Gendered trends in student teachers’ professional aspirations

Abstract

The paper reports on a small-scale, exploratory study investigating the professional aspirations of a cohort of student teachers at a UK university. Questionnaires and interviews sought insights into the students’ perceptions of leadership, future aspirations and self-perceptions as potential leaders. Whilst there was commonality in male and female students’ interest in subject leadership and teaching- and learning-oriented roles such as Advanced Skills Teacher, gendered trends emerged in patterns of aspiration towards certain other posts. Women were more likely than men to aspire to the post of Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator, and men were more likely than women to aspire to the most senior posts, especially headship. Whilst men and women showed awareness of the negative and more challenging aspects of senior school leadership, there were indications that male students were more likely than their female colleagues to perceive the affordances offered by headship and to envisage themselves as potential headteachers. There were indications of difference also in the ways in which men and women constructed teaching and leadership, and a stronger tendency for men to transfer agentic self-perceptions as teachers to a view of their future selves as leaders.