GROUP AND GENDER IN JAPANESE AND AMERICAN ELEMENTARY CLASSROOMS

Teachers' individualism versus collectivism and androgenous versus gender-differentiated handling of boys and girls were compared in 10 Japanese and 9 American fifth-grade classrooms. Results showed that, as predicted, Japanese teachers attended significantly more often to groups rather than individual children, even controlling for their tendency to use whole group modes of instruction. Regarding gender differences, teachers in both countries paid more attention, especially negative attention, to boys. However, observations of children indicated that this difference could not be attributed to boys' being off-task or to bad behavior by a subset of low achieving boys. American boys and girls' behaviors did not differ significantly; Japanese boys were significantly more off-task than girls, but the gap was slight in comparison to the gender difference in attention paid by teachers. There were no consistent effects of teachers' gender on either teacher communication or children's behavior. © 1991, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.