Why Women Choose to Teach Math and Science: Interests, Constraints and Gendered Expectations

Why do young women who love mathematics and science end up standing at the front of a classroom rather than in a research laboratory or an engineering firm? A new qualitative study from Türkiye offers a rare, fine-grained answer to that question, tracing the tangled web of personal passion, family influence, exam pressure and gendered expectations that shapes the career decisions of female preservice mathematics and science teachers. The research, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, was conducted by İrfan Erdoğan of İstanbul University Cerrahpaşa and Gamze İnan of Boğaziçi University, and it arrives at a moment when the underrepresentation of women in many mathematics- and science-intensive careers remains a stubborn global problem.

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