Educational Psychology / Unit 9 EDP 0808 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Auditing Gender Patterns
The idea
Because differential interaction is a pattern across many small exchanges, teachers find it by auditing their own classrooms. The audit asks three questions. Who gets called on, and how often? Who receives extended public talk, such as follow-up questions? And what is each student praised or criticized for: knowledge and correct answers, or compliance and neatness? Tallying these for a week, by gender, makes the pattern visible and gives the teacher specific practices to change.
In practice
Worked example: a peer observer tallies one science class for a week. Boys are called on 60 times and girls 40; boys get most of the follow-up questions; girls' praise is mostly for neat work and boys' for correct answers. The teacher begins calling on students from a randomized list, asks follow-up questions of every student, and praises the reasoning in girls' answers.
Where people slip
The pattern is a trend, not a rule, and an audit tests a teacher's own class rather than assuming it. The goal is equal access to attention and to praise for knowledge, not identical treatment in every exchange.
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