"Gender Achievement Gaps Among Chinese Middle School Students and the Role of Teachers’ Gender"

Assistant Professor Di Xu and PhD student Qiujie Li have published in Economics of Education Review: "Gender Achievement Gaps Among Chinese Middle School Students  and the Role of Teachers’ Gender." 

Abstract

This study extends the current literature on student-teacher gender match that mainly focuses on academic achievement outcomes by further including direct measures of students’ perception of a subject as well as classroom interactions with the subject teacher. The study was conducted within an experimental condition where junior high students in China are randomly assigned to teachers. The study used data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), a recent and large-scale nationally representative survey of junior high students in China.

In documenting gender-differences in academic performance, self-perceived ability and perceptions of different subjects in China, the researchers found substantial gender academic achievement gaps in favor of girls in all of the three main subject areas, although the sizes of the gaps are substantially smaller in math than in literacy. Results suggest that teacher gender has little impact on boys. In contrast, having a female teacher noticeably improves girls’ self-reported student-teacher interactions, self-perceived ability, and academic performance, although the effect is only robust and persists over time in the subject of math.