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Q&A with Charol Shakeshaft, Ph.D.
Charol Shakeshaft, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education, has been studying equity in schools for more than 25 years, documenting gendered practice in the classroom and in school administration. She is an internationally recognized researcher in the area of gender patterns in educational delivery and classroom interactions. Her work on equity in schools has taken her into school systems across the U.S., Australia, China, Japan, Canada and Europe, where she has helped educators make schools more welcoming to females and African-Americans. She completed a synthesis of research on educator sexual misconduct, which was mandated by Congress and released by the U.S. Department of Education in July 2004.
Shakeshaft came to VCU in 2007 from the School of Education at Hofstra University, where she was professor and chair of the Department of Foundations, Leadership and Policy Study.
Here is more about her research, in her own words:
1. Tell us about your research.
I have three strands of research: educator sexual misconduct, educational equity and technology. All received federal grant funding.
2. What is educator sexual misconduct?
Any action that is sexually based and directed toward a student. That might mean visual, verbal or physical sexual interaction or exploitation. I have spent the last 15 years studying educators who cross sexual boundaries with students. In my work as a professor in educational leadership, I had students who were school administrators who were trying to prevent the exploitation of students and came to me for help. We realized there wasn’t anything written or researched on this topic and I started working on it as a response to questions from the field.
3. Why is it a bad idea?
Because students are kids who do not necessarily know the consequences of their actions. We hire adults to be teachers because they are trained to provide leadership and good judgment. Being sexually involved with a student or exploiting a student is likely to harm that student. Children have a right to expect that adults employed by the school won’t harm them.
4. How pervasive is it?
Seven percent of students say that sometime during their K-12 journey they have been a target of sexual misconduct from an adult employed in the school, primarily teachers and coaches. That is about 3.5 million children. It happens almost anywhere — in affluent areas, economically distressed areas, predominantly white and black communities, elementary and high schools, wherever there are adults in position of power over children.
5. Why is there such little research on the subject?
Research needs funding to support it and governmental agencies and foundations have been reluctant to study teacher sexual misconduct, partly because of the fear that they will be labeled anti-teacher. Also, it is a difficult subject to study because we need to be able to interview children who have been sexually abused. There are only three or four other people in the country who study sexual abuse by educators. There are probably just three or four of us who look at sexual abuse by educators, but we are part of a larger group of researchers who study sexual abuse by people in professions such as doctors or the clergy.
6. What is your work on race and gender equity about?
This is a topic I’ve worked on since my dissertation 30 years ago. We want the best people we can in our classrooms and leading our schools, and if we are preventing that because they are female or of color then we are limiting the pool of excellence. As someone who works to prepare school leaders it is important to me that we are drawing from the largest pool of talent we can and not shutting people out. Females make up 75 percent of teachers in the United States, but only 20 percent of school leaders. That indicates there is something not working. Where are the men in teaching and the women in administration? In terms of administrators of color, there are very few in predominantly white school systems, but plenty of white administrators in school systems predominantly of color, which indicates we have different selection criteria.