Der Einfluss von Schüler- und Lehrergeschlecht auf die Benotung in der Sekundarstufe II Marburger Medizinstudenten in den Jahren 2007–2013

Boys are the losers of today’s educational system. Being female is a prognostic factor for more success in school. Gender research is challenged to find ex-planations for the shift in the educational chances for boys and girls within 1-2 generations. Sex specific strengths and weaknesses can be observed in dif-ferent areas: Boys have greatest deficits in reading skills whereas girls’ great-est handicap is a lack of motivation in mathematics and science. The ‘poor boys’ discourse suggests a disadvantage for boys regardless of their ability to perform. Recently, female teachers often were considered as major causes for the lower school performance of boys. This dissertation examined how the sex of teachers and of students in interaction predicts school grades. The goal of the study was finding out whether there is discrimination by male or female teachers when grading male vs. female students. In contrast to most previous studies the data were collected at the end of high school in a retrospective sur-vey of medical students. This subject group mostly had grades well above av-erage, otherwise they would not have made it into Medical School. In the years 2007 to 2013 an anonymous survey examined 2614 medical students in their first preclinical year at Marburg University. They were asked to give the grades in their last year in high school plus the sex of the last teacher they had in the respective field. Additionally, standard demographic and social variables and some attitude items were documented. Sex specific differences in grades were found in almost all fields of study (languages, math, science etc.), mostly in favor of girls. Teacher’s sex had only little effect on a student’s grade. In partic-ular, there were only few hints for interactive effects. Instead, in most fields of study students benefited from female teachers, who tend to grade more favora-bly, in some field significantly better than their male colleagues. There is just as little evidence for the discrimination of boys by female teachers as for a dispro-portionate preference of girls. The student’s sex and the fact that a field is cho-sen as advanced level field as an indicator of the individual’s talents are more relevant than the teacher’s sex. Clearly, grading is too complex to be predicted using just a few objective variables. Still, this dissertation provides important results as to which potential reasons are more important and which ones are insignificant.