|
|
Gender gap in math score: does teacher gender matter?
Scharf, Šimon ; Pertold-Gebicka, Barbara (advisor) ; Gregor, Martin (referee)
Even though quality and equal opportunities are regarded as generally desir- able in education, major differences in the study outcomes of girls and boys still exist. In this thesis, we try to assess the effect of a teacher's gender on the educational outcomes of pupils. Specifically, we use TIMSS data from 36 coun- tries to evaluate this effect on 4th grade students. To our knowledge, we are the first to utilize the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) approach to overcome the selection bias in this context. The results of the pooled analysis suggest that there is no significant effect of teachers' gender on girls but we observe a negative effect for boys. When considering each country separately, only in 4 countries do we find a significant effect of teacher's gender on students' test scores for boys. Of the 4 countries, only boys in Montenegro prosper with a same-sex teacher, while in 3 countries boys' achievement is hampered by a same-sex teacher. For girls, we find a robust positive effect in 4 countries and a negative effect in 3 countries. For both boys and girls, we find no significant robust effect of having a same-sex teacher in the majority of countries. Our findings contribute to the literature on the effects of teachers' gender, as well as, to the broader discussion of differences in the...
|
guest ::
