Let’s make changes from education: gender awareness trainings for primary teacher colleges

The project for “Strengthening Primary Pre- Service Mathematics and Science Education” (STEPMAS) recently conducted a string of gender awareness trainings in Sacred Heart Teachers College and Kabaleo Teacher College.

The trainings are a part of a string of gender awareness trainings under the STEPMAS project and aimed to provide basic knowledge and skills to ensure gender responsive teaching and learning in Primary Teacher Colleges (PTCs) and to allow PTC lecturers to share their views and experiences on gender responsive lessons and gender responsive school environments.

The awareness trainings consisted of two parts. The first part involved a general introduction such as concepts of gender, gender roles, gender stereotypes, and gender equality and gender responsive lessons. Part 2 allowed participants to conduct a practical lesson delivery of mathematics and science lessons; considering some of the gender issues discussed in part 1 of the training.

Discussions during these awareness activities have been quite useful in highlighting some harmful societal and teaching practices in and outside the classroom that contribute to gender biasness in teaching and learning and such bias often becomes a barrier to quality teaching and learning taking place in a classroom.

Allowing lecturers and teacher students to share experiences and suggestions during these activities has helped the STEPMAS project team to also draft a gender handbook. This gender handbook is anticipated to address these gender related challenges by providing a clear guide for teachers on how to deliver gender responsive lesson and create a learning environment that is conducive for all students to learn and actively participate in maths and science lesson discussions, regardless of their gender, respective academic ability, religion or ethnicity. These measures have been taken to enhance the quality of teaching and learning of maths and science at the primary school level.