Student perceptions on gender differences of ELT teachers

Abstract

The effect of teacher gender on students of different gender is often shrugged off, as a lot of teachers themselves are not aware of gender biases and stereotyping in particular when these issues may not have been addressed effectively in their training programs, as not much research has been done on this particular aspect in recent years. Hence, it is an area that needs to be addressed in a more vigorous style particularly in the language learning arena, in order to explore and overcome any shortcomings that may exist with regard to gender differences. The purpose of this research is to identify the effects of teacher gender on students in terms of their perceptions as learners and thus cater to the following research question. Which teacher gender is preferred over the other by students among their language teachers and why? In order to do this, qualitative research design has been incorporated and data collected over a period of 2 months were analyzed and triangulated to accumulate the results which indicated that with regard to content delivery, female teachers topped off while male teachers flourished being spontaneous and more approachable in class. Furthermore, it was also found that both male and female students preferred male language teachers over female teachers due to the fact that they were perceived to be more “friendly” towards their students.