Opinions of teacher candidates on the gender of mathematics teachers

Abstract

The objective of this study is to determine how the students of the education faculty perceive the gender of mathematics teachers. The survey prepared for this purpose was applied to 1185 teacher candidates who were enrolled in the department in 2009 and 536 in 2014. It was observed according to the acquired results that 77 % of the participants in 2009 and 74 % of the participants in 2014 replied as “Male” to the question, “what is the gender that first comes to your mind when you think of a mathematics teacher”. It was determined from the statistics of the Ministry of Education in 2012 that 51 % of all the secondary school mathematics teachers in Turkey and 52 % of all the high school mathematics teachers in Turkey are male. It was observed that the percentages of the genders of the teacher candidates who participated in the study both in 2009 and in 2014 are similar to the percentages of the Ministry of Education. In the study carried out to question the reasons for the perceptions of teacher candidates regarding the gender of mathematics teachers, replies given to the questions about their genders, their education programs, class levels, what they wish the genders of their mathematics teachers should be, do they think that makes are more successful in mathematics? were subject to binary comparisons. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.