UTAS Health and Physical Education course coordinator Vaughan Cruickshank surveyed male teachers across Tasmania for his PhD, and interviewed a smaller number in-depth about their experiences.

Challenges facing male primary school teachers include taboos around physical contact with students, expectations of fulfilling masculine roles in the workplace, and isolation from their female peers.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data reported in 2016, out of a total 2989 primary school teachers in Tasmania, just 600 were male.

Tasmania's average of 20 per cent of male primary school teachers fares slightly better than the national 18 per cent.

Dr Cruickshank said his research uncovered a number of strategies more experienced male teachers employ to combat societal assumptions, protect themselves from false accusation, and build trust with students and school communities.

Teachers who participated in the survey reported fear of physical contact with students being misconstrued as a major issue throughout their careers.

“It had a few different aspects … the gender double-standards of what’s appropriate for a man versus what’s appropriate for a woman, fear of false accusations,” Dr Cruickshank said.

He said societal and media bias toward pre-judging any man accused of inappropriate contact with students was a reason for some male teachers to enforce a blanket ban on any physical contact, setting up classrooms to avoid any student contact.

“Some of them were worried that people in society would see people like Rolf Harris and think ‘Oh, I’m a man working with children … are they conflating high-profile paedophiles with me?’” Dr Cruickshank said.

He said male teachers would often ask female colleagues for help if a student needed physical assistance and would always think ahead to assess student needs and situations.

Dr Cruickshank said his research reported younger male teachers were most likely to instigate no-contact rules with students, and would keep office or classroom doors open, ensuring they were not seen as being alone with a student.

“Others really talked about using humour and sport at lunchtime to build relationships [with students] because they were worried they couldn’t build relationships the same way their female colleagues could,” he said.

He said male teachers worked hard to build trust in their school communities to break down barriers and assumptions about their roles in the school.

The need for male teachers to be positive role models was seen as a fine line between “not masculine enough” versus “reassuring masculinity”, balancing expectations of gender roles with requirements to be good role models for open communication and equality.