Brief report: the effect of gender on teachers’ perceptions of behaviours in students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

ABSTRACT

Objective

It has been suggested that gender stereotypes can influence social perception and how people perceive behaviours in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) based on the individual’s gender. This study aimed to investigate the effect of student’s gender on teachers’ perceptions of ASD behaviours in regular school settings.

Method

The sample consisted of 60 primary school teachers with a mean of 11.82 years (SD = 7.34) of teaching experience. Participants read a total of 20 vignettes depicting students’ behaviours and were asked to rate the featured student’s behaviour using a 5-point Likert scale (i.e., 1 = Strongly Negative to 5 = Strongly Positive). The survey vignettes were presented in a randomised order and participants were randomly assigned to either the female gender group or the male gender group.

Results

Results indicated that teachers rated the male ASD student’s social behaviours but not the repetitive and restricted behaviours significantly more negatively than the female ASD student. Using multiple regression analysis, teachers’ prior awareness of ASD affected their ratings for the social behaviours.

Conclusion

Findings from this study would have implications for teacher training in understanding and supporting students with ASD.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

(1) Research on ASD has predominantly been focused on male samples.

(2) Teachers’ perceptions of students’ problematic behaviours may also be influenced by student’s gender.

(3) However, studies were done using typical developing children and there is limited research done to look at the effect of gender on the perception of behaviours associated with ASD.

What this topic adds:

(1) This study represents a preliminary step in understanding how student’s gender label affect teachers’ perceptions of behaviours observed in students with ASD in regular primary schools.

(2) Participants rated the male student’s social communication and interaction behaviours significantly more negatively than the female student.

(3) There is the implication for teachers to be more self-aware of their own gender stereotype-based biases especially in male students with ASD, and how gender may impact on the behavioural presentation and recognition of ASD.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher perceptions
• gender labels
• behaviour
• autism spectrum disorder
• social perception

Acknowledgments

The views expressed in this paper are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of NIE. The authors would like to thank all the participants in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/20590776.2021.1985378.

Notes

1. The American Psychological Association (2020) note that sex refers to biological sex assignment as male or female, whereas gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. In the current paper, the term “sex/gender” is used throughout to acknowledge the overlap between the two terms in autism research (Lai et al., 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University [SUG 04/18 NYH].