It is also important to consider the role of the teacher in girls’ engagement with problem solving. Education Week reporter Sarah Schwartz (2018) challenges us to consider this:
Students in classes where teachers have a “multi-dimensional” approach to problem solving that allows for multiple strategies are more likely to have a growth mindset at the end of the course than students of teachers who value speed or memorization. This effect can be more pronounced for some students than others. For example, separate research found that when female teachers had more anxiety around doing math, the girls in their classes had lower achievement. The boys in their classes did not see these same negative effects.
Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez, and Susan C. Levine (2010) also note this correlation between a woman teacher’s confidence with mathematics and her students’ confidence. Given that most elementary teachers in the United States and Canada are women (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2016), we can say with certainty that women teachers have a great reach in their access and interactions with learners. Therefore, it is important to consider this research that suggests that how a teacher responds to mathematics is an issue that can impact how certain populations of students, such as girls, will respond to mathematics.
Differences in Spatial Skills Among Boys and Girls
Some research suggests that boys demonstrate more sophisticated spatial skills than girls (Klein, Adi-Japha, & Hakak-Benizri, 2010). The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) calls for instructional programs from prekindergarten through twelfth grade to enable each and every student to “use visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric reasoning to solve problems.” A gender gap in this area is noteworthy because in addition to being a part of content standards at all grade levels, research shows that greater spatial skills are a predictor of higher mathematics performance in later years of schooling and that they also positively impact the selection of STEM-related careers (Tzuriel & Egozi, 2010). Despite this reported gender imbalance, much of this same research suggests targeted intervention can improve girls’ deficits in spatial skills, even to the extent that it eliminates gender discrepancy. There is an impact on girls’ exposure to the instructional experiences that have the potential to positively impact the development of students’ spatial skills. To foster these experiences, teachers can:
■ Explain to young people that spatial skills are not innate but developed.
■ Encourage children and students to play with construction toys, take things apart and put them back together again, play games that involve fitting objects into different places, draw, and work with their hands.
■ Use handheld models when possible (rather than computer models) to help students visualize what they see on paper in front of them. (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010, p. 56)
Use figure 1.5 to reflect on why the gender achievement gap appears in some contexts but not others.
Figure 1.5: Reflection on disparities in gender achievement gap across contexts.
Evidence Challenging a Gender Gap in Mathematics
The following is evidence that challenges the notion of a gender gap in mathematics. Specifically, we highlight marginal differences between boys’ and girls’ mathematics achievement scores and student confidence levels impacting mathematics achievement.
Marginal Differences Between Boys’ and Girls’ Mathematics Achievement Scores
As previously indicated, some data challenge the presence of a mathematics gender achievement gap. For instance, Jennifer E. V. Lloyd, John Walsh, and Manizheh Shehni Yailagh (2005) conducted an analysis of grades, standardized test scores, and self-efficacy responses among sixty-two fourth graders and ninety-nine seventh graders and conclude that “girls’ mathematics achievement met or exceeded that of boys’” (p. 384).
The NCES (2017) report of NAEP data for 2003–2017 indicates that there is not a mathematics gender achievement gap except for grade 4, as we previously outlined. Although NCES (2017) reports the presence of the gap for just one grade, that is one grade too many! Why this phenomenon exists for grade 4 in particular is a point for further study. A variety of factors, such as grade 4 mathematics curriculum, assessment item structures, and much more, could influence this outcome, and researchers continue to explore it (Reardon, Kalogrides, Fahle, Podolsky, & Zarate, 2018). Nonetheless, it is clearly important for educators to take a closer look at the mathematics experiences of girls in elementary school, which is why we chose to focus this book on grades K–5.
Student Confidence Levels Impacting Mathematics Achievement
There are other variables that need examination. For instance, what we tell students about their mathematics performance or about anticipating their mathematics performance really matters. How can we encourage students? How can we empower students to be successful in mathematics, simply by what we say to them? How can we even the playing field for boys and girls in mathematics? Perhaps there are many answers to these questions and to the previous questions. Here is one simple answer: “When test administrators tell students that girls and boys are equally capable in math, … the difference in performance essentially disappears” (Hill et al., 2010, p. xv). So, what we say to students can have a great deal of influence on how they perform in mathematics. To send direct messages about the nature of intelligence as dynamic and to reduce stereotypes, teachers and administrators can:
■ Teach students that intellectual skills can be acquired—Explain that, like muscles, the more we use our brains, the stronger they become. Help students learn that their brains form new connections as they stretch themselves and work hard to learn something new.
■ Praise students for their effort (not their outcomes)—Give feedback about students’ processes and how they arrive at conclusions.
■ Highlight the role of struggle in education—Help convey to students that challenges, hard work, and mistakes are valuable and admirable. Explain to them that the process of struggling and overcoming challenges has been at the core of most scientific and mathematical contributions in our society.
Use figure 1.6 to rate your confidence teaching and learning mathematics.
Figure 1.6: Educator reflection on anxiety toward mathematics and its impact on students.
Considering the Impact of Teachers’ Mindsets
We briefly mentioned the teacher’s influence in the previous section. Here we deal with this topic in a bit more detail. Elementary mathematics teachers play an important role in the mathematics learning experiences of young girls. Interestingly, studies even suggest that teachers may impact girls’ perceptions of and achievements in mathematics beyond the mathematics lessons taught in the classroom, especially if that teacher is a woman (Beilock et al., 2010; Klass, 2017). Regardless of teacher effectiveness, girls’ mathematics achievement may actually be lower in classrooms where a woman teacher has mathematics anxiety, meaning that she is not confident in either her own mathematics abilities, her ability to teach mathematics, or both (Beilock et al., 2010). Young girls may implicitly be forming a gender stereotype since they assume the teacher’s knowledge and ability to learn applies to them.
Teachers’ perceptions of student achievement in mathematics also offer potential for gender