Studies indicate that girls and boys often receive quite different treatment in the classroom, a process that strongly influences gender-role socialization. Among the findings of these studies are that teachers call on and encourage boys more than girls; that teachers are more likely to tolerate inappropriate behavior of boys than girls; and that boys are more likely than girls to receive attention, remedial help, and praise from their teachers (Duffy et al., 2001; Eccles et al., 1999; Keller, 2002).
School textbooks and children’s books have also perpetuated gender-role stereotypes. In the early 1970s, two major studies of children’s textbooks found that girls were typically portrayed as dependent, unambitious, and not very successful or clever, whereas boys were shown to have just the opposite characteristics (Saario et al., 1973; Women on Words and Images, 1972). In the early 1980s, men played the dominant roles in about two out of every three stories in American reading texts—an improvement from four out of every five stories in the early 1970s (Britton & Lumpkin, 1984). A recent review of children’s books also demonstrated a male bias and a message that women and girls are less important than men and boys (McCabe et al., 2011).
Fortunately, schools in the United States are now acting to reduce classroom perpetuation of stereotypical gender roles (Meyerhoff, 2004). An influx of younger teachers who are products of a more gender-aware generation has aided in this gradual transformation of classroom environments. One of the most striking examples of this change has been a concerted effort by American schools to ensure equal educational opportunities for both sexes in math and science and to create educational environments in which girls as well as boys are encouraged to participate in these subjects. However, like the culture they represent, textbooks and children’s books are still not completely free of stereotyped gender roles.
A recent review of illustrations in award-winning children’s books in the period 1990-2009 found that "larger proportions of female characters in the books used household artifacts, whereas larger proportions of male characters used production artifacts outside the home" (Crabb & Marciano, 2011, p. 390).