Enhancing Gender Awareness in Teaching Maths and Science
On 18 March 2014, ten days after International Women’s Day, the VVOB Cambodia team received the training “Enhancing Gender Awareness in Teaching Maths and Science”. Facilitator Ms Cova Alvarez, who is an International Gender Consultant, has been working on different assignments for several organisations in Cambodia since 2010. One of her assignments has been to do a gender-sensitive review of educational manuals for lower secondary schools. This topic seemed particularly interesting for us and therefore we invited her to facilitate a training session at our office.
VVOB Cambodia has a gender policy. One goal derived from that is to ensure that all activities and programme practices are implemented in a gender-sensitive manner. In the VVOB programme 2014-2016 one intermediate result is to strengthen pre-service teacher training for primary education in mathematics and science. Mathematics and science are subjects that are liable to gender bias and stereotypes. The training session on gender-neutral teaching with a focus on maths and science has given us useful food for thought.
Gender Stereotypes
Ms Cova started by asking what image pops up in our head when we read the word “scientist”. Most people will think of a white man, with messy hair perhaps. Why is that? Because most of the times a scientist is portrayed in that way. There are many female scientists with great achievements, but they are not as widely displayed as men.
Another example of gender stereotyping: apparently there are colourful phone covers and t-shirts for sale stating the line: “I am too pretty to do maths.” Although it seems funny and cute, underlying is a message that for girls it doesn’t matter if you’re not good in maths, your looks are more important.
Stereotyped images like this keep the vicious circle in place that science and mathematics are not for girls.
Tips
What can we do to help break that circle? Here are a few tips from the training session. More details can be found in the attached presentation.
In the classroom
- Teachers must give equal attention to girls and boys, encouraging all pupils to answer questions, even (or perhaps especially) when girls tend to be more shy or less confident to do so.
- Ensure mixed groups for group work tasks
- Clearly assign different roles in group work (note taker, presenter, time keeper) and rotate those roles among girls and boys. We cannot take for granted that roles in the group will automatically be divided equally between the boys and girls.
In text books
- Equal representation of females and males in images, even when it is difficult to find female role models, like for the subject mathematics.
- Images should portray both men and women in an active role
- Make an effort to depict women in a non-traditional role
- Use gender-neutral examples in lessons.
- Use gender-neutral language: If you have mentioned someone’s gender, was it necessary to do so? If you identify someone as a female architect, for example, do you (or would you) refer to someone else as a “male architect”? And if you then note that the woman is an attractive blonde mother of two, do you mention that the man is a muscular, dark-haired father of three? Unless gender and related matters—looks, clothes, parenthood—are relevant to your point, leave them unmentioned.
In the work of the VVOB team
The VVOB team was asked to list which aspects from the training we can apply in our work. Here is a summary of the answers.
- Gender sensitivity is a point of attention while developing manuals, DVDs or other teaching aid, in the images used, in the language and in didactics.
- We strive for gender balance in our core teams of teacher trainers.
- Not only in teaching materials but also in our reporting and publications we should include pictures so that women and men are equally represented, even if a group is not balanced in itself, like our Core Team Mathematics.
- Gender neutrality should be encouraged not only in written texts, but also in the verbal teacher-student interaction. We have to support girl student teachers to get more confident and brave to be actively involved in maths and science lessons.
- It would be good to further relay what we have learned to our core teams of teacher trainers so that the message will get to our ultimate target groups – primary teachers in the classroom.
- For lesson observation and monitoring we can include in the lesson observation form an element to verify if roles by female and male students are balanced when applying student-centred approaches.
The training session has been a good refresher and also provided new insights into how we can ensure that all activities and programme practices are implemented in a gender-sensitive manner.
In attach the presentation used in the training with more tips how gender awareness in teaching can be enhanced, with many thanks to Ms Cova Alvarez.
