The study sits at an unusual intersection of two large research literatures. Psychologists and education researchers have spent decades examining why women enter or avoid mathematics- and science-related fields, and a separate body of work has explored why people choose teaching. Far less attention has been paid to the overlap between the two: women who choose to teach the very subjects that so many of their peers abandon. That overlap, the authors argue, is a natural laboratory for understanding how individual interests, educational experiences, structural opportunities and beliefs about gendered occupations interact in real career decisions.

To explore this terrain, the researchers adopted expectancy-value theory as a sensitizing framework. The theory, one of the most influential accounts of academic motivation, holds that people’s choices are driven by their expectations of success and by the value they attach to a task, whether that value is intrinsic enjoyment, personal importance, or its perceived usefulness for the future. Crucially, the theory also includes the concept of perceived cost, the psychological price of pursuing an option, in effort, lost alternatives, and emotional strain. In this study, the framework served not as a rigid hypothesis-testing template but as a lens for making sense of what participants said about their own lives.

The design was exploratory and qualitative. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 female preservice teachers, aged 19 to 21, enrolled in mathematics and science education programs at a public university in Türkiye. All participants were adults, and written informed consent was obtained individually before each interview. The study received ethical approval from the Ethics Committee of Istanbul University–Cerrahpaşa, and participants were assured of the voluntary nature of participation and the confidential handling of their data. Nine participants agreed to audio recording, while detailed written field notes were used for the 21 who declined, a detail that reflects the practical sensitivities that qualitative researchers in this field must navigate.

Analysis of the interview data followed thematic analysis, a method that systematically codes qualitative material and organizes it into recurring patterns. Two overarching themes emerged. The first centered on enduring interest in mathematics and science. Participants described a long-standing fascination with these subjects, nourished by positive learning experiences and by influential teachers who had made the disciplines feel alive and attainable. This sustained interest functioned as a key resource, keeping the women engaged with mathematics and science even as many of their peers drifted away from these fields during the demanding secondary school years.

The second theme was more ambivalent. Teaching was portrayed as a meaningful continuation of these interests, a way to remain close to mathematics and science while doing socially valuable work. But for some participants, the choice of teaching was also described as an adaptation to structural constraints, particularly those associated with Türkiye’s centralized university entrance examination and with gendered occupational expectations about which careers are appropriate or feasible for women. In other words, teaching was not always a first-choice destination; for some, it was the most accessible and socially sanctioned route through a constrained landscape of options.

This dual picture is where the study’s contribution becomes sharpest. Expectancy-value theory predicts that people weigh expectancy, value and cost when making choices, but the study shows how those abstract calculations are experienced inside a specific institutional machinery. Türkiye’s centralized admissions system assigns students to degree programs largely on the basis of a high-stakes national examination, which means that a student’s exam score, not only her preferences, determines which programs are realistically open to her. A woman with a strong interest in physics may find that her score admits her to a science teaching program but not to the engineering faculty she might otherwise have considered. The study suggests that such structural filters become woven into motivation itself, so that what looks like a free choice also reflects the narrowing of alternatives.

Equally striking is the finding that families and previous teachers emerged as distinct socializers who influenced career choices in different but complementary ways. Families appear to have shaped the broader frame of what seemed possible and appropriate, while teachers operated closer to the subject matter, kindling and sustaining interest in mathematics and science themselves. This division of labor in social influence echoes a long tradition in the sociology of education, but the study’s qualitative detail shows how the two forces can converge: a family that deems teaching a respectable profession for women and a teacher who makes calculus exhilarating together push a talented student toward the mathematics classroom rather than the mathematics department.

The gendered dimension of the findings deserves emphasis. Teaching, especially at the primary and secondary levels, is a heavily feminized profession in many countries, and it carries cultural associations of nurturing, stability and compatibility with expected family roles. Mathematics and science careers outside teaching, by contrast, are often perceived as competitive, inflexible or male-dominated. When the researchers describe teaching as both a mathematics- and science-related pathway and a gendered profession, they are pointing to this double character: choosing to teach math or science allows a woman to stay in the disciplines she loves while occupying a role that society codes as appropriate for her gender. The decision, in this light, is best understood not as a single moment of choice but as an ongoing negotiation among personal interests, educational experiences, structural opportunities and sociocultural expectations.

The authors argue that their findings carry practical implications for educational and career guidance and for policy. If some women are steered toward teaching partly by constraints rather than pure preference, then guidance systems that present the full range of mathematics- and science-related pathways early, and admissions systems that allow more flexibility in changing direction, could widen genuine choice. At the same time, the study affirms that for many participants teaching was an authentic and valued expression of enduring passion for the subjects, and policies should support that motivation rather than treat it as a consolation prize. Because the study involved 30 women at a single public university in Türkiye, the authors are careful to frame the work as contextual and exploratory rather than generalizable, and they note that expectancy, value and cost considerations take on distinctive shapes within centralized admissions systems and gendered occupational contexts. Even so, the core insight travels well beyond one national system: women’s routes into mathematics and science teaching are neither purely free choices nor purely imposed ones, but negotiated settlements between what these young women love, what their societies expect, and what their institutions make possible. Understanding that negotiation, the study suggests, is essential if educators and policymakers hope to keep talented women connected to mathematics and science, whether at the blackboard, in the laboratory or beyond.

Subject of Research: Gendered career motivations of female preservice mathematics and science teachers

Article Title: Gendered career motivations of female preservice mathematics and science teachers: a qualitative study

Article References: Gendered career motivations of female preservice mathematics and science teachers: a qualitative study. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41599-026-09324-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41599-026-09324-z

Keywords: expectancy-value theory, preservice teachers, mathematics education, science education, gendered occupations, career motivation, qualitative research, thematic analysis, university entrance examination, Türkiye, STEM gender gap, teacher socialization

The study, conducted by Ricardo Navarro, Monica Takushi-Rodriguez, and Lucía Gurbillon of the Faculty of Psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, set out to address a persistent problem in higher education: although STEM programs are central to scientific and technological advancement, the academic experience of women in these predominantly male environments is often not the same as that of their male peers. The researchers wanted to know whether the same educational factors that support men’s success in STEM do the same work for women, or whether the psychological machinery differs beneath the surface.

At the heart of the investigation lies academic self-efficacy, the belief a student holds in their own capability to organize and execute the actions required to succeed academically. Decades of research have tied self-efficacy to persistence, effort, and achievement, but the new study asks where this belief comes from in the specific context of STEM classrooms and what consequences it carries. The researchers focused on two upstream factors. The first is an autonomy-supportive climate—an educational environment in which instructors acknowledge students’ perspectives, offer meaningful choices, minimize controlling language, and nurture intrinsic motivation. This construct is grounded in Self-Determination Theory, the influential framework holding that autonomy, competence, and relatedness are basic psychological needs whose satisfaction fuels motivation and well-being. The second factor is the use of metacognitive strategies: the planning, monitoring, and self-regulation techniques that learners deploy to manage their own thinking—setting goals before studying, checking comprehension along the way, and adjusting tactics when material refuses to yield.

To trace the relationships among these constructs, the team employed structural equation modeling, a statistical framework that allows researchers to test whether a hypothesized network of cause-like associations fits observed data. Their general model posited that an autonomy-supportive climate and metacognitive strategies would each be associated with academic self-efficacy, which in turn would be associated with academic performance and academic satisfaction, with direct pathways from the climate to satisfaction and performance as well. The hypothesized general SEM model demonstrated good fit indices, meaning the observed pattern of relationships among variables was statistically consistent with the proposed structure. The researchers evaluated fit using established benchmarks, including the Comparative Fit Index, the Tucker-Lewis Index, the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation, and the Standardized Root Mean Squared Residual—metrics that together assess whether the model reproduces the covariance structure of the data adequately.

Critically, the team did not stop at a single pooled model. Because their central question concerned gender, they needed to verify that the same measurement instruments were functioning equivalently across men and women before making comparisons. The model met invariance criteria, the statistical prerequisite for meaningful multigroup comparison, after which the researchers conducted multigroup SEM analyses—essentially fitting the network of associations separately for male and female students and testing whether specific pathways held in each group.

The results were revealing. In both gender groups, the factors associated with academic self-efficacy were the same: an autonomy-supportive climate and the use of metacognitive strategies were each significantly linked to students’ belief in their own academic capabilities. In other words, whether students were men or women, environments that supported autonomy and study habits grounded in self-regulated learning were associated with stronger confidence. This consistency suggests that these two levers remain powerful entry points for supporting all STEM students, regardless of gender.

The downstream picture, however, fractured along gender lines. Academic satisfaction—the sense of contentment and fulfillment students derive from their studies—was significantly associated with academic self-efficacy among women but not among men. For male students, the association with an autonomy-supportive climate was significant instead, while for women it was not. This pattern implies that what makes a woman in a STEM program feel satisfied with her academic life may be tied closely to whether she believes she can succeed, whereas men’s satisfaction appears more directly sensitive to the motivational character of their learning environment.

Academic performance told a similar story of divergence. Among women, both academic self-efficacy and an autonomy-supportive climate were associated with academic performance; among men, neither association reached statistical significance. The finding is striking because it inverts a common assumption that self-efficacy functions as a universal predictor of grades. In this STEM sample, confidence in one’s capabilities and an educational climate that respects student autonomy tracked with measurable achievement only for women, while men’s performance appears to ride on other factors outside the modeled network.

The researchers caution, appropriately, that the study’s design captures associations rather than experimental causation, and the divergent significance patterns raise as many questions as they answer. Yet the implications are considerable. If the same interventions do not produce the same psychological consequences across genders, then STEM retention programs, teaching training initiatives, and academic support services built on one-size-fits-all models may be quietly failing a substantial share of their audience. A mentoring scheme that boosts men’s satisfaction by enriching their learning environment might do little for women whose satisfaction hinges on self-efficacy; conversely, programs that build women’s confidence through mastery experiences and strategy training may be precisely the lever that both grades and satisfaction require for female students.

The broader context sharpens the stakes. International assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment have long documented gender gaps in mathematics and science confidence, and bodies like the OECD and national ministries—including Peru’s Ministry of Education, whose institutional landscape frames this research—have prioritized widening STEM participation. Women remain underrepresented in many STEM careers, and attrition during undergraduate study is one point at which the pipeline narrows. Understanding which psychological factors predict performance and satisfaction differently for men and women offers a route toward targeted, evidence-based support rather than blunt institutional policy.

Methodologically, the study demonstrates the value of multigroup structural equation modeling for educational psychology. Had the researchers stopped with the pooled model, which showed good overall fit, they might have concluded that a single unified story explained all students’ experiences. Only by testing invariance and then partitioning the sample did the gender-specific pathways emerge—an analytic lesson with relevance well beyond this single dataset. The work also underscores the continuing utility of instruments derived from frameworks like the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, a widely used measure of students’ learning strategies and self-efficacy, when combined with rigorous measurement-invariance testing.

The research was funded by Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú under grant CAP PI-1139 and approved by the university’s ethics committee under approval number 085–2024-CEI-CCSSHHyAA/PUCP, with all participants providing informed consent. Published as an open-access article in BMC Psychology, the study was received in August 2025, accepted in August 2026, and published on 03 September 2026, with a citable version carrying a permanent DOI.

For educators, the takeaway is that autonomy-supportive teaching and explicit training in metacognitive strategies remain foundational—both were linked to self-efficacy in every group examined. But the study also warns that confidence, satisfaction, and performance are woven together differently for women and men in STEM fields. For women, whose self-efficacy connects to both grades and satisfaction, cultivating belief in capability may be the single most consequential intervention. For men, satisfaction appears tied to the climate itself. As universities worldwide scramble to close gender gaps in science and engineering, this research suggests that the path to equity runs not through uniform policies but through a finer-grained understanding of how the same classroom can be, in psychological terms, two very different places.