Ms. Scientist

Self-confidence and teacher support helps girls succeed at math and science

By Holly Otterbein Posted 09.11.2008 at 12:48 pm 7 Comments

Girl Studying lenifuzhead (CC licensed)

In 2005, the then-president of Harvard University said that men are better at math and science than women. (President Lawrence Summers' exact words were a bit more roundabout. While theorizing why women are underrepresented in those fields, he said "there is a different availability of aptitude at the high end.")

Turns out Summers's attitude may be to blame, according to a new study from vocational psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The three-year report sought to identify what encourages girls to pursue math and science, and what barriers keep them from the subjects. In the 20 years prior to the study, experts believed that girls lacked interest and tried to combat their indifference. The report revealed that a missing factor – confidence – often precedes interest. Because many girls perceived math and science as difficult, they assumed they would fail and didn't take the classes. Parental support and positive expectations from teachers can reverse these negative prognoses. Unfortunately, both boys and girls believed that teachers deemed boys better at math and science. The study didn't examine whether the teachers did indeed think this way, or if the boys and girls were internalizing stereotypes.

This comes shortly after scientists released a similar study in June, which examined 7 million students and found that boys and girls performed equally at math. Science noted that the results disproved Summers's infamous theory that more boys were math whizzes, since girls scored in the top five percent nearly as often as boys. The Times observed that people were shocked by these findings, which indicates that stereotypes are still alive and well. The study's co-author agreed, surmising that negative stereotypes drive girls and women out of math careers, regardless of their aptitude.

FOXNews.com also covered the study in an article entitled "Girls Catching Up to Boys in Math, Study Finds." Hold on. Didn't the research show that girls had already caught up with boys? And hadn't the co-researcher concluded that stereotypes, not aptitude, had kept them away from it in the first place? Maybe a study will come out showing that media generalizations are to blame for women's underrepresentation in math and science careers, too.

[Via PhysOrg]

Previous Article: Ain't No Cure For The Winter Time Blues...Or Is There?

Next Article: A Baby Earth

7 Comments

link to this comment

NotImpressed

09/11/08 at 1:31 pm

First off, Try proof reading and not just spell checking before submitting an article.

Why not put Mr. Summers actual quote in the article instead of your interpretation.....I'm sure you were a big fan of the Railroading that he got for daring to say that Women and Men are Different....

I think it's great that Women are doing better in Math and Science. However the question begs, Compared to what? The Boys of the US of course.

"people were shocked by these findings" Give me a break, for the last 30+ years the primary and secondary school curriculum has been greatly skewed to benefit Girls and their confidence. Many times it has been done at the expense of boys. One wonders if there is any true increase in performance compared to the rest of the world or if we should just be happy the Girls are doing better. Yay
Just wait until T9 hits the Math and Science departments in the major colleges, then we'll get some "Major" advancement, for girls anyway....

oooops too late, it’s already happening..

link to this comment

Kate McCormack

09/11/08 at 2:04 pm

Girls dominate the academic landscape at all levels, and even in math and science. School's advanced placement classes, are often 70 percent to 80 percent girls. This includes calculus and in AP biology. In some of these classes there is not a single boy.

College campuses are now nearly 60 percent female, with women earning at least 172,400 more bachelor degrees each year than men. Women are flooding into business schools and medical schools, and will be the majority at the nation's law schools.

Do your research Holly!

link to this comment

jandom

09/11/08 at 4:51 pm

what i'm about to say may be unpopular but i dare to believe it be true.
equal results in math's test? so what? how many women got a nobel prize for physics, maths? (i know there is no nobel prize for maths, but one can get it 'around' - like john nash for economy) how many women - great mathematicians - are noted in the history?
tests can be skewed. history is less prone to skewing. some may say 'that the community was anti-feminist' yup, up to a point, now that statement is just an excuse.

besides, being better certainly involves the confidence, not just the pure skill.
man may perform equally better in tests as women, but this proves nothing. tests require noting more than machine like repetition of a scheme and carefulness in calculations. achieving success in maths requires something more than this.

link to this comment

meltykiss

09/11/08 at 4:55 pm

I am having trouble figuring out what points NotImpressed and jandom are trying to make. Is it just me, or is it a little unclear?

link to this comment

titusrevised

09/11/08 at 7:07 pm

WOW. Lawrence Summers DID NOT SAY men are better at math and science, IN ANY WAY. He was merely describing a phenomenon he observes in his data which points to the idea that there is more variance in men as opposed to women.

The average IQ is 100. He is saying that most women have IQs very close to 100, maybe 95 through 110 generally. It is rare to find women with extremely high IQs or extremely low IQs. Men however are more varied. There are men with very low IQs and very high IQs. Thus more men would naturally be in intellectually demanding areas because there are simply more men with higher IQs and more men bums and criminals because there are more men with very low IQs.

Thought (from Supercrunchers): If you were having a child and you could choose for it to have a 90% of having an IQ between 95 and 100 or a 90% of having an IQ of 50 to 150, which would you choose? Probably the former because you wouldnt want to risk having a "slow" child.

link to this comment

empjag

09/11/08 at 7:13 pm

I agree with meltykiss. I also like your comment tidus. I'm a dude and I've always been better at math than other subjects; it's the one truth in the universe.

link to this comment

Dustman

09/13/08 at 3:59 am

So what, men and women are better at different things. And just maybe it also has to do with their upbringing/parenting... Women CAN work on cars but are they encouraged to? To all the ladies... Never sell yourself short!