Bias or Responsivity? Sex and Achievement-Level Effects on Teachers' Classroom Questioning Practices

The authors examined rates of both teacher responsiveness and student participation in the classroom question-asking context. Participants were 165 students and their teachers in 6 science classrooms. Teachers in 3 of the 6 classrooms called on male students to answer questions more often than would have been expected on the basis of the number of boys in the classroom. In none of the classrooms, however, did teachers call on boys more often than would be expected on the basis of the heightened volunteering rates of their male students. No systematic sex or achievement-level differences were found in the types of questions that students responded to. These findings suggest the need to focus on the role that both teachers and their students play in creating and maintaining sex differences in the teacher-student interaction context.