As part of the HEP-TED, this article presents key findings from a thesis project by Odutola Odubanjo at the University of Helsinki examining gender-responsive pedagogy in STEM teacher education at the University of Rwanda – College of Education. Through curriculum analysis and classroom observations, the study explores how institutional omissions can quietly reproduce gender inequality — even in systems formally committed to inclusion.
This study examines how gender-responsive pedagogy (GRP) is embedded and operationalised in STEM teacher education at the University of Rwanda–College of Education (UR-CE). Drawing on document analysis of the Bachelor of Education in Science curriculum across thirteen programme options and twelve structured classroom observations at the Remera and Rukara campuses, the study investigates GRP through the FAWE Gender-Responsive Pedagogy Framework and curriculum theory. The central finding is that GRP at UR-CE is structurally optional: curriculum documents contain consistent omissions across nine GRP dimensions, while classroom practice is varied and individually driven. The study concludes with recommendations for embedding GRP at the module level and integrating explicit professional development within the B.Ed. Science programme.
Keywords: gender-responsive pedagogy, STEM education, teacher education, curriculum theory, Rwanda, classroom observation
Despite decades of global effort to promote gender equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), women remain significantly underrepresented in these fields. In Rwanda, 66% of male and 51% of female learners participate in STEM at upper secondary level; at tertiary level, only 32% of women concentrate in STEM disciplines compared with 51% of men (Wuyts et al., 2022). These disparities persist even as Rwanda has made internationally recognised advances in gender equality policy, including the Revised National Gender Policy (MIGEPROF, 2021) and Education Sector Strategic Plans (MINEDUC, 2018; 2024) that explicitly identify gender-responsive teaching as a strategic priority.
The University of Rwanda–College of Education (UR-CE) sits at the centre of this challenge. As Rwanda's primary institution for training secondary school STEM teachers, it is the site where the pedagogical orientations of the next generation of educators are formed. If gender-responsive pedagogy (GRP) is not meaningfully embedded in UR-CE's teacher education curriculum, the institution risks producing graduates who are unequipped to challenge the gender dynamics that sustain STEM inequality.
Yet despite this institutional significance, limited evidence has existed on the extent to which GRP principles are integrated into the B.Ed. Science curriculum or enacted in STEM teacher education classrooms. This article presents findings from a study addressing that gap, drawing on two sources of data: document analysis of the B.Ed. Science programme documents across all thirteen programme options, and twelve structured classroom observations at UR-CE's Remera and Rukara campuses. The study was conducted as part of the Higher Education Pedagogy for Teacher Education Development (HEP-TED) project, a Finland–Rwanda collaboration focused on inclusive and gender-responsive approaches in teacher education.
The study draws on two interconnected frameworks. Curriculum theory (Pinar, 2004; Schiro, 2012) provides the interpretive lens, treating the curriculum not as a neutral technical document but as a socio-political text that encodes assumptions about whose knowledge matters and whose experiences are centred or marginalised. Two curriculum theory concepts carry particular weight: the null curriculum — what is systematically omitted, and what such omissions communicate (Eisner, 1994) — and the intended/enacted curriculum distinction, which directs attention to the gap between what is formally designed and what happens in classrooms. As Unterhalter (2007, p. 72) observes, it is precisely this gap that is "often the site where gender inequality is reproduced most persistently."
The FAWE Gender-Responsive Pedagogy (GRP) Framework (FAWE, 2018) serves as the operational and evaluative tool. The framework provides nine dimensions of gender-responsive teaching and learning — covering learning and teaching strategies, empowerment and student voice, teacher role and bias awareness, representation in learning materials, safety and learning environment, assessment strategies, feedback and student support, monitoring and evaluation, and structural/leadership context — which were applied consistently across both the document analysis and classroom observation instruments. This enabled direct comparison between what the curriculum prescribes and what teachers enact.
Document analysis constituted the primary method, applied to three interrelated document types across all thirteen B.Ed. Science programme options: the Programme Proposal, the Programme Specification, and the Module Descriptions. These documents together constitute the formal curriculum framework governing STEM teacher preparation at UR-CE. A deductive thematic coding approach was used, with the nine dimensions of the FAWE GRP Framework as pre-established categories. Content was assigned one of two code types: positive indicator (evidence of GRP-aligned language or provision) or gap/omission (absence of GRP guidance or failure to address a relevant GRP dimension).
Structured classroom observation constituted the second method. Twelve sessions were conducted across STEM teacher education courses at both campuses, spanning Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Computer Science, and Physical Education & Sports. A predefined checklist aligned with FAWE indicators was applied across four enacted dimensions: teacher language and behaviour, participation and interaction patterns, leadership and visibility, and the physical and visual learning environment. Each session was assessed holistically against the four observed dimensions to determine the extent to which deliberate GRP-aligned strategies were present.
4.1 What the Curriculum Says: Document Analysis
Across all thirteen programme options, the document analysis reveals a consistent pattern: GRP principles appear at the level of formal policy statement in the programme proposal but are not systematically operationalised at the module level. Against the nine dimensions of the FAWE GRP Framework, the curriculum demonstrates partial compliance in programme-level objectives but consistent absence in the module descriptions that directly guide teaching practice.
Three omissions are particularly significant. First, no module description in any programme option contains a directive on gender-sensitive language or gender-inclusive teaching materials. Second, women's contributions to STEM are absent from the illustrative examples, case studies, and teaching materials referenced across all programme options — leaving the default framing of scientific and mathematical knowledge as male-referenced. Third, assessment frameworks contain no attention to equitable assessment design, sex-disaggregated performance monitoring, or gender-differentiated feedback. The FAWE GRP Toolkit identifies each of these as foundational requirements for gender-responsive institutional practice (FAWE, 2018).
Assessment gap: No module description across any of the thirteen programme options references sex-disaggregated performance monitoring or any mechanism for identifying whether male and female students are achieving equitably. Without this data, disparities in outcomes remain invisible and therefore unchallenged.
The curriculum similarly contains no structured monitoring and evaluation mechanisms incorporating gender indicators, no provisions for preventing or responding to gender-based harassment, and no assessment component that evaluates teacher candidates' ability to design and deliver gender-responsive instruction. GRP is recognised as a policy value but is not translated into the operational structures — module content, learning outcomes, assessment criteria — that guide what teacher educators teach and how student teachers are prepared.
This pattern reflects what curriculum theorists describe as symbolic or rhetorical commitment: one that satisfies formal policy requirements without restructuring how knowledge is organised and transmitted (Pinar, 2004; Schiro, 2012). The null curriculum concept is directly applicable here — what is systematically left out of the formal curriculum transmits implicit messages about what is valued and who belongs in STEM disciplines, with compounding effects in a teacher education context where omissions shape the pedagogical orientations that graduates carry into their own future classrooms.
4.2 What Happens in Classrooms: Observation Findings
The classroom observations present a more varied picture than the curriculum documents alone suggest — but one characterised by inconsistency and individual dependency rather than systemic provision.
Across all twelve sessions, teacher language was gender-neutral. No gender-stereotypical remarks, differential expectations, or gendered behavioural cues were directed toward male or female students in any observed class. This represents a meaningful baseline: overt verbal gender bias was largely absent from UR-CE classrooms.
Beyond this baseline, however, sessions diverged substantially. Seven of twelve sessions demonstrated clear GRP alignment overall, with teachers actively redistributing speaking opportunities, directing questions to female students by name, and in several cases structuring group compositions to ensure mixed-gender collaboration. These practices align directly with the FAWE Framework's principles of equitable questioning and inclusive facilitation, and produced measurably more balanced participation even in classes where male students constituted a numerical majority.
The remaining five sessions showed limited GRP alignment. In Chemistry at Rukara, for example, male students accounted for approximately 70% of the class and nearly all verbal responses. Female students did not volunteer a single response and were not called upon. The teacher's language throughout remained neutral — but neutrality unaccompanied by deliberate participation strategies is insufficient from a GRP standpoint. The FAWE Framework makes the distinction explicit: gender-responsive teaching requires teachers to plan to ask substantive questions to both girls and boys, distribute questions across the class, and allow adequate response time — not simply to avoid overt bias (FAWE, 2018, pp. 52–53).
Observation pattern: In sessions without deliberate participation strategies, male students dominated verbal exchanges and volunteered answers more frequently. This pattern was a predictable consequence of unreflective practice: without active teacher intervention, gender imbalances reproduce themselves even in the absence of overt bias.
Leadership and visibility patterns showed consistent gendering. Where roles emerged organically, male students predominantly assumed visible positions: cleaning the board, managing technical equipment, and organising classroom logistics. The FAWE Framework identifies these informal role assignments as a form of implicit gender bias — even without explicit instruction, the pattern communicates messages about competence and authority that reproduce gender hierarchies. A more equitable picture emerged where teachers actively structured leadership distribution, for example by alternating which gender was invited to present group findings.
The physical and visual learning environment was uniformly absent of gender-inclusive materials. With one exception — anatomical representations in a biology practical — no classroom contained posters, photographs, or other visual materials depicting women in scientific or technical roles, and no teacher introduced supplementary content highlighting women's contributions to STEM. This extends the curriculum-level omission on representation directly into the enacted learning environment.
Informal conversations with teachers following observations provided important context. Teachers who demonstrated strong GRP alignment consistently attributed their approach to professional experience and targeted training — not to curriculum guidance. One teacher explicitly noted that curriculum documents do not provide specific strategies for addressing gendered classroom dynamics; his capacity to manage them derived from external professional development. By contrast, a teacher in one of the weaker sessions attributed male dominance in informal leadership roles to the numerical composition of the class — a framing the GRP literature identifies as a failure to recognise how informal role patterns function as hidden curriculum.
Taken together, the document analysis and classroom observations reveal a pattern that can be characterised as broad correspondence in absence, alongside limited and individually driven divergence in practice.
Where curriculum documents are silent on GRP — which, as the findings demonstrate, is the case across the majority of the nine FAWE dimensions — this silence is largely reproduced in the classroom. The absence of a gender-sensitive language directive corresponds with no teacher-introduced attention to inclusive language. The absence of female role models from curriculum materials corresponds with the absence of gender-inclusive visual content in eleven of twelve observed classrooms. The absence of equitable assessment guidance corresponds with the absence of gender-differentiated feedback in any observed session. In each of these areas, structural omission at the curriculum level has a traceable effect on enacted practice.
The correspondence is not, however, uniformly one of absence. In equitable participation — where no curriculum directive exists — a significant subset of teachers independently developed and applied deliberate GRP-aligned strategies. This divergence is significant for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that individual teacher agency can partially compensate for curriculum-level gaps. Second, and more critically, it confirms that such compensation is neither consistent nor institutionally guaranteed. Where GRP-aligned practice was observed, it reflected individual professional formation; where it was absent, nothing in the curriculum structure prompted or required it.
The result is a programme in which GRP is structurally optional — present when a particular teacher brings it, absent when they do not.
This finding confirms and extends Mukagiahana, Sibomana, and Ndiritu's (2024) observation that Rwandan STEM teachers' GRP practice is contingent on individual awareness rather than embedded programme structures. It also resonates with research across Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania showing that while teacher trainees broadly support gender equality as a principle, most lack the skills to translate it into practice due to minimal exposure to GRP during training (Unterhalter et al., 2015). Individual professional commitment cannot substitute for institutional design.
The findings point to three interconnected areas for action at UR-CE and comparable STEM teacher education institutions.
Curriculum-level embedding
The most immediate opportunity lies in extending GRP from programme-level policy statements to module-level operationalisation. This means embedding gender-inclusive language directives, female representation requirements, and equitable assessment frameworks into the module descriptions and learning outcomes that directly guide teaching practice — not only in the General Methods module, but across all discipline-specific programme options. GRP competency should also be established as an assessed learning outcome, so that teacher candidates are evaluated on their ability to design and deliver gender-responsive instruction.
Structured GRP professional development
The finding that GRP competence derives primarily from professional experience and targeted training — rather than curriculum preparation — points to the need for explicit GRP professional development embedded within the B.Ed. Science programme itself. Active, skill-based, and reflective learning in GRP must address both the theoretical foundations (including curriculum theory, the null and hidden curriculum) and the practical competencies required to enact equitable questioning, gender-sensitive feedback, and inclusive group facilitation (Mukagiahana et al., 2024; FAWE, 2018).
Institutional monitoring and accountability
Closing the gap between Rwanda's formal gender equality commitments and the realities of STEM teacher education will require monitoring and evaluation mechanisms capable of assessing the extent to which GRP is enacted in classrooms — not merely referenced in policy documents. This includes collecting sex-disaggregated performance data, conducting regular gender audits of module content and assessment patterns, and establishing feedback loops between monitoring findings and curriculum revision. Without such mechanisms, the individual agency of committed teachers remains the primary — and inherently unreliable — guarantee of gender equity in the programme.
This study set out to examine how gender-responsive pedagogy is embedded and operationalised in STEM teacher education at UR-CE. The answer is: unevenly, and structurally optionally. The curriculum does not actively impede gender-responsive practice — but it does not equip or prompt it either. When individual teachers develop GRP competence through professional experience and targeted training, they bring it into their classrooms; when they do not, it is simply absent. A programme in which gender equity depends on individual commitment rather than institutional design cannot reliably produce the gender-responsive STEM teachers that Rwanda's educational goals require.
Rwanda's Education Sector Strategic Plan 2024–2029 explicitly targets gender parity in STEM and identifies gender-responsive teaching as a strategic priority. The realisation of these ambitions depends substantially on whether teacher education programmes are equipping their graduates to enact GRP in their own classrooms. The evidence from this study suggests that this goal is not yet being systematically achieved at UR-CE — and that transforming it requires deliberate action at the level of curriculum design, professional development, and institutional accountability.