Gender and Professional Qualification as Correlates of Teacher Competence in Mathematical Modelling: Evidence from Edo South Senatorial District, Nigeria

Gender and professional qualification are frequently proposed as correlates of teacher competence in mathematics education, yet their combined effect on competence to teach an unfamiliar, applied curriculum component such as Mathematical Modelling remains under-examined in the Nigerian context. This study investigated whether gender and professional qualification were significantly associated with Further Mathematics teachers' competence in teaching the Mathematical Modelling component of Nigeria's Further Mathematics Curriculum (FMC). A descriptive survey design was adopted, with a multi-stage stratified sample of 40 Further Mathematics teachers (29 males, 11 females) drawn from 26 public and private senior secondary schools in Edo South Senatorial District, Nigeria. Composite teacher competence was measured using the 32-item Mathematical Modeling Evaluation Questionnaire I (MMEQ I; Cronbach's alpha = .717), content-validated by subject and measurement experts. Independent-samples t-tests showed that male teachers scored significantly higher than female teachers, t(38) = 2.77, p = .009, while professionally qualified teachers scored higher than non-professionally qualified teachers, though not significantly, t(32) = 1.88, p = .069. Findings are interpreted through Bandura's (1997) self-efficacy theory, suggesting a gendered confidence gap in applied mathematical reasoning rather than a qualification-based gap. The study recommends gender-responsive continuing professional development and cautions against relying on formal qualification alone to predict competence in newly introduced curriculum content