Exploring STEM teacher educators’ understanding of gender-responsive pedagogies in Kazakhstan

• In Event: Poster Session 4
  In Poster Session: Exploring STEM teacher educators’ understanding of gender-responsive pedagogies in Kazakhstan

Proposal

The study aims to fill the niche in global scholarly research on the major hindrances of women’s participation in STEM adding evidence from Kazakhstan-one of the biggest Central Asian countries. Kazakhstani women demonstrate low enrolment rates in STEM university majors (31.6 % of the total population of students) and are less likely to persist as they advance in their education. Not surprisingly, Kazakhstan's labor force in STEM fields remains highly gender-segregated (WEF, 2015).
The voices of STEM women students suggest that they confront hidden barriers, mostly rooted in social and cultural expectations from women (Almukhambetova et al., 2022), and the critical stage when they need to receive gender-responsive academic and career counseling is at high school when academic pathways are selected (Almukhabetova & Kuzhabekova, 2022). However, STEM teachers have little understanding of their agency to challenge the underrepresentation of women in STEM (Durrani et al, under review). Therefore it is important to explore the understandings and practices of STEM teacher educators in Kazakhstan to identify the underlying tensions in STEM teacher education that hinder the progress toward gender-responsive instruction and career counseling.

While the literature points out the importance of gender-responsiveness in curriculum and instruction and the teachers’ gender awareness, there is a lack of research on how teacher educators understand and implement gender-responsiveness in educating future STEM teachers. Therefore this study focuses on STEM teacher educators in several pedagogical universities in Kazakhstan to explore their gender awareness and understand how they teach gender-responsiveness in educating future STEM teachers in Kazakhstan.

The following research questions guide the study:

RQ1: To what extent are STEM teacher educators gender-aware and demonstrate their agential potential to engage with gender issues in STEM?

RQ1.1: What do the teacher educators do to teach the gender-responsive instructional strategies and curriculum practices to future STEM teachers?

RQ 1.2: What are the underlying tensions in STEM teacher education that hinder the progress towards gender-responsive instruction and curriculum practices?

Author

• Ainur Almukhambetova, Nazarbayev University