The gendered environment of female, early career teachers in Icelandic compulsory schools

Abstract

The study focuses on how four female, early career teachers in Icelandic compulsory schools fared during their first years and how and to what extent their experience related to gender issues. These teachers were each interviewed three or four times: in autumn 2021, spring 2022, autumn 2022, and spring 2023. Altogether there were 14 interviews because in the last round, two of the interviewees did not participate. The participants were 27–32 years old when the study commenced, and they had none to three years of experience at that time. They taught at the youngest levels of the compulsory schools, that is, grades 1–7 (6–12 years old students). Two research questions are posed. How does a gendered and feminised working environment manifest to the female, early career teachers? And what is supportive and what is challenging in their work?

Two main types of research literature formed the base for the study: feminist research about female and male teachers; and research about issues that appeared in the data, that is, team work and teaching assistants. We relied on two key concepts from the feminist literature: gendered work, and feminisation of teaching. In the latter case, we focused on the numbers of the genders in the schools’ personnel but also on the cultural issues, that is, the claim that school culture is more geared to women teachers than men and that the pedagogy is better suited to girls than boys. Moreau (2019) and Skelton (2012) criticise the latter view. The literature has also revealed different expectations of male and female teachers: women tend to be expected to show care and male teachers to perform disciplinary actions (e.g., Hjalmarsson & Löfdahl, 2014).

The analysis was data-driven, focusing on capturing the gendered processes and the professional characteristics of the working environment. Three themes were reported: gender issues and views; team work and team teaching; and cooperation with teaching assistants.

Very few male teachers worked in the schools in question, from 5–20%, according to the websites of the schools, and most of them did not teach in grades 1–7 where our interviewees taught. This meant that the majority of the males working with them were teaching assistants (Icelandic: stuðningsfulltrúar). While the interviewees found the work of the teaching assistants important, with the above working conditions in mind, we were told anecdotes about the work of some male assistants that portrayed stereotypical gendered carelessness on their behalf. Such findings support the thesis that there may be differences in the expectations of female and male teachers as well as teaching assistants. In fact, one of the larger challenges was working with non-professional support staff, mostly teaching assistants of different ages, and the gendered practices and behaviours of these individuals. They either ‘followed’ one particular student, or they were working with the whole class under the supervision of the teachers. The number of the teaching assistants tended to vary during the research time, both because the need was defined as greater or lesser, or a substitute teaching assistant was not hired when another one was absent. The teaching assistants tended not have time for preparation with the teachers because they were to do other tasks immediately after the children’s school day was over.

When the research period ended, our interviewees had taught for between two to five years, they had become active in forming the working conditions, and some of them were now among the most experienced teachers teaching that age group. The ideal arrangement, however, would be that a newly qualified teacher would be one of two or three teachers in a team, and formal mentoring would be a part of the team’s function. Our findings also suggest that there is a rather urgent need to reconsider the work of support staff, including teaching assistants, not least so they can have more preparation time with the teachers, and thus become more active participants with the teachers.