Perpetuating Gender Inequity: Attitudes of Teacher Education Students

Abstract

The role of schools in perpetuating social inequalities has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. However, less attention has been paid to the impact of teacher education programs in influencing teacher attitudes which can contribute to discriminatory practices. To begin to address this question in relation to gender equity, attitudes of 751 teacher education students to traditional sex-role stereotypes were measured on a 32-item questionnaire. One three-way ANOVA was conducted on the total score (all items summed) and another on each item. The independent variables were age, gender and length of enrolment of the student. A consistent main effect for gender was obtained; women were more egalitarian in their attitudes than men. There was, however, no effect for length of enrolment. This was interpreted to indicate that the current teacher education program in which the students were enrolled had a limited impact on traditional gender-related stereotypes.

Knowledge, Gender and Power in Physical Education Teacher Education

“…They powerfully exemplified the hegemony of sexist patterns of gender relationships which have been exposed in other teacher education (Christensen & Massey, 1989;Skelton, 1987) and PETE institutions (Dewar, 1986). They powerfully exemplified the hegemony of sexist patterns of gender relationships which have been exposed in other teacher education (Christensen & Massey, 1989;Skelton, 1987) and PETE institutions (Dewar, 1986).…”

“…Unlike many teacher education programs (Christensen & Massey, 1989;Tinning, 1988), this PETE program did attend to gender equity issues through theory-based content knowledge. Resistance was located among some non-conformist, female student groups and, to a limited extent, in the practices of faculty in the lower status social science subjects.…”

Student Teacher Attitudes to Sex Role Stereotyping: some Australian data

“…A 32-item questionnaire developed by Christensen & Massey (1989) was used. It presented a variety of commonly held stereotypes of role-appropriate female and male behaviour to which students responded on a five point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree; 2 = agree; 3 = not sure; 4 = disagree; 5 = strongly disagree).…”

“…Another Australian study reported that female students enrolled in Health Science courses in 1976 and 1986 were more liberal in their attitudes than their male colleagues on most of the sub-scales of the AWS (Westbrook & Nordholm, 1988). More recently, Christensen & Massey (1989), recognizing the critical relationship between the attitudes of teachers to sex roles and the socialisation of children, found that the females enrolled in a pre-service teacher education course were more egalitarian than the males on most items of the questionnaire they developed.…”