About “Gender Differences In The Classroom” By Kelvin Seifert

In this response essay, I examine the article “Gender differences in the classroom” by Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton. In their manuscript, the authors discuss how students from both genders differ in their behavior in the classroom, and how gender stereotypes may be causing them to act accordingly. The writers also attempt to equalize how both genders’ actions and reactions are perceived in the classroom by teachers, and how those teachers can react to conduct in different ways based on the student’s gender.

In what follows, I discuss many instances of success in the authors’ work as well as opportunities for improvement.

The authors successfully explained how both genders differ in the ways they act in their classrooms on the social, physical and academic level. Their article is well structured and easy to follow. I also believe that their writing is accessible to students at different levels. I particularly enjoyed the last three sections where Seifert and Sutton did a good job synthesizing previous research, citing wherever appropriate.

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The last section shows sound arguments, and the table they included allowed me to better understand what they are trying to convey. In fact, I can personally relate to the claims made in that table. I do recall many instances of inconsistent responses from teachers to comparable behavior of boys and girls during my middle school and high school years.

Unfortunately, I noticed that many of the claims that were made especially in the first half of the article are not cited.

It is not clear if those reflect the writers’ personal opinion on the matters. For instance, consider the following sentences: “physically, boys tend to be more active than girls […] gross motor skills develop at almost the same average rate for boys and girls”. While these may seem like common knowledge to some, such statements should not be taken lightly in an academic setting. In addition, there was at least one instance of a vague statement. In the ninth paragraph, the authors claim that “many studies have found none at all” (referring to cognitive abilities of students from both genders). This would have been more credible if Seifert and Sutton gave specific examples: what were the studies? what were the researchers’ methods? conclusions? Moreover, many of the references for the article are at least 15 years old, with some dating back to the 1980s and 1990s. Although these may be classical studies that paved the way for modern research on the topic, I would have liked to see recent literature especially since the conversation on gender norms and equity has significantly changed in the past decade.

Even though the authors claim that there are exceptions to the statements they are making, it still seems that many of the claims in the article are enforcing gender stereotypes. While making such big statements, especially in an academic setting, it would be would have been more beneficial for authors to support their claim with relevant research literature, rather than fill their article with what may be easily interpreted as jargon (mostly referring to the first half of the article). That being said, I believe this manuscript could be a wakeup call for teachers to pay attention to the gender bias they are eliciting, directly or indirectly, in their classrooms.