For more than a century, women have outnumbered men in teaching, with the gender gap continuing to widen among younger generations despite ongoing efforts to bring more men into education.
Bringing male teachers closer to parity will require targeted recruitment and sustained support, particularly in early grades and Southern states, according to an analysis released this month by the newly launched Male Educator Network and Policy Institute (MEN), a national research and advocacy group dedicated to bringing more men into teaching.
The MEN Institute, which includes researchers, advocates, and a network of male teachers, sees greater gender parity as crucial to engaging boys in their education and in later civic service.
Male teachers made up only 20% of teachers in grades 1-8 and only 3% in pre-K and kindergarten from 2018 to 2022, the network found. While male educators made up 43% of high school teachers, males were particularly underrepresented in English/language arts, world languages, and special education. They made up a majority of social studies and health and physical education teachers.
“We have a small window of time—because so many teachers are nearing retirement—to shape the next generation of teachers to make sure that men are more represented in classrooms, in line with the percentage of male students,” said Curtis Valentine, the founder of the MEN Institute and a former head of the scholarship program Real Men Teach.
Valentine spoke with Education Week about the challenges of getting and keeping male teachers. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why is the gender gap in teaching widening?
There are a number of factors that go into why the number of men in education has dropped over the last 25 years, from 30% in the 1980s to 23% now. Young boys are not introduced to the profession as a potential career ambition compared to young girls—only 1 in 3 parents would even support their children going into teaching—so, you’re starting off with young boys not even seeing teaching as a viable profession.
And then, the number of boys graduating from high school and going to four-year colleges has been decreasing, so [aspiring male teachers] are trying to function in a major where [there is] a shortage of men. And once they get into the school building, they are not really having the community of men to work with. Particularly in the lower grades, men said that they felt as if being a male teacher with younger students was stigmatized. So there are issues that we’re seeing throughout the pipeline about why they’re not getting in and then why they’re not staying.
Why create a national network for male teachers?
Oftentimes, when you’re the only [male teacher]—which was my experience as a 7th grade teacher—it’s hard to find ways to stick around when you feel like you’re isolated. So we’re creating a brotherhood in teaching across the country to say, ‘Hey, I’m a social studies teacher, I’m a math teacher. I teach early childhood. I teach students with special needs, and I feel a connection with men across the country.’
We like to say we’re one part policy think tank, one part fraternity of men sharing best practices.
How can schools counter stereotypes against male teachers, particularly in lower grades?
When we talk to young men, the chance of them staying in teaching decreases when they have to come in and try to be something they’re not, like a disciplinarian.
It’s really about narrative shifting, but doing it through the systems themselves. It’s not just how we’re preparing the [aspiring teacher] to be themselves. It’s how we’re preparing the co-teachers, the school leaders, and school districts. We want them to say, what kind of training are you going to do before these [teachers] enter your school so that they can be their full selves?
What roles do pay and incentives play?
We are going to continue to fight for compensation and salaries for teachers, because it’s one [issue] that affects men in some cases disproportionately. We’re bringing in [research from] other industries—what’s working across other career pathways, around recruitment and retention, around compensation policy, around benefits—to education. We’re looking to create a network of community partnerships with higher ed. that will reduce the cost for particularly men to go into teaching. Because men who have diverse backgrounds—in many cases from low-income backgrounds—can identify with students who come from the same community.
Why do you think a call to national service is key for boys to become teachers?
We are looking at how we can approach professionals who are ready to engage with young people who are mid-career changers: former veterans, retirees, former athletes, those who have been volunteering in say, the Peace Corps, like myself, or City Year, or AmeriCorps.
