Gender in STEM Education: an Exploratory Study of Student Perceptions of Math and Science Instructors in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

The current study addresses student perceptions of math and science professors in the Middle East. Gender disparity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education continues to exist in higher education, with male professors holding a normative position. This disparity can also be seen in the United Arab Emirates. As female participation in STEM education lags behind men, it is possible that gender stereotypes may influence students' first impressions of male and female instructors. The United Arab Emirates provides a unique context to study this phenomenon as it is a traditional patriarchal society that is highly dependent on the engineering discipline, especially within the oil and gas sectors. A total of 176 undergraduate students from 2 universities in the United Arab Emirates completed a survey about teaching effectiveness based on their perceptions of photographs of hypothetical male and female instructors. A factor analysis of survey items revealed 2 main subcategories of teacher effectiveness: namely teacher warmth and professionalism. A 2-way between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of teacher gender and student gender on perceptions of overall teaching effectiveness, as well as their perceptions of teacher warmth and professionalism. Findings revealed that there was a significant cross-gender effect on student perceptions of math and science instructors in the United Arab Emirates.

A systematic review of STEM education research in the GCC countries: trends, gaps and barriers

“…Another gap in the papers included in the present review is the limited consensus on the scope and direction of gender differences to do with performance in mathematics, and gender bias and student evaluations in higher education (Forgasz et al, 2014;Pasha-Zaidi & Afari, 2016). Besides, empirical research investigating the career aspirations and expectations of national GCC youth is scanty.…”

“…Looking at the factors that hinder STEM education (see Table 3), most of the studies included school-level factors (n = 10, 55.6%), such as teachers' perceptions of integrated STEM education (Aldahmash et al, 2019;Elayyan & Al-Shizawi, 2019;El-Deghaidy et al, 2017;Madani & Forawi, 2019), STEM curriculum and pedagogy (Awwad & Ayesh, 2013;Madani, 2020;Murphy et al, 2018), and STEM assessment (Alhashem & Agha, 2020). Second in line of the research focus are studies on environmental factors (n = 7, 38.92%), mostly related to the impact of stereotypes (Aswad et al, 2011;Forgasz et al, 2014;Pasha-Zaidi & Afari, 2016), the role of family members (Aswad et al, 2011) and family income (Khan & Rodrigues, 2017). These are in turn followed by cultural and societal beliefs (Wang et al, 2020), and social perceptions and prejudices towards participation in STEM education and careers (Islam, 2017(Islam, , 2019.…”

“…Cultural stereotypes also shape how STEM is perceived in society. Arguably, they play a significant role in reinforcing the claim that women are less welcome in the field, and these stereotypes affect female participation in STEM domains (Pasha-Zaidi & Afari, 2016). Indeed, some claim that gender stereotypes can lower girls' STEM aspirations (Bradley, 2000).…”

Gendered STEM: A Systematic Review and Applied Analysis of Female Participation in STEM in the United Arab Emirates

“…Since 2010, the UAE has been working to reform its secondary education curriculum to incorporate more STEM courses [22]. Today, even fathers motivate their daughters to study engineering [23,24], which would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.…”

“…One may argue that STEM fields are no longer considered male-only sectors in the UAE [25], as girls are actively participating in school and university-level science and engineering courses, outperforming boys in most cases since the adaptation of STEM in government schools. Emirati women have persisted in STEM education and continue to outnumber their male peers despite social, psychological, and gender preconceptions, as well as cultural difficulties with women playing leadership roles [23]. Nonetheless, while female participation in secondary and tertiary STEM education has increased in parallel with the UAE's economic development goals, the workforce continues to skew male.…”