Chapter 12: Mathematics Teacher Education and Gender Effects

There is a growing body of research about gender effects on student achievement in mathematics. Even if a lot of controversy still exists about how to explain differences in the achievement between girls and boys, the discussion on gender equity can be regarded as a well-established research field. The situation is very different when it comes to teacher education. Only a few studies exist that include gender-specific data about future teachers’ achievement during their education (see, for example, the recent International Handbook of Mathematics Teachers Education, in which neither gender aspects under a general perspective nor gender differences in achievement are discussed in special chapters; Sullivan & Wood, 2008)—not least because teacher education research is still a fairly new field itself and evaluating teachers does not have a long tradition.