Associate of the Human Development Lab Featured in Chilean Newspaper La Tercera for Research on Gender Gaps in Education

Associate of the Human Development Lab Featured in Chilean Newspaper “La Tercera” for Research on Gender Gaps in Education

Dr. Andrés Barrios Fernández, academic and director of the Human Development Lab, recognized for his work in the economics of education, was interviewed by “La Tercera” due to his study on understanding the gender gap between men and women, which begins to manifest at the school level.

Situation in Chile

In Chile, primary and secondary education lasts for 12 years and is offered through three types of institutions: public, subsidized, and private schools. Although only 7% of students attend private schools, which tend to achieve better results in tests like SIMCE and university admissions, a gender gap is observed in all three types of institutions. According to the study, eliminating differences in teacher effectiveness would reduce the gender gap in test scores by 67% (in mathematics).

The Study

The study titled “Teacher Added Value and Gender Gaps in Educational Outcomes,” conducted by Andrés Barrios Fernández, director of the Human Development Lab at the Universidad de los Andes, and Marc Riudavets-Barcons, researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland, identified how this gap operates through a specific analysis of the behavior of mathematics teachers in the classroom.

The decision to focus on the classroom stems from the importance of teachers’ roles in students’ education. Recent research has shown that some teachers have attributes that differentially influence male and female students, suggesting that these effects could help explain the observed disparities in educational outcomes between the sexes.

The study yielded several significant conclusions. In an interview with the media, Barrios-Fernández highlighted the following:

• On average, teachers are not equally effective for male and female students.
• These differences in teacher effectiveness explain a significant part of the gender gaps observed in mathematics scores.
• No practices or characteristics of teachers completely explain these differences in effectiveness. However, female teachers are more effective than male teachers at teaching female students.
• It was also concluded that there are some biases against women among teachers, although they do not fully explain the differences in effectiveness. When these biases are smaller, the differences in effectiveness also decrease.
• Finally, it was discovered that teachers who pay more attention to students with difficulties, who recognize and praise their students’ improvements, are more effective for both males and females.
• Additionally, the study notes that differences in effectiveness between male and female teachers are due to a series of factors and that, sometimes, the biases teachers have towards women are largely inconsistent.
  

More details

The full article can be found in the following link and the published research article can be downloaded directly from the journal.

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