Are Hong Kong's youngest students receiving the best possible preparation for the future? Research on gender and learning reveals that discrimination begins early. Yet, relatively little has been done to address gender inequality in our schools. In 2001, the High Court ruled in a landmark case that the government's gender quotas in co-educational secondary schools were unlawful according to the Sex Discrimination Ordinance. A decade later, we are still struggling to eradicate the pernicious effects of sexism in the classroom.
Gender stereotypes continue to manifest themselves in more subtle but no less harmful ways.
In research conducted in several Chinese-language kindergartens here, we observed interactions between teachers and pupils, and among the four-year-old children themselves. The good news is that we saw plenty of positive interaction between teachers and children, which bodes well for engaged learning.
However, we did not expect to find such significant differences in teachers' behaviour towards boys and girls. Teachers interacted almost twice as much with boys than they did with girls, although more of the teacher interactions with girls were positive. Boys, in contrast, experienced more negative interactions since they tended to act up or challenge the teacher more frequently than girls. The girls' more compliant behaviour may have led to them receiving less attention from the teacher.
These findings underscore the importance of thinking creatively and critically about pedagogy that engages 'restless learners' of both genders and that rewards thoughtful, respectful participation rather than just compliance.
Moreover, teachers are still too reliant on gender labels - using the terms 'boys' and 'girls' almost 60 times within a three-hour session. A playful context of competition was often used to motivate the children to segregate themselves by gender quickly. While gender segregation is appropriate during toilet time, should it have occurred in other teaching and learning activities like music or computer sessions?