The aim of this study is to examine, with a gender theoretical and conversational analytical framework, how teachers in Swedish for immigrants (SFI) distribute positive and negative assessments towards men and women in the classroom and what causes them. The purpose is further to examine how the assessments construct and actualize gender patterns in the education.

The thesis is divided into two major issues: How are positive and negative assessments ​​distributed between men and women in a class at Swedish for immigrants (SFI) and what causes these? How can the assessments ​​be related to constructing and actualizing gender? In order to achieve the research questions, four teachers have been observed in three different classrooms.

The result shows how assessments ​​in classrooms are caused by fostering the students into a gender-normative behavior and also into a desirable classroom behavior. Furthermore, the assessments ​​are caused by evaluating students work efforts in school work. The result also show how women are given more positive assessments ​​and men more negative, even though there are no major differences between how assessments are distributed between male and female students. In total, women are given more assessments than men in the classroom. With the hidden curriculum as an analytic tool, the results show how hidden teaching agendas and the teachers’ assessments to foster the students into these exists within an educational context for adult students. The study has also made visible how gender is both actualized and constructed in the assessments ​​the teachers express in conversation with the students.