Abstract
This descriptive study aims to analyze personality traits associated with gender and attitudes and self-efficacy towards teaching science and mathematics in pre-service primary teachers. Convenience sampling was used to select 92 pre-service primary teachers in Chile, who were administered a set of instruments to measure these variables; these instruments have displayed adequate levels of validity and reliability. Results show that an important percentage of pre-service primary teachers have low levels of self-efficacy and attitudes toward teaching these subjects and have personality traits that indicate marked gender stereotypes. Furthermore, the measured variables together generate distinct profiles of pre-service primary teachers. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to creating more equitable school environments that strive to attract more students, especially girls, to engage in science and mathematics.
Highlights
In Chile, important gender gaps in learning outcomes in math and science tend to be unfavorable for women (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2016)
A descriptive research design was chosen given the objectives of the study and the research questions the aim is to characterize gender stereotypes, and attitudes and self-efficacy related to teaching science and mathematics in pre-service primary teachers and how these variables are related
Both the attitudes and the self-efficacy related to teaching science and mathematics show a positive tendency, with values higher than 3
Summary
In Chile, important gender gaps in learning outcomes in math and science tend to be unfavorable for women (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2016). Teachers have been found to have an impact on student learning (Riegle-Crumb et al, 2015), on their attitudes toward science (Korur et al, 2016) and math (Michaluk et al, 2018; Ren et al, 2016), on their self-efficacy in these subjects (Gurin et al, 2017), on their gender stereotypes (Thomas, 2017), and on their future decisions to undertake scientific careers (Cvencek et al, 2011; Dejarnette, 2012; Nadelson et al, 2013) In this context, both research and educational policies have paid increasing attention to primary teachers (Riegle-Crumb et al, 2015). This seems to be accentuated in mathematics (Varas et al, 2018) and in science (Riegle-Crumb et al, 2015)
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