Processes that support quality education include well-trained teachers who continually engage in professional learning and development; well-managed, child-friendly and gender-fair classrooms and schools; skills-based, child-centred participatory methods; skilful assessment to facilitate learning; and appropriate technologies.

Children should be taught in languages they understand and through which they can learn.

Teaching practices should be based on the belief that all students can learn. Education systems and communities should support good living and working conditions for teachers. Supervisors should provide administrative support and leadership. Girls’ learning styles, which may be different from boys’, should be respected, and they should be given equal chances to think, create and learn. And families and communities should support schools by helping to make effective decisions that will benefit all.

Within the same classroom, girls and boys often have very different and unequal learning experiences. Teachers may call on boys more than on girls, or assign science and computer studies to boys and domestic subjects to girls. Girls are often pushed into non-professional courses. These practices discriminate against girls. Teachers should receive careful training in how to interact with and encourage all students equally. Administrators should monitor what goes on in classrooms to make sure that teachers are not acting in discriminatory ways, however subtle and unintended.

Gender Issues in Classroom Practice

Violence Prevention and Conflict Resolution The best teaching and learning can only take place in a safe and welcoming school setting. So as school violence continues to capture headlines, educators are looking for effective strategies for violence prevention and conflict resolution. How should schools respond to bullying, sexual harassment, and cliques? How can schools support novice teachers in classroom management? How can they ensure that efforts to create orderly, safe schools do not unfairly pigeonhole as "troubled" or "violent" students who are merely rambunctious or different? This page provides further ordering information http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~hepg/vp/

Gender Bias in the Classroom This Scottish study of Gender bias reviewed how teachers dealt with boys and with girls in regard to the following actions:

Class Administration

activities that usually take place at the start of a lesson - settling pupils, giving general instructions, giving out material. These items were also recorded when the class was prepared for dismissal at the lesson end.

Lesson Core

Observations here were made during teacher input of content - if male or female characters were discussed, eg in a Kestrel for a Knave, or examples used to illustrate a principle.

Questions asked of

refers to occasions when a teacher directed a question at a specific boy or girl usually by name but often taking one volunteer from many hands up.

Questions asked by

refers to the occasions when a member of the class asked the teacher a question directly, either to repeat instructions or to clarify the teaching point.

Tasks allocated to

records the distribution of activities such as giving out books, going errands or within the class organisation eg group work tasks.

Discipline of

refers to occasions when the teacher reprimands a pupil. Often this would be a simple corrective instruction like "turn round" or "get on with your work". Only instances directed at individual pupils were recorded.

Radio

Open Learning Systems Education Trust, South Africa

OLSET is an independent, non-profit and non-governmental organisation committed to providing high quality educational materials in the form of interactive radio programmes focused on addressing the education imbalances existing in South Africa. These programmes provide teachers and learners with English Second Language lessons in the form of daily half-hour broadcasts, integrated print materials, teacher workshops, classroom visits and teacher support group meetings.

http://www.sn.apc.org/olset/

Fine Tuning for Schools

A review of radio programmes supportive of EFA by Francis Mead. This Working paper is a database that supports educators who plan to use radio to improve education quality. The data-base concentrates primarily on the following areas: health with a focus on Life Skills and HIV/AIDS, child rights, literacy, numeracy and science/environment. It includes radio and audio materials designed for ages up to 18. Available on the UNICEf Intranet

http://www.intranet.unicef.org/IMU/libweb/girlseducation/
technical_working_papers.htm