Gender and Perception: Part 1

In September 2011, I was teaching a grade 8 Math class, one of the first of many such classes, starting out in a new teaching position, when a curious thing happened. I made a sexist remark. I didn’t mean to, it just slipped out, and at the time I thought little of it. To engage the boys in the class, I read out a word problem that involved playing hockey, and I said, “Here’s a question for the boys in the class”.
Realizing my mistake, I blurted out something about girls also playing hockey and moved on, thinking I had covered myself. However, after class a girl named Jazminne, or Jazzy for short, stuck around to introduce herself. She told me that she had problems in Math and wanted to know what she could do to stay on top of everything, and then she dropped a bomb. Without a pause she said, “Oh, by the way, I didn’t like how you said that the hockey question was just for the guys”.
I was amazed at the composure of this Grade 8 girl telling her new teacher that he is sexist. I felt about ten inches tall at that moment, but I told her that I was sorry, and that I wouldn’t do that again, and I haven’t since. However, that brief moment stuck with me. What do students actually take away from their Math classes? What are we teaching, and, more importantly, what are our students learning?
The issue of gender bias was again brought to my attention through an assigned article critique. Karen Zittleman and David Sadker’s “Gender bias in teacher education texts: New (and Old) lessons reported a staggering gender bias toward males in teacher education texts; “Although most texts include some coverage of gender issues and the role and contribution of women, that coverage is minimal and not always positive” (Zittleman and Sadker, 178). Zittleman and Sadker’s article, was eye opening, but it did not address what goes on in an actual classroom, and it did not deal with any Canadian texts.
I thought that in Canada, known for its progressivism, would have a much more balanced gender approach. This is not, however, what I actually found. Although much has been done in Canada since the issue was first addressed in the 1970s, government lead policy has stalled (Coulter, 1996). In fact, I preformed a journal sweep of the Canadian Journal of Education for the past ten years and found very little on feminist issues, and even less on gender bias. Even more interesting than the absence of research in Canada, is that what little that is done is largely structural, proceeding with a linear, categorical, and regimented approach. The research is still being carried out in the same way it has for the past thirty years, and demonstrating the same results. I wanted to find a new approach; I wanted to know what, if any, were the students’ perceptions of gender bias in Mathematics. Has anyone done a study asking what the students are learning about bias in Canadian classrooms?