Ethnic Background and number of female students in my classroom

Some of the aspects that I wanted to look back on after this week were the different ethnic backgrounds in my classroom and the numbers of female students participating in my subjects.

Female vs Male numbers

I have only six girls in both of my second-year wood technology class’s, I have no girl in my fifth-year construction class. Now these are not total figures within the year groups as the fifth years have two separate classes and the first-year wood technology have two, however on average the first year and fifth year groups are slightly below average, and the first-year group is on par with the national average of girls completing woodwork. – see charts below

This is something I have looked at on a whole school basis, I have looked at the class lists and have been helping in some of the classes and have seen that the percentages doing wood technology and technical graphics is below the national average in the first and fifth year groups, roughly on par in the first year group and slightly above average with the third, fourth and sixth year groups.

This can all in my opinion be put down to individual student’s preferences within the year groups. From speaking to the co-operating teachers, I have got the impression that girls are really encouraged to take technical subjects within the school and are well catered for when they pick the subject, this is an area that I will be looking to promote in my own teaching career. Also they stressed to me that the results that female students have received in their leaving certs in the previous years have been on par with the boys and better in a lot of circumstances, from this I can see it is crucial to really sell my subject when I am teaching to girls who are looking to pick it as an subject choice in both first year and transition year as there is currently a deficit of females working within the technical sector nationwide. see image below (O'Connor, 2008).

Ethnic backgrounds

There are some students within each of my classrooms from different ethnic backgrounds, some who are in my forth year DCG class who are from Polish descent but has lived in Ireland for most of their lives and are really well integrated into the school environment and there is no language barrier so he requires no additional resources and is progressing well.

Others such as __ in my first-year wood technology class do require a lot of additional help as he doesn’t have the same relationships with his peers. He can’t rely on them to offer support as frequently. This raised the issue of the ethnic divide in my mind even though it is not a huge issue within my classes. Overall the numbers of students from different ethnic backgrounds or students who are from other countries in my classes is low compared to other schools and the national average (see table below) (Delma Byrne, 2010).

I have really tried to help these students through the additional individual demos given and by creating an environment where peer teaching regularly takes place and is encouraged.

Bibliography

Delma Byrne, F. M. E. S. &. M. D., 2010. Immigration and school composition in Ireland. Irish Educational Studies, 29(3), pp. 271-288.

O'Connor, M., 2008. education. [Online] Available at: https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Statistics/Se-Si-Gender-in-Irish-Education-Introduction-to-Chapter-9.pdf