School education | Research: Male teachers helped schoolchildren achieve better results

School children benefited from the male quota used in teacher training in Finland, thanks to which there were more men as teachers in primary schools.

Thanks to male teachers, the students got into post-primary school studies more smoothly. In addition, as young adults they had higher education and were better employed.

Male teachers also seemed to influence interests.

Their students – both boys and girls – were more likely to study mathematics, technology and natural sciences, i.e. the so-called stem fields.

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When the quota was abolished, the share of graduating male teachers was halved.

This everything was solved by an assistant professor at Tufts University in the United States and a visiting researcher at Aalto University Ursina Schaeden and a researcher at the University of Turku Ville Mankin in the study. It has not yet been peer reviewed.

They investigated the effects of the male quota used in teacher education before 1989 and its abolition on students.

The quota meant that a lot of men who would not have been able to get into class teacher training simply because they lost their studies. This led to the fact that approximately 40 percent of the graduating classroom teachers were men.

When the quota was abolished, the proportion of graduating male teachers halved to 20 percent. The share of men in school teaching staff began to decrease as teachers retired and were replaced by graduates after the abolition of the quota.

Situation gave Schaede and Manki the opportunity to examine how the change in the gender distribution of school teachers was reflected in students' performance. The students were followed until they were 25 years old, and the last data are from 2018.

Pupils' progress in education and working life suffered somewhat when men as teachers became less common. The men who graduated as teachers through the quota seem to have been an advantage for the students.

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“Maybe they were role models for all the students in that they were more interested in math and science.”

One the explanation for the finding could be that the quota male teachers act as role models for the boys, in which case they would study more enthusiastically.

But this explanation does not work because both boys and girls benefited from male teachers in exactly the same way.

“These male teachers are good teachers, and it's not that they serve as role models just because of their biological sex,” says Schaede.

Schaede thinks that the teacher can act as a role model in situations where minorities are concerned.

For example has been observed in Francethat high school female teachers in mathematics and natural sciences have encouraged a minority of girls to apply for studies in these fields.

“If I feel like I'm a minority, it's important to have a role model. But in Finnish schools, boys are not a minority. Therefore, gender is not such an important factor in this case.”

However Schaede thinks that Finnish male teachers might act as role models in another way.

“Maybe they were role models for all the students in that they were more interested in math and science.”

The interest is indicated by the fact that male teachers had written more often than female teachers in the matriculation exam.

Strong internal motivation may also explain men's success in teaching, Schaede's analysis found.

He didn't ask the teachers about their motivation, but he had a way to measure it indirectly by finding out how much teachers are willing to give up to get a job as a teacher.

Schede found out which other professions they want to apply for as teachers if they don't get into teacher training.

For women, the second option was often the education of a kindergarten teacher or nurse, while for men the professions of technology and natural sciences and law or economics.

Men's second options would have been clearly better paid than women's. Men also earned much less as a teacher than, for example, as an engineer.

“Men aspiring to become classroom teachers are not only applying to a field that is considered a women's field. They are also willing to accept a lower salary compared to what they could get in other professions,” explains Schaede.

In research it also turned out that the grades the teachers got in the matriculation exam had no connection to how well or poorly their students did.

So a good teacher didn't have to be a particularly good student himself. Similar results have been obtained from other countries.

Since men have lower grades on average than women, according to Schaede, this can also explain the success of quota male teachers in their work.

“Perhaps a person who understands the difficulty associated with studying is better able to put himself in the position of the students in class. However, this is only speculation.”

The important message of the study, according to Schaede, is that quotas do not necessarily mean sacrificing quality, as is often claimed. In some cases, a quota can improve results.

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