Empowering Social Science Teachers with Gender Sensitive Pedagogies in Schools  

This project addresses the challenge of gender inequality in teaching and the content that learners are taught in schools. Gender inequality is promoted in teaching and learning process or reinforced in the teaching materials when women are viewed as entities that cannot make contributions as men in society. Mboyonga (2023) noted that the representation of women in the Zambia school curriculum was minimal such that the girls did have role models to look up to in society. In the same vein, the Policy for Monitoring and Research Center noted that the contribution of women in leadership positions was low (PMRC,2020).

Zambia is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1972 and enacted the Gender Equity and Equality Act No 22 of 2015. Both legislations mandate public and private bodies to promote gender equity and equality in all spheres of life. Education policies such as Educating our future (1996) and the recently adopted outcomes based (2013) and competency-based curriculum (2024) prescribe that teachers should use gender sensitive pedagogies while teaching in the classroom in all subjects. However, the challenge is aspects of gender have not been included in teacher education training modules or programmes. Thus, most teachers are not knowledgeable of gender sensitive pedagogies. The ministry of education of Zambia is working with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), academicians or gender specialist working on gender related issues to train teachers during their Continuous Professional Development (CPD) meetings to share on the importance of gender sensitive pedagogies which they have in schools every term as well as at the yearly conference for Social Sciences Teacher Association of Zambia (SOSTAZ). For example, in March 2024 a colleague and I facilitated a workshop in Eastern Province of Zambia during their CPD meeting for social sciences teachers.

 

 

UNESCO (2019) has called on education systems to promote gender equality in the education sector through access, teaching and learning contexts and content. Firstly, this project intends to train 10 Provincial Continuous Development Teacher Leaders (PCDTL) for social sciences from all the ten provinces of Zambia in turn these teachers will train other teachers. The main beneficiaries for this project are females’ learners and teachers who will be empowered with knowledge that they can participate and contribute positively to key decision-making positions in society. The training might increase the participation of women in the public sector in Zambia.

Teachers are agents of social transformation in society as they translate the curriculum to learners in the class. This project will address the issues of gender imbalance in society by working teachers who work with learners directly every day in the classroom. Thus, when teachers are empowered with knowledge and skills, they will be able to inspire female learners to participate and take up leadership roles in the public sector in society. The education system provides an opportunity to promote gender equality because gender roles exist in the curricula, school culture and textbooks (Silova,2016). Gender inequalities continue to be perpetuated in the power relations, pedagogy and stereotypical portrayal of females and males in textbooks (Longwe,1998). The gender stereotypical lens that leaners are exposed could affect the vision of who they could become in future. Teachers participate in curriculum development of the nation; the teachers will also be equipped with knowledge that during the curriculum development process they should advocated for development of textbooks that include prominent local women in Zambia in the textbooks and remove images that portray negative stereotypes in the textbooks for social sciences as they can affect learners self esteem and future contribution in society.

The project intends to empower social science teachers from the ten provinces of Zambia as trainer of trainers. The R20,000 will be split in half. The first R10,000 used for a physical training workshop in Lusaka for teachers who are provincial leaders from the ten provinces of Zambia. The teachers will need food, transport to Lusaka and accommodation, venue and workshop material. The other R10,000 will be used to support training in provinces on gender sensitive pedagogies in the classroom. This will give teachers an opportunity to reach out to other teachers so that they can promote gender equality as they teach in their classroom every day. The project will partner and network with the Ministry of Education in Zambia, the Social Sciences Association of Teachers in Zambia (SOSTAZ) and the History Education Research Association of Zambia (HERAZ) both associations are recognized by the Ministry of Education.