Effect of Gender Perspective towards Performance of Chemistry Education in Secondary School: Case Study of Three Selected Schools of Gicumbi District in North-East of Rwanda

*Evangeline Irakoze, Emmanuel Gakuba & Claude Karegeya
Chemistry Education, African Centre of Excellence in Innovative Teaching and learning Mathematics and
Science (ACE-ITLMS), College of Education, University of Rwanda, Rwanda
*Corresponding author: iraline01@gmail.com

Abstract: Providing science education for both girls and boys and emphasizing on their performance, particularly in chemistry, might play a big role in any country development. The main objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of teachers’, students’ and parents’ attitude towards girls’ science education and performance. The adopted research design was descriptive survey under mixed method. A total of two hundred and fifty seven (257) participants consisted of 77.8% students and 4.7% teachers from three schools, and 17.5% parents were selected by using purposive, simple random sampling methods. Quantitative data were statistically analysed using SPSS, whereas qualitative data were recorded and set in themes before reporting in narrations and quotations. The research found out that generally students, teachers and parents have good attitude, beliefs and perceptions towards girls and chemistry education. Teachers showed positive, neutral, and negative attitude on 55.6%, 16.7%, and 27.7% of the total asked statements, respectively. However, there was a slight difference between boys and girls students in terms of attitude, beliefs and perceptions towards chemistry where some girls still need to improve. The findings further revealed that boys and girls have positive attitudes towards chemistry education at 94% and 86.7%, respectively. Some factors underpinning low performance of girls were identified, including inappropriate teaching methods, low confidence among girl students, and limited number of female role models. The present study will benefit decision makers in establishing facts-based policies, which in turn will improve not only parity but also the performance in science education.