Teachers' Attitude and Gender Habitus in the Classroom

“The study of the thinking processes of teachers – how teachers gather, organize, interpret, and evaluate information – is expected to lead to understandings of the uniquely human processes that guide and determine teacher behavior” (Clark/Yinger 1977: 279). Teachers thinking and behavior determine the agenda setting at school, the educational goals and contents as well as non-verbal attitudes and modes of interaction that are taught in the classroom. As teachers do not only convey knowledge but also cultural and societal attitudes (Lloyd Yero 2002: 29), teachers attitudes towards gender issues are highly important for the shaping of pluralistic and democratic ideas on gender in the classroom. Therefore, gender knowledge and gender competence are core issues in teacher’s training. But: Attitudes and beliefs influence teaching and learning consciously and unconsciously. If school is a “gender factory” (Schwartze 2016: 232), what should teacher’s training look like in order to meet the requirements for an advanced contemporary gender education? In our paper, two questions are addressed: 1. What attitudes do teachers have to gender issues? 2. What are the potential effects of teachers thinking and behavior on the promotion of gender policies? Our paper discusses the findings of an empirical study based on a new survey of teacher-trainees in Germany, which was conducted in November 2016 at the University of Giessen. From a methodological point of view, we will problematize the difficulties in measuring conscious and unconscious attitudes.