Observational Tool for Mathematics Teaching Practices from a Gender Perspective: design and justification

Abstract

Historically, mathematics has been considered a male-dominated field, limiting the participation and recognition of women. In schools, there is evidence that teaching practices vary according to the gender of the students, which partly explains phenomena such as the low self-concept that girls often have regarding their mathematical abilities. Despite the importance of studying teaching practices, no instruments were found that are specific to mathematics, consider a gender perspective and are contextualized within the reality of Mexican schools. The aim of this article is to present and justify the design of MAPEG (acronym in Spanish), which is an observation instrument developed to evaluate mathematics teaching practices from a gender perspective. The instrument’s construction is grounded in didactics of mathematics, gender perspective of mathematics education, and classroom management. Video recordings of mathematics lessons taught by male and female teachers at the elementary and middle school levels were analyzed as part of the process, with contributions from specialists in related domains. The agreement among observers was analyzed through their notes and inter-rater agreement, making this a mixed-methods approach. The final version of the instrument consists of eight dimensions intended to evaluate gender equity in mathematics classroom: students participation, positive reinforcement, teacher-student interactions, monitoring, language used to address the group, gender stereotypes, negative affect, and behavior redirection.