Lead researcher Dr Samantha Schulz, from the University of Adelaide, said the study – involving an anonymous survey on the Teachers of Adelaide Facebook group and ten in-depth interviews – has unearthed a troubling ‘bystander inaction’ scene in schools, with many teachers reporting the problem is downplayed and swept under the carpet.
Schulz said some female teachers had left schools after enduring abuse and harassment from male students in workplaces that did little to support them.
These teachers were left feeling ‘physically sick’ and unsafe at work, she added.
“[They left schools] because issues hadn’t been dealt with adequately, one of the teachers [said], ‘parents aren’t taking the issue seriously, there’s a lot of eye rolling, like – I can’t believe you're treating this as an issue’.
“Another teacher talked about how, unless she has the evidence there that is indisputable, parents, caregivers, are just in disbelief that their young men and boys could be possibly acting this way.”
As one teacher in the yet-to-be-published study reported: “Usually I get the response from the parent, ‘Not my boy. My boy would not do that. My boy would not have those values’.”
A growing body of Australian research has charted how boys are increasingly falling prey to a ‘regressive masculinist supremacy’ espoused by notorious ‘manfluencers’ such as Andrew Tate, with teachers reporting alarming shifts in their behaviour and attitudes towards women.
Schulz said that without clear boundaries around what will not be tolerated, boys are more likely to act on the impulse to perform a ‘heightened form of masculinity’ at school to fit in.
She noted that one interviewee, a young male teacher, said he’d noticed his younger brother plays out one version of himself at school but adopts an entirely different persona at home.
“[Another] teacher talked about wanting to take up an educational response and interweave gender equity and sexuality diversity into her teaching, but having to do it in such a way that it wouldn’t raise backlash from parents,” Schulz added.
This speaks to the broader lack of gender literacy within society, the researcher says, which is making the job of these teachers even more difficult.
“So just knowing even if they do tackle this educationally, that they have to do it under the radar … it is unsurprising when you think about the policy vacuum around gender equity that we’ve had in Australian schooling for such a long time.
“I think that needs to be floodlit,” Schulz says.
Previous research has found an infiltration of the ideas and tropes of Andrew Tate, pictured above, in Australian classrooms, with teachers saying his name is initially conjured by boys as “a neutral talking point, albeit with eventually sinister intentions”.
The often ‘piecemeal’ and insufficient response on the part of school leaders to these incidents was another strong theme that emerged from the study.
There was the sense that principals and deputies are already overwhelmed, and so teachers’ concerns were simply added to a burgeoning pile of problems needing attention, Schulz explains.
“[They might opt for] a punitive response, where students have to write a letter of apology to whoever they targeted,” she says.
“That’s very individualised, and [one] teacher spoke about feeling that that response was wholly inadequate, because the letter is disingenuous – even if a student was suspended for a day or a week for some really quite extreme behaviours, then they were back and the behaviours were recurrent.”
Others spoke of not being taken seriously or quite literally told ‘don’t talk about this’, Schulz says.
“In one site, three young female teachers left in the same week, and the rest of the staff were told, ‘don't talk about it, just carry on as usual’.
“And so, the message that the young people are receiving is that you can engage in these behaviours, and there’s not going to be a strong, clear, consistent counterpoint or boundaries.”
Intuitional gaslighting is by no means unique to education, the expert says.
But does more need to be done at the preservice level to prepare graduate teachers for the reality of what they might face in classrooms?
Absolutely, Schulz says.
“Initial teacher education is at the mercy of a whole range of different accrediting bodies that dictate what we do,” she clarifies.
“It boils down to the motivations of individual academics, whether or not they include it on the agenda.
“I’m strongly advocating in favour of this, but the amount of space that I’ve got to teach preservice teachers is three hours total across their entire degree.
“If I weren’t at my particular school of education, it wouldn’t be happening at all – it’s not at a policy level. It is sidelined. It is out of sight, out of mind. It is structurally positioned as not important…”
The fact is that gender inequity has become normalised across whole sectors of our society, she argues.
“I mean, some of the teachers in our study were saying, ‘Well, I guess it is just boys being boys’, so by default, reinforcing these limited … ideas around gender.”
The researcher is not counting on political will to change anytime soon, but says that teachers and school leaders are in need of policy frameworks to address gender-based violence in schools.
“I would argue that amidst the teacher workforce crisis, perhaps losing more valuable female teachers will finally prompt some of that political will and genuine action.
“I am not holding my breath, but I’ll keep making noise about this because the situation is not just going to resolve on its own.”
