Do you remember your grade school or elementary school teachers? What were they like? Do you remember realizing that teachers don’t actually live at school and that they’re real people? Do you remember their gender or their expectations for you or your classmates based on your perceived gender? You may not explicitly remember gender expectations in school. The education setting can frame our understanding of gender in subtle ways, such as when boys are called on to answer questions more often than girls. Sometimes, gender stereotypes become more pronounced, like when we invite ‘ladies first’ for activities.

As we progress through our academics, gender norms and expectations in education forge our understanding of what it means to identify as a particular gender in society. Long-standing gender expectations, rooted in personal bias by educators and educational institutions, guide our behaviors and thoughts inside and outside the classroom. This chapter will focus on how educational institutions transmit knowledge about society, including how they regulate our gender-normative ideologies and behaviors.