Teacher educators’ perspectives on gender responsive pedagogy in higher education

The enactment of gender responsive pedagogical approaches has the potential to support learning for all students and foster gender equality within and beyond education systems. This study investigated teacher educators’ perceptions of gender responsive pedagogy in higher education in Palestine. Mixed methods were used to explore the components of capability, opportunity and motivation that influence teacher educators’ behaviour when incorporating gender responsive pedagogy in their teaching practices. Thirty-six participants completed an online survey and subsequently 17 of these took part in a semi-structured interview that used the COM-B model as a framework to explore the educators’ perceptions. Our findings suggest that teacher educators do not have sufficient knowledge and skills to incorporate gender responsive pedagogy into their teaching practices due to misunderstandings regarding the approach and the misconception between gender equality and gender responsive pedagogy. This led to lower motivation to include gender responsive practices, but increased their desire to engage in future learning and professional development on gender responsive pedagogy. In addition, the results revealed that social and cultural backgrounds of the teacher educators in addition to the understanding of the surrounding social cues and cultural norms are crucial in embedding gender responsive pedagogy into teaching practices.