Breaking down barriers faced by male teachers


In early 2011, Schulich School of Education professors Dr. Douglas Gosse, principal investigator, and Dr. Mike Parr, co-investigator, released a bold new report discussing the importance of, and the barriers faced by, male teachers in the primary/junior classrooms in Ontario.


Te study titled, Te Professional Journey of Male Primary-Junior Teachers in Ontario, addresses key issues that male teachers face in their professional role, as well as teacher expectations regarding boys, and effective approaches and strategies for teaching boys.


Te report builds on previous research showing that barriers to males becoming teachers include the widespread impression that men are less nurturing than women and, even more alarming, discriminatory beliefs that men have pedophiliac tendencies, often conflated with the notion that male primary-junior teachers are gay and, therefore, deviant. Conversely, many researchers, educators, and members of the public identify a need for more men in education to serve as role models, to reflect demographics of the broader population, and to enhance the learning of boys who progressively score lower than girls on provincial, national and international achievement tests.


Gosse and Parr offer a series of recommendations for improving the workplace environment for male teachers including targeted strategies to combat discrimination and gender imbalance, increased communication, greater accountability, policy change, and investment in further research.


Learning lessons from the past while winning awards


Dr. Hilary Earl, a professor in Nipissing’s History department, is helping to ensure that today’s global citizens can learn important lessons from the past, especially with reference to the gripping and tragic episodes of genocide in human history – and she is earning international recognition for doing so.


Her book, Te Nuremberg SS- Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945 – 1958: Atrocity, Law and History (Cambridge University Press) was recently awarded the prestigious Hans Rosenberg Book Prize for the best book in 2009.


Based on extensive archival research, Earl’s book offers the first historical examination of the arrest, trial, and punishment of the leaders of the SS-Einsatzgruppen – the mobile security and killing units employed by the Nazis in their racial war


on the eastern front. In addition to describing the legal proceedings, Earl also examines recent historiographical trends and analyzes what makes someone become a perpetrator of genocide. She explores such contested issues as the timing and genesis of the “Final Solution”, and looks for common patterns in the perpetrators’ route to crime and their motivation for killing. She also discusses the tensions between law and history.


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