Investigating the Meaning of Gender-Equitable Quality Education in Zambia: Perceptions and Practices of Teachers

• In Event: 46.073 - Global/Local Narratives of Girls' Education: Does Girls' Education Lead to Gender Equality?

Abstract

Objectives:
International development agencies focus on gender equality and quality education as central goals for developing countries (Gibson 2007; Aikman et al., 2011). However, the relationship between these two policies is often left vague. This research sets out to re-conceptualize gender equitable quality education by investigating teaching practices of women teachers in a marginalized context.
Research Questions:
The research addresses questions of 1) What factors do teacher perceive as major challenges for quality education for girls?; and 2) How do they deal with these challenges in their teaching practice?
Theoretical Framework:
Three approaches to conceptualizing gender equitable education quality are identified in the literature: human capital theory with a focus on parity and sameness for all (Heyneman, 2004; Verspoor, 2008); a human rights and power perspective, within which gender equality is viewed as transforming unjust structures (Aikman et al., 2011; Tawil et al., 2011); and the view of social justice and human development perspectives with gender intersecting with other inequalities (Tawil et al., 2011; Tikly & Barrett, 2011).
Data and Methods:
Major data for the research are from face-to-face interviews, surveys and classroom observations with teachers and school documents from five state primary schools in Lusaka, Zambia. Data are organized and examined to find out 1) challenges teachers have for quality education for girls and underpinning causes for these challenges and 2) the way teachers deal with such challenges and related phenomena that shape teachers' practice. The framework of social justice and human development perspectives is mainly applied to an analysis of collected data seeking to examine whether and to what extent this framework address actual challenges that teachers experience in class for quality education for girls.
Results:
This paper shows for education quality at the school level to move beyond fairness of distribution resources between boys and girls. Interviews, observations and survey results collectively indicate that teachers lack pedagogical skills and knowledge that are gender-sensitive in terms that many of them still maintain gender biased attitude and treatment in favor of boys and have relatively lower expectation of the intellectual abilities of girls. In addition, observation results notify that women and girls are often under-represented in most curriculum materials that studied teachers use and the contents are also often irrelevant to the real life of girls. The foregoing findings demonstrate the need of more substantive interventions which are grounded on the explicit acknowledgement of differences and particularities amongst boys and girls. The findings also call for continuous training for teachers to ensure them a more gender sensitive performance thereby to actualize gender-equitable quality education both for boys and girls.
Significance:
The research confirms the need of a greater inquiry on the gender biased nature of educational experiences for girls and practices of teachers for promoting gender equitable quality education in marginalized contexts. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of understanding education quality based on a philosophy which promotes gender equality as an integral part of it rather than a fragmentary component.

Author

• Jeongmin Lee, Florida State University