When the context withholds girls from gender a‐typical conduct: Schools' gender role culture and disruptive school behaviour of boys and girls

Abstract

On average, boys display more disruptive school behaviour than girls. This study looks at this behaviour in the first place as gendered behaviour, investigating whether boys' and girls' disruptive behaviour is associated with their schools' student and teacher gender role culture. Multilevel analyses (HLM7) of representative Flemish data of 2706 male and 2436 female 8th grade students in resp. 57 and 49 secondary schools, and 1247 teachers gathered at the end of school‐year 2013/14, revealed that a more traditional student gender role culture is associated with less disruptive school behaviour in girls. As for boys, the positive association between traditional student gender role culture and disruptive school behaviour disappears when accounting for their individual gender role attitudes, which are significantly more traditional than those of girls. More traditional gender role attitudes coincide with more disruptive behaviour in boys and girls. Moreover, boys displaying less disruptive behaviour report a higher felt pressure for gender conformity. No impact is found of the homogeneity of teachers' gender role attitudes. The findings demonstrate that disruptive school behaviour can be looked at as gendered behaviour and can be tackled, at least partly, by discouraging gender stereotypical beliefs in students.