Correct Answer - Option 3 : Both (1) and (2)
Gender is a social construct. It refers to the socially and culturally constructed system that attributes meaning to what it means to be a male or a female in a particular society. A society comprises males and females.
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Gender inequality, gender biases, gender stereotypes are the common ill practices in a society.
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Gender discrimination should not be encouraged in a classroom.
Gender bias occurs when we make assumptions regarding the behaviors, abilities, or preferences of students based upon their gender. A gender-friendly classroom environment can build harmonious relations between boys and girls at different stages of education. This can be done by adopting some of the suggestive measures:
- Teachers must define their roles as mentors and facilitators and not as instructors and knowledge experts aiming to disseminate information.
- As a facilitator, the teacher should ensure that the physical and social environment of the classroom promotes healthy relationships between boys and girls. Sitting arrangements and all activities should as far as possible be done in a mixed group in co-educational schools and in single-sex, it should cut across class, caste, region, and faith.
- Equal participation of boys and girls in the teaching-learning process must be ensured
- For ensuring greater participation of girls and boys, participatory activities like- role play, problem-solving, and quiz, etc must be adopted in the teaching of languages, social science and science for eliminating the stereotype and discriminative attitude among learners.
- Allocation of classroom duties should reflect gender neutrality.
- Boys and girls should participate equally in maintaining cleanliness, observing classroom decorum, decorating the class, and conducting routine classroom chores.
- In the teaching-learning process, special emphasis must be given to sharing examples of women achievers who have contributed to different fields. This will help in attitudinal reconstruction.
- The use of visual aids like pictures and puppets, depicting women working in fields along with men, in hospitals as doctors and nurses, sharing household chores with men etc. can also help to create gender inclusion and parity.
- In the transaction of subjects like mathematics, sciences, social science, and languages, care should be taken to include examples of both boys and girls, men and women drawn from different walks of life so that the message of equal capability gets highlighted.
- The classroom culture should be built in a manner that interactions between boys and girls reflect mutual respect.
Hence, we can conclude that To avoid gender biases in the class, the teacher must be aware of the discriminative and stereotype attitude of the students.
