Elementary girls’ lower math achievement linked to teachers’ influence

 We’ve all heard the stereotype that women just aren’t as good as men in math and science. In fact, many of us have bought in to this stereotype--whether or not we realize it. A new study suggests that women elementary teachers are unwittingly passing on the age-old bias to their students, and girls in particular are taking it to heart.

According to a recent Science Daily article , a University of Chicago study has demonstrated that elementary school teachers, the vast majority of whom are female, tend to have anxieties about math. The study found a correlation among teachers’ math anxiety, second grade students’ believing the stereotype, and girls’ lower math scores on an achievement test.

Dr. Sian Beilock, an Associate Professor of Psychology and the Committee on Education, authored the paper, "Female Teachers' Math Anxiety Affects Girls' Math Achievement" published in a January 2010 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the paper, Beilock, an expert on anxiety and learning, claims that elementary education majors have the highest level of math anxiety than any other college major. Beilock goes on to explain that since math requirements to obtain an elementary teaching certificate are so low, math-anxious education majors can effectively avoid math preparation and still become teachers.

Beilock and her team of researchers first assessed math anxiety levels in 17 female elementary school teachers at the begin of an academic year and at the end. Then, the researchers determined who among 65 female and 52 male second grade students believed the stereotype that girls were innately poorer math achievers. To determine this, Beilock and her team told the students gender-neutral stories about other children who were good at math and reading. Then, they asked the students to draw the characters described in the story.

Girls who presumably believed the stereotype drew boys as good at math, and these same female students had significantly poorer scores on math achievement tests than girls who did not draw boys as good at math. Boys’ scores were not correlated to their gender stereotype beliefs. Interestingly, none of these differences in scores were seen at the beginning of the year. It was only after the year had passed--and presumably, after math-anxious female teachers were able to unwittingly indoctrinate their students to conform to the stereotype--that the girls’ scores dropped.

Beilock does concede that there could be several different factors influencing girls’ lower math scores. But she argues that the correlation between teacher math anxiety and girls’ lower math achievement is much too positive to ignore.

To read an MSNBC article debunking gender and math/science stereotypes, click here.

A Live Science article describing more research in men’s and women’s intelligence is found here.

Read about former Harvard President (now one of President Obama’s economic advisors) Lawrence Summer’s controversial comments about men’s and women’s intelligence here.

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This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes on the topics of online universities.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com .