You would like to think that no one believes the lazy stereotype of the older teacher being a stern, cantankerous, technology-averse and direct instruction-obsessed disciplinarian - someone who automatically commands respect from every student.

One of the great joys of education is the diversity in the approach and personality of teaching staff, and one of the biggest challenges of the profession is that respect is never automatic and has to be earned. That person described above simply does not exist.

And yet, what if your pupils do buy into that perception of older teachers? How might that impact the success of the teaching of those considered “old”, both in the classroom and now when teaching remotely?

Getting an answer to these questions is difficult: research from school classroom settings is scarce. However, we can get a good steer on the potential for pupil age bias - and its possible impact - from a number of different areas.

For a start, it’s important to know that the concept of “old” is slippery. While you might believe that at age 40 no one could think you elderly, some children may well consider you to be someone enjoying their twilight years.

A survey from the Pew Research Center in the US showed that people’s view of the age of others changes as they themselves age. It revealed that adults aged 18 to 29 believe that a person becomes “old” at the age of 60, while those over 65 believe that a person becomes old at the age of 74.

Similarly, how a pupil sees age also changes across their school experience, says William Chopik, assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University and the author of another study on this topic.

“A five-year-old is likely to consider anyone over 40 as an older adult - ie, in old age,” he explains. “As children age, the perception of what makes an older adult starts to creep up. By age 10, children think anyone over 55 is an older adult. By the time they’re 15 to 18, that number is 60 years old.”

But if you are a teacher who falls into a bracket of being perceived as old by their pupils, is this necessarily bad news? Are they ageist? According to Chopik, the answer is yes. In an as-yet-unpublished study that he undertook, he found that young people had already absorbed negative stereotypes about older people. He asked 300 young people to generate five positive words/adjectives about older adults and five negative words.

“The most common negative words that came to mind were that older adults were ‘slow’, ‘mean’, ‘rude’, ‘bossy’, and ‘angry’,” he says. Those perceptions, unfortunately, do matter, Chopik explains. “These stereotypes and descriptors likely affect how people treat older adults. People perceived to be older are less likely to be listened to and taken seriously; people also are more likely to doubt their abilities.”

Before you bemoan the fickleness of youth, Chopik’s view is by no means uncontested. Other studies suggest that the evidence for ageism in children is “inconclusive”. Although children as young as 3 have been found to have negative ideas about older adults, other studies had shown children with neutral or positive views.

Where there is a little more agreement is the idea that students - at least at college age - do make misguided assumptions about a teacher’s ability due to their age.

One study in the US showed that students were more likely to give positive evaluations about a lecture given by a gender-neutral stick figure if they were told it was a man aged under 35. Students watching the same lecture who were told it was a man or a woman over the age of 55 gave lower evaluations for aspects of their teaching, such as enthusiasm and voice tone, even though the gender-neutral voice was the same.

Another study, which looked at how college students perceived the voice tones of speakers aged between 41 and 80, revealed that the students found the younger voices more pleasing than the older ones. And research has also shown that older professors garnered lower ratings for teaching effectiveness, perceptions of friendliness and rapport.

Oddly, according to Janie H Wilson, professor of psychology at Georgia Southern University, who has carried out research in this area, being a man can negate some of this ageism. “In our study, male professors were evaluated positively by students regardless of the perceived age of the professor. In other words, it didn’t matter to students if a male professor was young or older,” she says.

“That wasn’t true for female professors. When they perceived a female professor to be older, they rated her less positively than when she was depicted as younger. They also said the younger woman was significantly more attractive than the other groups. I assume we’re seeing some cultural bias there - women aren’t allowed to age.”

Thankfully, there is also some good news. Despite older women being more likely to have aspects of their teaching perceived negatively, research found that students did far better in a test when they thought that they were hearing a lecture from an older woman. “This group scored higher than those who thought they heard a younger woman or either a younger or older man,” says Wilson. “We speculated the higher grade was because they saw the older woman as a ‘mother figure’ and felt compelled to listen and learn in order to perform well on the test.”

Wilson does warn that the research was carried out in a university setting, not a school - where, she says, far more teachers are likely to be women. And, obviously, all the research above should be treated as indicative, not fact: experiences will vary.

Yet it will be alarming for many teachers to discover that their ability may be being judged purely on their perceived age, not on what they are actually doing. It has already been well publicised that older teachers are facing discrimination in the workplace: Tes reported in February how the NASUWT teaching union had highlighted that older teachers were “being put under intense pressure” to leave by being “disproportionately” placed on capability procedures and having pay progression “withheld”, as well as being subject to “excessive” observation and scrutiny. And Tes columnist Jo Brighouse has also written about being “cast out” as an older teacher.

Is the reality that the research is right and these teachers have to battle prejudice from students, too? At least initially, this is likely, says Mark Heaton, principal lecturer in primary and early years at Sheffield Hallam University. However, he says this prejudice can quickly be overcome.

Based on his experiences of teaching trainees of all ages, he says children often settle quicker and their behaviour is often more straightforward with the more mature students. Younger secondary teacher trainees, who may be teaching students of a similar age, can find it hard to establish “gravitas and authority”.

That’s not to do with the trainees but the children’s perceptions of them, he stresses. Heaton adds, though, that this can easily be overcome. All teachers need to acknowledge the importance of good stance and body language, tone of voice, eye contact, humour and maintaining a veneer of calm when under pressure, he says.

“It’s actually about developing positive relationships and engaging the students in the lessons you’re giving them,” he explains. “Are you giving them a consistent approach to how you are with them? Do you make them feel you care?”

Stephen Lehec, headmaster of Kingston Grammar School in Kingston upon Thames, agrees that overall, age is not a fundamental factor for a teacher, but that it can affect first impressions. Prejudices do exist, he says - for example, the idea that young teachers will be easy to distract or that older teachers will be stuffy and didactic, but he says none of that matters in the long run.

“It comes down to one thing: how much do you care? Do you care about the subject you are teaching and do you care about the students in front of you and do you demonstrate that consistently?”

More difficult to shake off in the current situation, with school staff teaching remotely, is the perception that older teachers are likely to be resistant to technology, or less able to use it effectively. For a long time, the notion of the “digital native” - someone who has grown up with technology and is therefore presumed to be naturally able to manipulate it - was pervasive and it led to many unfair assumptions about the ability of older people to use technology. This was not helped by the media pushing the narrative that all Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were in their twenties. Unsurprisingly in that context, a quick Google search will bring up hundreds of advice columns and articles about getting older people upskilled.

In fact, there is no evidence that older people cannot use technology as well as younger people. The idea of the digital native has also been widely critiqued: there is no evidence that young people are more natural users of technology or have any specific skill with it. And, in fact, as the New York Times pointed out last year, the average age at the fastest growing companies in the US, many of which were technology companies, was 45.

While the pupils may wrongly believe that older teachers are more likely to have issues with technology, it is important that older teachers do not believe it of themselves. But it’s also crucial that schools challenge this view, too.

That goes for all the above: it’s probable that ageism does exist among the pupil population but it should not just be down to teachers affected by it to challenge it. It is crucial that schools constantly challenge it, too, and model what they wish to see: older staff should be visible, respected in the school and given equal access to opportunities so they can demonstrate the lack of basis for damaging pupil perceptions. If school staff can’t get over their bias and do that, how can we expect the pupils to?

Irena Barker is a freelance journalist

This article originally appeared in the 24 April 2020 issue under the headline “Tes focus on… Ageism in teaching”