Unraveling gender disparities in teachers’ technological pedagogical and content knowledge: A large-scale meta-analytic review

Abstract

This large-scale meta-analytic review investigates gender disparities in pre- and in-service K-12 teachers' Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) self-efficacy and performance. Synthesizing 915 effect sizes from 102 primary studies and 420 teacher samples (N = 681,745 teachers) in 70 countries via multilevel meta-analyses, we found small but significant gender differences favoring male teachers in TPACK self-efficacy ($\bar{d}$ = −0.17), particularly in technological knowledge ($\bar{d}$ = −0.31) and technological pedagogical knowledge ($\bar{d}$ = −0.14). However, no significant gender disparities were observed in TPACK performance ($\bar{d}$ = −0.08). Our findings revealed considerable heterogeneity in these effects across samples, studies, countries, measures, and over time, which could be partly explained by factors such as educational level, country-level gender inequality, and economic development. These results do not support male teachers’ advantage in all aspects of technology-related teaching competencies. Our meta-analytic review further implies that gender disparities in TPACK vary across contexts or over time.