Project TEACH is a large-scale effort focused on examining teachers' roles as agents of gender and peer socialization and how these processes affect children's social, behavioral, and academic outcomes.
Despite a growing attention to gender inequities in education, little is known about teachers as agents of gender and peer socialization. Yet, school-aged children spend most of their day in a setting where teachers play a critical role in shaping their academic achievement, social skills and aspirations. Existing research on inequities in education has tended to focus on identifying gender differences in student outcomes.
Project TEACH, however, aims to examine the processes that lead to these differences by focusing on the role of teachers as agents of gender and peer socialization, including their teaching strategies and role in structuring the physical environment of classrooms.
Our central goal is to examine how teachers' practices (e.g., classroom management, teacher-student interaction) contribute to student outcomes (e.g., school readiness, social and behavioral functioning).
Project TEACH consists of two studies: Teacher Online Survey, which is coordinated by Dr. Carlos Santos, and Teach-P, which is a naturalistic observational study of preschool teacher-child interaction and is coordinated by Dr. Olga Kornienko.
The project is funded by T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics and the Challenged Child Project.