Gender Dynamics in Mathematics’ Learning Attitudinal Inclinations

This paper is examining effects of secondary biases [such as parental perceptions about whether male or female teachers can teach mathematics better and whether female or male students can learn mathematics easily] on learner’s attitudes. The findings of this study were based on data obtained from a study of 1200 randomly sampled (female and male secondary school) students in Elgeyo Marakwet County. The county was selected as a representative sample of the other 47 counties in Kenya. This study found that, as a result of parental education or exposure, attitudinal tendencies were evolving. The findings reported in this paper therefore implies that there is a shift from a generalist claim that all parents tend to believe that female learners are not equally endowed like boys in the process of learning mathematics. This study further reveals a transit from the findings of the previous studies where some parents used to believe that mathematics was relatively insignificant to female learners based on their career paths. This paper interrogates if this factor [i.e. parental view] is still impacting on the female students’ attitude to mathematics in the early stages of learning or even their inclination towards studying mathematics courses later or not. Impact of female teachers on female learners and vice versa is also addressed in the paper