Mathematics classrooms, gender and affect

Abstract

Gender differences in mathematics learning outcomes persist and several explanatory models incorporate affective variables. Current understandings of how children learn mathematics seem inconsistent with traditional mathematics instruction. The literature reveals that little is known about the relationship between classroom factors and students' beliefs about themselves as learners of mathematics. The study reported here explored this relationship at two levels: a large scale survey and in-depth studies of two classrooms. Classroom factors which might influence beliefs were identified, and provided partial explanations for some of the gender differences noted. There were clear implications for the teaching of mathematics.

Equity, empowerment and different ways of knowing

“…Various research projects have monitored the under achievement of girls and isolated the processes which negatively affect their achievement in mathematics. Factors such as teacher attention (Forgasz & Leder, 1996;Koehler, 1993;Leder, 1993;Spender, 1982), the contexts and examples used in books and schemes (Walkerdine & Girls and Mathematics Unit, 1989), classroom behaviours (Spender, 1982;Forgasz & Leder, 1996), and the forms of questions which are used in assessment (Murphy, 1990) are all known to affect the performance of girls. Indeed the increased awareness among teachers of the influence of such classroom factors, as well as broader societal changes which have empowered women and girls, have probably contributed to the improved performances of girls which have been reported in the last 2-3 years.…”

Collaborative statistical investigations in diverse settings

“…In the classroom setting the differences in factors associated with events in groups with dilferent gender balances were not as pronounced as might have been predicted by Webb [32] or Forgasz and Leder [16]. The observation of more 'outsider" factors in the groups with two boys (71% of these factors) is related to their overall behaviour as documented by Watson and Chick [30].…”

Gender-related differences on open and closed assessment tasks

“…Interestingly, when nothing was at stake (for example, in exercises undertaken during the course), there was less abstention and this usually when the student genuinely did not know, rather than when they were merely uncertain. The survey article [2] provides considerable evidence that females often perform worse on objective tests, and that a ective factors, rather than lack of knowledge, have a considerable in¯uence. McLeod [10] believes it`unlikely that di erences in problem-solving performance between the sexes can be explained in any other way'.…”

“…When, for example, multiple-choice or true/false questions were used as part of the assessment, it was found [1] that there were signi®cant gender e ects, some of which may be ascribed to di erent attitudes to risk-taking [2]. Some of these e ects may be put down to the fact that the student will lose marks for guessing wrongly, while there is no penalty for abstention, so that the`safer' option is to abstain if in real doubt.…”