Building gender fairness in schools

Description

Developed by the Illinois Building Fairness Resource Center under the direction of Beverly A. Stitt, this book addresses these omissions in teacher education textbooks. Each of the units has been field tested with pre-service and in-service teachers and together will help educators—those preparing to be teachers and those already teaching—to identify gender bias and eliminate it from their classrooms.The book helps educators to assess their own levels of gender bias and to determine the effects of such bias on students and society, also providing activities to retrain for its elimination. The contents are divided into two sections—readings and units of instruction. Each of the eleven units addresses a competency to be mastered. Although these units follow a logical sequence, each is sufficiently self-contained to permit selective use within an existing course. Research indicates that gender bias in classroom interaction inhibits student achievement. It also indicates that training to eliminate gender bias results in overall better teaching—equity in teaching seems to promote excellence as well.