Primary EducationAre UK primary schools in need of more male teachers?

• Are children’s results effected by the male teacher shortage?

• Whether or not school environments are too feminised and if the stereotype of it being a woman’s job puts men off?

• Are the behaviour and attitude of the children influenced by the gender of the teacher?

By Joseph King

I aimed to find out more about peoples opinions as there are many different opinions to explore and to gain a better knowledge on the topic.

I began researching by using google but found that there wasn’t much of a variety to the sources I found and that most sources were newspaper articles and had to search deeper for different types.

I found that boys results can in fact be influenced by the gender of the teacher but girls achieve better. The lack in male teachers seems to influence boys on their interests in education and makes them less interested.

I also found that school environments aren’t too feminised and does not put men off. As male teachers have spoke out about this on an education website called schoolsworld.tv and they say that it doesn’t put them off whatsoever and rather enjoy working with female teachers.

Explaining My Project

Finally I discovered that behaviour and attitudes in boys can be influenced by the gender of the teacher as when boys from a local primary school were interviewed by The Guardian newspaper they all agreed that they behave and work better with a man teacher.

My conclusion to the project was that yes, primary schools are in need of more male teachers. But more importantly there needs to be an equal balance of both male and female teachers in schools for everyone to achieve. The out come is as expected as I already had a background knowledge on the subject before and had read about it in newspapers. I would also say that my project does what I set out to do as I wanted to expand my knowledge on the subject and explore it more and this was achieved.

My learning experiencePositives:

• I managed to find a variety of sources relevant to my study.

• I handed in my literature review on the deadline with the correct amount of words.

• I gained more experience in independent learning.

Negatives:

• I didn’t manage to stick to my deadlines.

• My management of my extended project log was bad as I didn’t fill it out every lesson.

• My main discussion was slightly rushed and could have been improved.

Advice to future students:

Don’t underestimate the project as the deadlines come around thick and fast.

Also start the literature review and main analysis as soon as possible as they both have high word counts and take a while to do.

Keep on top of your extended project log as it’s a pain when trying to recall what you did in lesson a month ago.

Any Questions?