Pre-service primary teachers' gender and studies previously undertaken: effects on problem solving

This study analyses the influence of gender and studies previously undertaken on problem-solving. An experimental design was used with two independent variables (gender and studies previously undertaken) and one dependent variable (scores in the problems). A booklet containing two word problems that differ from each other in structure was administered to 66 third-year pre-service primary teachers from the same Faculty (Faculty of Teacher Training, University of Valencia, Spain). The results of the analyses of variance simple showed that: a) men undergraduate students solve the difficult problem more successfully than women undergraduate students, b) students who had completed post-compulsory secondary education do not solve the problems significantly better than the others, and c) students who had studied physics and chemistry in the tenth grade at high school solve the problems significantly better than the others.