One hundred seventy-five third-and fourth-grade boys who were identified as struggling readers participated in a 10-week intervention to determine the effect of the reading teachers' sex on boys' reading performance, selfperceptions as readers, and view of reading as a masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral activity. Findings indicated no main effects on reading performance, yet main effects of teacher's sex on two sub-scales of reader self-perception emerged. Evidence of interactions showed that boys responded differentially to the intervention-they responded better to female teachers. Further analysis revealed that the boys' responses varied as much as a response to individual male teachers as to the teacher's sex.

In response to concerns about boys' academic underachievement as well as the international gender imbalance in our teaching force composition, a call has been made to hire more male teachers and practice ‘boy-friendly’ pedagogy. Our investigation of effects of male reading teachers and use of computer-based books demonstrated their ability to de-feminise boys' views of reading but no differential effects were evident on boys' reading achievement or reader self-perceptions between boys taught by males or by females, whether or not they use technology in their reading practices.