Gender Equality in Education: Iranian ELF Teachers’ Gender Partiality in Evaluating Mono-Mixed Gender ELF Learners’ Writing Performance

Abstract

Gender plays a significant role in education and evaluation. Accepting it as a fateful variable, many researchers have discussed gender and its influence on education and have come to various and contradictory results in this area just to compound the problem. Unfortunately, in Iran, there is a dearth of gender studies on education and EFL situations and this ignorance can lead to the expansion of prone-atmosphere to gender bias and its undesirable effects. The present study conducted a quasi-experimental method and explored the existence of the gender partiality in Iranian EFL contexts. To achieve this purpose, two samples were singled out: 1) students (N=49) who were asked to produce writing samples; and 2) teachers (N= 30) who consented to score these papers. The teachers were asked to score twin-papers produced by the EFL learners with their names changed to the mixed-sex during predetermined and specified time intervals in two various cycles. The results of the study confirmed the existence of gender partiality among Iranian EFL teachers towards their students of the opposite-sex.