Re: Male teaching methods? - was: Re: Women in FOSS at OSWC II

[Pia Waugh <pia@waughpartners.com.au>]

Hi Almut,

<quote who="Almut Behrens">

<snip>
> Eventually, I figured they equated "male" with "technical", or, maybe 
> more precisely, "analytic" (in the sense of taking things apart to
> study how their constituents work, or why they don't...). 
<snip>

Don't make that assumption too readily :) I don't think it is the content,
but rather the style of teaching. I find that even on mailing lists men tend
to be very loud in their questions and answers, and women often are a bit
quieter and go off to learn stuff on their own without asking as many
questions as their male counterparts. I think women learn better in smaller
groups, working through real problems rather than theory. I know I would
rather try to read up on something than just ask the question in a technical
forum, and this is something that often slows women down. I think we learn
differently than men and don't have all the answers as to how, but women do
tend to be more collaborative learners, whereas uni for one place is more a
person standing in front of you and the if you have a question, you have it
in front of everybody!

An interesting read on the matter below:

- Women and Men in the Classroom: Inequality and Its Remedies - http://bokcenter.fas.harvard.edu/docs/krupnick.html

> When thinking about it, I guess it's this aspect in which I'm most
> different from "typical" (non-technical) women ("typical" in the
> statistical status quo sense - not saying there's some biological
> predetermination in effect here!).

See, I don't think that any of us are atypical. I think that by thinking
that way we are maintaining a status quo to ourselves :)

> OK, to come back to my original question, that's my take of why my
> teaching style might have been perceived as male... Not sure, though.
> Ideas, comments?

To be honest, you'd have to describe your teaching style :)

Cheers,
Pia

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