The effects of gender, type of problem, previous referral experiences and gender role attitudes on the evaluations of teachers in relation to the students' psychological problems

The current thesis aimed to look at the possible factors, which can affect the teachers' considerations, in relation to the psychological problems of children. The factors which taken into consideration were the gender of the child in the vignette who have some psychological difficulties, the type of the psychological problem that the child faced with: externalized/internalized; the gender of the responders, earlier referral experiences of responders and their gender role attitudes. Two specific vignettes that were developed by the researchers and the Gender Role Attitude Scale of Zeyneloğlu and Terzioğlu (2011) were used. The study was performed with 120 elementary and middle class teachers and school counselors in an online format. The results represent that teachers considered the externalizing problems of children as more serious and they expected to see these problems more commonly among boys. On the other hand, the internalizing problems were considered as more likely to be seen among girls and these problems could not capture the necessary attention of teachers. Also, female teachers were more likely to refer a child with externalizing problems compared to male teachers. Lastly, the teachers with more egalitarian gender role attitudes evaluated the internalizing problems of youth as more serious compared to the teachers with more traditional attitudes.