A little critique

[velvetpage]

Gender gap persists at highest levels of math and science testing

The authors of this study point out that the achievement gap between boys and girls, when testing gifted seventh-graders, has narrowed dramatically in the last thirty years. When it was studied in the eighties, the number of boys scoring above 800 on the math SAT outnumbered the girls 30 to 1, and that gap has narrowed to about 3 to 1. That happened in the first fifteen years - that is, the 3:1 gap has been consistent since 1995.

So the authors are postulating that the persistence of this 3:1 gap indicates a difference in innate ability between boys and girls in math and scientific reasoning (where the same gap is evident.)

I'm not buying it. Here's why.

First, for every elementary school teacher who is well-versed in constructivist teaching methods as they relate to math, there are a bunch more who aren't. The NCTM (National Council for Teachers of Mathematics) put out the original version of their constructivist curriculum in 1989; I suspect if one were to break down the changes further within that thirty-year time span, it would be the years between 1990 and 1995 that would show the biggest change. But the uptake is, at best, piecemeal. Teachers still teach from textbooks, which short-circuit the problem-solving process by their very nature. Manipulatives still start to disappear from ready availability in classrooms as early as grade four. The higher one goes in math, the more likely it is that manipulatives will disappear almost entirely from the classroom, to be replaced with purely abstract problems and procedural methodology - not because those are the end goal of mathematics instruction but because that's how the teachers were taught, and when they get out of the comfort zone of their pedagogical instruction which is generally aimed at the middle of the expected outcomes for their grade level, they tend to fall back on what they know.

In short, how much of this is the fact that girls learn mathematics differently, and their learning styles for mathematics aren't being supported in their gifted classrooms? My gut instinct says that's a huge part of the reason for the gender gap, but of course I don't have the stats to back it up.

Second, their base data is of twelve-year-old gifted kids. Leaving aside the selection criteria for giftedness (which honestly I question, knowing as I do dozens of people who are very clearly gifted academically but were not identified as such in school) there's the question of socialization. Girls are still socialized away from mathematics, more subtly perhaps than they used to be and less often by teachers, but it still happens. Twelve-year-olds are at the point in their lives when they're really struggling to figure out their place in the world. How many of those gifted kids have already decided that math isn't their thing, due to a couple of years of the poor teaching I mentioned above? How many of them will be talked out of that thinking once it starts to establish itself? Or will it simply be seen as her choosing what she's best at, and hey, there are great careers in language-based subjects, too, so what does it matter if she gives up on the highest levels of math?

In short, socialization has been downplayed as a reason in this study, probably erroneously. The cultural myopia of the data selection is in my favour, here: there is no gender gap in several Asian countries when it comes to mathematics, which makes me question why there should be a 3:1 gender gap here. But the study is done entirely on American students using American tests.

Third is the issue of NCLB. It started in 2001. It short-circuits attempted improvements in instruction because so much of the testing is knowledge-based rather than based in a problem-solving model. Because the testing has such very high stakes attached to it, teachers teach to the test, meaning that improvement in instruction has been stymied in favour of getting the test scores up. You'd think that wouldn't affect gifted education, but school culture affects everything, including the kids who otherwise might not have to worry about it. If the teachers' PD is all about getting test scores up, the teacher of the gifted students effectively is getting no PD at all. His kids are going to do just fine. But he's not then getting trained in the enrichment methods which would really serve everyone much better and are absolutely essential for the highest-functioning kids.

In short, if you want to see problem-solving in students, you have to ask for problem-solving on the tests. The US as a whole is not doing that, so the level of problem-solving isn't improving.

Should I email the authors of the study and point out the problems in their methodology? :)

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

You should absolutely email the authors of the study.

I was a seventh-grade gifted girl with particular skill in math in 1995, and I GUARANTEE you that sexism and stereotypes were still seriously interfering with girls' math achievement then. It was pretty fucking blatant, and it came from both teachers and fellow students. In fact, resentment from other girls about my math ability (and the fact that I wasn't too tactful about it, a problem exacerbated by my often not receiving adequate enrichment) contributed heavily to my being bullied in both grade five ('93-'94) and grade seven ('95-'96). I experienced sexism from a female teacher who refused to provide me adequate math enrichment, as well, in grade five. There was VERY clearly sexism contributing to the gender gap in math achievement in 1995, so if the gap hasn't changed, I don't see any reason to think its cause has changed.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

You should, because there are things they could look at relatively trivially I think. Do girls who test as gifted who are in schools where girl-based methodologies are used do better, worse, or the same?

The US (IMO), outside of single-sex school proponents, is loathe to admit that not only do individual children learn differently, but that there are some significant differences in how girls-in-general and boys-in-general learn. And having teachers call on girls 50% of the time is an insufficient "fix" to the persistent issue that our educational institutions are based on how to teach boys.

[amyura.livejournal.com]

Gifted 12-year-olds? They used the Johns Hopkins-identified G&T kids. The method of identity itself is flawed, because Hopkins uses the results of earlier standardized tests to identify kids that might be gifted, and invites them to take the SATs.

Not sure if the problem-solving is an issue here, because the SAT itself doesn't really test problem-solving. It tests a very limited range of facts. And only the richest districts even still have gifted programs. Nowhere I've ever taught or attended had one. A few of us got to do self-directed enriched math off by ourselves in elementary school, and then we were placed in year-ahead classes through middle and high school for math and science, which cost the district nothing. In elementary school, I got pulled out for a Great Books reading group twice a week, and my mother-in-law, a retired elementary reading teacher, did something similar herself. Other than that? No gifted classes.

I got a 680 on the SAT when I took it in grade seven. I got an 800 four years later, which would have been right in the middle of this study, and an 800 on the math GRE (which admittedly was a FAR easier feat to accomplish).

Without seeing the study or the methodology, I'd have to go almost exclusively with socialization. Have there been any studies pointing to girls as a group learning mathematics differently? And how much of THAT difference could be attributed to very early socialization itself?

[integritysinger.livejournal.com]

being the 1 girl to every 3 boys that did well in math, I have to say I AM a much different thinker than most women. In fact, I think much more masculine in my approach to problems.

not discounting your thoughts, just saying, yeah - I'm definitely a different thinker than other XX humans.

[wayfarersgirl.livejournal.com]

I'm not a teacher, so I don't come at the issue from that perspective, but this is an issue very close to my heart. I guess my perspective is more from the social environment and personal choices of the students? I don't know how to describe it. Hm.

Anyway. It wasn't comprehensive, but I did a study on this a few years ago, based on local school district data (11th and 12th grade scores and participation) combined with state data (4th and 8th grade mandatory standardized tests). It was very interesting to see the statistics.

What I saw was that as age increased, so did the gap. This isn't new information. Some people are quick to say that it's because "oh, 4th grade math isn't hard enough to show a difference in potential. The innate difference comes when you get to higher levels of math, where it's more difficult." But I don't agree; there are plenty of 4th graders who struggle with that level of math, and according to the data, that doesn't seem to be gender-based. The basic thought processes for math are the same up through higher levels, for the most part. If girls really are just not as tuned in to that kind of thinking, not as innately gifted in math, I would honestly expect that to be reflected (I believe the actual data showed that 4th grade girls outperformed 4th grade boys, but not with a statistically significant margin).

What interested me most, though, was from our local school district data. The high school AP classes (college-level courses taught in high school, where students take a test at the end of the year to qualify for college credit) in math and science had a significant skew towards the men--in participation. But not performance. The female mean and median scores were higher than the male mean and median scores, but the sample size was much smaller. There are several possible explanations, but the one that fit with the 4th/8th grade trends was this: mid-level females weren't taking the classes. A male who would likely make a B would much more probably enroll in a class than a female who would likely make a B.

My thoughts on the standardized test gap are related to that concept. Girls are not taking the advanced classes (even as far back as 8th grade, it appeared. Here, math splits in 7th grade between "regular" and "pre-algebra," and again in 8th grade to "regular," "pre-algebra," and "algebra." That split sticks with students until they graduate, with even more splits in high school). When students get to the age to take standardized tests, then, the males are more likely to have had advanced classes in math that would have further prepared them for the test content.

So not only have the girls not been taught in a way that they would learn, many of them have simply not been taught. The girls that stuck around did as well as their high-performing male counterparts; it's hard not to wonder how the mid-range girls would have performed in comparison to their mid-range male counterparts, had they taken the courses. The whole situation makes me a little sick to my stomach, and feels vaguely overwhelming. I presented a paper based on my research at a regional meeting of the Texas Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, and I did things in college like organize a free weekend math/science workshop for middle school girls, where a group of college-aged female math/science majors showed the girls awesome college-level science experiments and tricks. But it's such a massive problem, and I don't even know where to begin to try and help fix it.