Cultural Production, Reproduction and Subversion of Gender Stereotyping among Pre-Service Science Teachers: Insights from Science Educators

Abstract

We perceive contestations between science, education and women’s engagement and have raised disruptions in their act of knowing and mobility in science education. This study explored science educators’ views, beliefs and actions of reproduction and subversion of gender stereotyping at a teacher education college in Nigeria. Six science educators were selected based on comprehensive gender information that facilitated conduction of the study. The six educators were purposively selected out of 11 educators who completed and returned the questionnaire. A qualitative approach and case study framed the research using instruments such as questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observation schedules. Thematic analysis and coding were done. Educators consciously and unconsciously reproduced gender stereotypes beliefs and practices. Educators explicitly and implicitly engaged in unequal distribution of cognitive activities amongst pre-service teachers influenced by their practice of cultural norms and patriarchal ideology. The findings revealed multiple oppressions females faced, contradictory science classrooms, and political and democratic classroom space for negotiating and renegotiating discriminatory classroom beliefs, perception and views of educators during science engagements. However, several possibilities such as political advocacy, productive activism and transformative resistance for educators to re-negotiate discriminatory gendered space through constructive gender equality awareness for freedom and intellectual growth in science education could be emancipatory possibilities.