Gender Stereotypes In The Drama Classroom

INTRODUCTION

As an educator who has taught in the Drama classroom in various periods, I have noticed a difference in the way male students engage with the subject compared to their female peers. It is frequently argued that boys, especially in coeducational settings, are academically underachieving and ‘left behind’ by a schooling system that has become feminised from a profusion of female teachers (West 2004; Roulston & Mills 2000). Male students are academically laggard compared to their female counterparts, spawning polarised ATAR results which have led to males only accounting for 37 per cent of university admissions (Martin 2015). The imbalance of male-to-female teachers has significantly affected the academic success of male students,

Martin (2015) supports this claim with data from the Australian Department of Education and Training shows that university admissions for men are significantly lower than that of women. The low level of academic achievement is attributed to the feminisation of schooling and the disproportionate amount of female educators to which male students struggle to identify with, resulting in subject disengagement and academic floundering (Roulston & Mills 2000). Traditionally masculine subjects such as science and maths have also seen a steadily decline in male students’ level of achievement whilst their female counterparts are showing gradual improvement over time (Sanders 2003). Sanders (2003) notes that perhaps it is not particular subjects that affect academic achievement, but the entire breadth of schooling that disappoints men. Furthermore, data collected supports the claim that male students are not failing in just feminised subjects, but across an entire range of areas (Sanders 2003). Physical Education is one of the few subject where male students typically dominate, which is due to the culture of competition it creates (Pollock 1999, p.273 as cited in Sanders 2003, p.40). Research concluded that Physical Education is one of the few subjects in which male students achieve higher across the board than other subjects as male teenagers desire competitive masculinity to create a sense of

As literature suggests, a lot of male students do not aspire to become teachers as they do not see representation of themselves in the classroom, leading them to snub academia, pushing them out of education, and to pursue trades as careers (West 2004). Additional to the prevalence of female teachers in Drama, male students view drama as a feminised subject due to female academic strength, supported by those female educators which dominate the field (Sallis 2010). Two studies (Sallis 2010; Sallis 2004) have both concluded that the lack of male representation and masculine expression during a teenager’s period of self-discovery in who they are, translates in the Drama classroom as disengagement from the feminine classroom in fear of not fulfilling masculine roles. Therefore any serious involvement in Drama is seen as feminine and female, rendering any male that does actively engage and participate as emasculate and homosexual (Sallis 2010). Regarding the research of Sallis (2004), the study was primarily focussed on how male teenagers expressed their masculinities in various manners in the performing arts context, gathered through an interview process with some observations. Contrasting to the study by Sallis (2010) on the same topic of male students in Drama, Sallis