Abstract

The study is conducted to examine the differences of gender perception among educators who are teaching in local higher learning institutions in Malaysia, in viewing their roles as the “teacher”. Several higher learning institutions were randomly targeted. Several researchers were involved in the data collection by means of using questionnaires in the survey over a period of several weeks.

The questionnaires were used to find out about their academic and professional backgrounds, requiring them to list their roles pertinent to their experiences in teaching, ranked them and provided the rationale behind the choices made. Twenty-five samples were collected to scrutinize the data by categorizing the information according to gender and teaching experiences and recording the frequencies of answers. From the study, it is found that regardless of gender and teaching experiences, most participants would consider themselves as “Provider of knowledge”, followed by “Nurturer”, especially those who are relatively new in teaching. There is also an indication that teacher’s experiences and gender might affect their perception in mirroring themselves.

A larger scale of study is needed in validating the findings of this study for it to be empirical, thus promoting in-depth investigations in viewing whether gender and cultural background may be vital factors that has profound effects towards their professionalism. It is hoped that future studies will shed some light to this rather controversial claims.

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