teachers
expectations: if the male student enacted his membership of the social group males,
teachers relied more on the stereotype of the lazy and troublesome male students to
form their impression of the student (cf. Hamilton et al. 1990; Fiske and Neuberg
1990).
Enacting femininity, however, also had detrimental rather than beneficial
consequences for teachers expectations of the female students, even though
stereotypes of female students as diligent and compliant have been found in
previous studies (e.g., Hartley and Sutton 2013; Latsch and Hannover 2014). This
unexpected finding might be traced back to the methodological characteristics of our
study. In Pilot Study 2, we found that, overall, the items rated as suitable for
enacting femininity were perceived as more socially desirable than both the items
for enacting masculinity and the gender-neutral behavior items. In order to control
for this a priori difference in social desirability in the main study, the items we
selected for the enactment of femininity were perceived as rather socially
undesirable compared with other items that also represented the enactment of
femininity. Because of this, the feminine items used in our vignettes might not have
represented the enactment of belonging to the group of females as a whole but rather
to a specific subgroup of females who display more socially undesirable behavior
than the average female student (for an overview on subgroup stereotypes of male
and female adults, cf. Athenstaedt et al. 2008; Eckes 1994). In a Norwegian
ethnographic study that identified different subgroups of male and female students,
there was one group of females (the babes) who enacted their femininity through
dating, interest in boys, clothing, and make-up (Lyng 2009). This specific enactment
matches the behavior used in the present study quite well (e.g., moving in an
exaggeratedly feminine way, signaling to boys she was interested in them
although she was not, or putting on make-up in the school lavatory; cf. Table 1).
Importantly, the babes were also characterized by rejecting school, avoiding
effort, and displaying indifference toward academic success (Lyng 2009). There-
fore, enacting the characteristics of a babe instead of enacting the characteristics
of a female will probably trigger teachers stereotypical knowledge about babes
and not their stereotypes about female students in general, and this difference may
account for why Hypothesis 2b was not supported by our data. When compared with

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boys enacting masculinity, however, the babes still benefitted from being female
(see Fig. 1).
Furthermore, our findings can be embedded into the body of research on the
different fit between the male and female gender roles and the student role.
Although the female gender role in general is perceived as better suited to
meet academic demands than the male gender role (Burke 1989; Gold and
Reis 1982; Kessels et al. 2014; Kessels and Steinmayr 2013; Mickelson 1989;
Orr 2011) and the least academic engagement is ascribed to male students
enacting masculinity, our findings indicate that different constructions of
masculinity and femininity might vary in their compatibility with academic
demands.
Teachers unfavorable stereotype-based expectations of male and masculine
students might be one possible factor contributing to the current gender gap in
academic success in favor of girls (e.g., Buchmann et al. 2008). Once stereotypes
are activated, they are known to influence subsequent information processing and
social behavior in a stereotype-confirming manner (e.g., Hamilton et al. 1990),
thereby potentially contributing to social problems that result from prejudice and
discrimination in the classroom. Two longitudinal studies found that male students
were confronted with more negatively biased teacher expectations than female
students (de Boer et al. 2010; Hinnant et al. 2009). Although self-fulfilling prophecy
effects of biased teacher expectations on students subsequent performance are
relatively small in general, moderate to large effects have been found for
expectations based on students membership in negatively stereotyped social
groups (e.g., ethnic minorities or low-income families; e.g., Jussim and Harber
2005; Tenenbaum and Ruck 2007; cf. Glock and Krolak-Schwerdt 2014). In line
with recent studies on gender stereotypes about students (Hartley and Sutton 2013;
Latsch and Hannover 2014), the results of our study indicate that male students
and especially those who exhibit masculinitymight be at risk of also becoming
such a negatively stereotyped group. However, the more a teacher gets to know a
student in everyday school life, the more the teachers expectations might be based
on individual characteristics, and the influence of all different social group
memberships should diminish (cf. Fiske and Neuberg 1990). Our study identified a
situation in which stereotypes heavily influenced subsequent person perception,
namely, if the social group membership corresponding to the stereotype was enacted
by the target.
As fictitious vignette students were judged in our experiment, the results are
limited in terms of their external validity as is common in the field of social
psychology. A second limitation of our study is that our sample consisted only of
teachers from German grammar schools, the highest track in the German
educational system. Whether our findings are representative of other types of
teachers remains an open question. It seems, however, highly plausible, as
stereotypes of the troublesome male student and the diligent female student have
been found in samples of several Western populations and age groups (e.g., Hartley
and Sutton 2013; Jones and Myhill 2004; Latsch and Hannover 2014).

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Do teachers equate male and masculine with lower academic 481

In summary, our vignette experiment showed that students gender enactment

triggered teachers stereotype-based expectations regarding academic engagement
to the disadvantage of students perceived as male and masculine. As not all forms of
femininity and masculinity seem to be equally (in)compatible with school, it seems
fruitful for future research to investigate in greater detail the ways in which different
expressions of masculinity and femininity fit with academic demands. Furthermore,
it remains a task for future research to develop strategies to reduce the salience of
and teachers reliance on a students group membership in the school setting in
order to reduce the impact of stereotypes on the processes of first impression
formation (cf. Beckett and Park 1995; Hamilton et al. 1990). The present findings
highlight the importance of increasing teachers awareness of the fact that
adolescent experimentation with different facets of gender roles does not
automatically imply opposing academic demands but simply serves as a way to
master the developmental task of shaping ones gender identity.

Acknowledgments The current research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsge-
meinschaft (DFG) allocated to the second author (KE 1412/2-1).

Appendix 1: Vignette describing a student enacting masculinity

Mr. Muller is a teacher in training. Today he had his first lesson in Class 9b. After
the lesson, in the staff room, he met the main teacher and the sports teacher of that
class.
Main teacher: Oh. Good morning, Mr. Muller. And how did your first lesson
go? Did the students behave?
Teacher trainee: Well, thank you. Altogether everything went very well. I
already know the students a little and they know me as well.
But I do have a question: This guy called Jan, what kind of
person is he? For example, today, he was sitting there the whole
time in his baggy clothes and with his hood on. As I turned to
the blackboard, he burped loudly so everybody laughed. Does
he behave like this often?
Sports teacher: Oh, he is not only like that with you. I know him from sports
lessons. Jan loves to jump from the 5-meter board when
everybody is watching. What else can I tell you? If he hurts
himself during sports lessons, he also likes to over-dramatize
pain - but then plays it down again, as if it was nothing to
him.
Main teacher: I recently had an encounter with Jan in the school yard when I
was on duty. He was sharing sex videos on his mobile with his
friends.

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482 A. Heyder, U. Kessels

Appendix 2: Behaviors that impede and foster learning, selected

on the basis of the results of pilot study 3

Behaviors impeding Spends lessons counting the minutes left till the end of class using a tally sheet
learning Looks up the solutions at the end of the book before completing the tasks by
himself/herself
Does not file worksheets and loses them
Never reads books
Secretly reads comics under his/her school desk during lessons
Does not pay attention in class
Copies homework
Sends text messages during lessons
Spends about 6 h per day watching TV
Forgets his/her school supplies at home
Behaviors fostering Continuously works on the material taught in class
learning Continues to work through difficult tasks that he/she does not instantly succeed
in
Participates in class with appropriate verbal contributions
Takes good notes
Asks the teacher or fellow students (for help) if there is something he/she does
not yet understand
Prepares himself/herself systematically for tests
Asks friends or siblings to test him/her to prepare for an exam
Does his/her homework on a regular basis
Distributes the material to be studied for a test across several days
Meets up with friends to study for school

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Anke Heyder is a research associate at the Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany. Her research interests
include the role of stereotypes, students motivation and students self-concept in explaining individual
and gender-related differences in academic achievement.

Ursula Kessels received her doctoral degree in psychology in 2001. She is now a professor at the Freie
Universitat Berlin and holds the chair of Educational Research/Heterogeneity. Her research interests
focus on the interplay of adolescents (gender related) self-concept and their academic engagement.

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