THE NATURE OF STAKEHOLDERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS FEMALE TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICS IN LUSAKA DISTRICT OF ZAMBIA

Abstract

This study investigated the nature of attitudes of administrators, teachers, learners and parents towards female teachers of mathematics in secondary schools in Lusaka District. A descriptive survey research design was used for in the study. Data was collected from 136 respondents comprising 40 secondary school teachers, 80 learners, 8 parents and 8 administrators. Schools were selected using stratified sampling while simple random sampling techniques were used to select the teachers and learners. The parents and administrators were selected using purposive sampling technique. Data were collected using questionnaires and interview schedules. Questionnaires were administered to teachers and learners to obtain quantitative data. Interview schedules were used to gather qualitative data. Quantitative data were analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) to generate descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were analyzed using the grounded theory to generate themes. The findings of the study were that attitudes towards female teachers of mathematics generally do exist on a lesser extent among the learners, secondary school teachers, administrators and parents in the schools under study. Inferential statistics showed that there is a significant difference in the extent of occurrence of attitudes among the levels of education among the teachers (0.029). This means that level of education of teachers has an effect on the extent of occurrence and nature of attitudes towards female teachers of mathematics. Teachers with lower levels of education (Diploma holders) exhibited the extent of occurrence and nature of attitude on a lesser extent as compared to the other participants who did not show any extent of occurrence and nature of attitudes at all. In terms of learner age, the older learners showed some nature of occurrence of attitudes towards female teachers of mathematics. There exists a moderate correlation between the extent and nature as could be seen from the correlation coefficients found which are at least 0.60.