The purpose of this study was to evaluate the gender stereotypes endorsed by elementary and high school students regarding mathematics and language. We developed a questionnaire allowing students to rate mathematics and language as either male or female domains and administered it to a sample of 984 elementary and high school French-speaking Canadian students (Grades 6, 8, and 10). Results showed that, with the exception of Grade 6 boys, students did not believe that mathematics was a male domain, or even conceived of mathematics as a predominantly female domain, suggesting that the traditional stereotype favouring boys in mathematics might have changed over the past few years. Moreover, language was clearly viewed as a female domain. Overall, our findings suggest that boys seem to be in need of encouragement in school, especially regarding language, where the advantage given to girls is particularly salient.
While some teachers experience burnout or literally quit the profession considering their challenging working conditions, others take stress as a challenge and try to improve professionally, a dynamic that could be termed resilience. Literature point out that professional competences are an important personal protective factor enhancing teacher resilience. It also appears that teacher reflection is fairly significant in professional development process. This doctoral study sought to explore the relationship between teachers' resilience and reflection on practice. Twenty-three teachers from seven underprivileged schools participated in this mixed method study. They were invited to complete a quality of work life questionnaire and a daily stress diary, and to participate in a semi-structured interview. The analysis has highlighted four resilience profiles among these teachers: 1) very resilient, 2) resilient, 3) somewhat resilient, and 4) non-resilient. Vertical analysis of four representative cases according to their reflection has shown that low resilience seemed to be related to an increased emphasis on the problems instead of the solutions, and on the environmental instead of the personal reflective contents, and inversely. Despite its limits, this study reveals evidence of empirical relationships between teacher resilience and reflection, and highlights avenues for professional development, and ideas for future research.
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