Pre-Service Teachers’ Gender Beliefs in Relation to their Beliefs about Children’s Mistakes

• Author / Creator

  Orr, Alicia R.

• Mistakes made in the process of learning are critical opportunities for acquiring knowledge. Nonetheless, children often feel anxious about making mistakes. It is important that teachers are able to alleviate this anxiety in order to maximize the learning potential of errors. However, teachers’ adaptive or maladaptive responses to students’ mistakes in the classroom can influence their students’ attitudes toward learning from mistakes. Moreover, observational research has shown that teachers provide work-related feedback to students differently depending on their gender. There is a lack of research that addresses how pre-service teachers’ gender beliefs might be related to their beliefs and attitudes towards children’s mistakes. Part of the challenge is the absence of measurement tools for measuring teachers’ beliefs about children’s errors. The objectives of the present study were (1) to explore the internal consistency of a psychometric instrument, the Error Orientation Questionnaire (EOQ), adapted for the present study to measure pre-service teachers’ beliefs about children’s mistakes in a school setting, and (2) to examine pre-service teachers’ gender beliefs and attitudes towards their own mistakes in relation to their views towards children’s mistakes in the classroom. Two groups of pre-service teachers studying at the University of Alberta were surveyed: (a) 80 pre-service teachers who were enrolled in a child development course (EDPY 302), and (b) 50 pre-service teachers who were enrolled in an adolescent development course (EDPY 304). Results indicated that the adaptation of the EOQ led to a mixed profile of internal consistency values, which informed subsequent analyses. Four out of eight EOQ subscales were retained for regression analyses. Regression analyses showed different results between both groups of pre-service teachers. Nonetheless, important patterns among pre-service teachers’ gender beliefs, attitudes towards their own mistakes, and views towards children’s mistakes were revealed. Pre-service teachers’ gender beliefs in part predicted their beliefs about children’s mistakes, and, pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards their own mistakes in part predicted their beliefs about children’s mistakes. Potential implications are discussed, including that pre-service teachers’ own beliefs and attitudes can be projected onto children, and, that this may have an influence on how pre-service teachers eventually handle children’s mistakes in the classroom. As well, pre-service teachers’ gender bias may unintentionally impact how they promote and encourage boys versus girls learning from their mistakes. Overall, the results from this study contribute to addressing persistent issues surrounding gender beliefs in relation to children and may help to understand girls’ disengagement and underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Gender beliefs
  • Pre-service teachers
  • Beliefs about mistakes
  • Errors in learning

• Graduation date

  Fall 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Education

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-yvza-5w58

• License

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