The association between the gender gap in science achievement and students’ perceptions of their own attitudes and capabilities

Abstract

Among the countries that participated in the trends in international mathematics and science study (TIMSS) 2019 for grade 8 science, Oman had the highest gender gap in favor of girls. The current study explores the gender gap in science achievement in Oman and relates it to students’ varying perceptions of their own attitudes and capabilities. The sample in the study comprised 467 grade 9 students, 266 female and 201 male. The participants were given a TIMSS-like science test, along with four self-perception surveys; these explored metacognitive awareness, self-regulation (SR), science learning self-efficacy (SLSE), and attitudes to science (AS). The results indicated that student self-perceptions of SR, SLSE, and AS, were significantly related to the gender gap in students with higher-level science achievement. The results were different when looking at the gender gap in scores for lower-level questions; here, there was no relation to any of the four self-perception variables explored in the study.

Students’ Conceptual Understanding, Self-Efficacy and Scientific Creativity in Science Learning: A Multivariate Analysis

“…However, Aurah (2017) employed MANOVA to examine science self-efficacy in terms of gender and detected a statistical difference, with female students reporting better self-assessment than male students. The same result was revealed by Al-Balushi et al (2022) indicating that there is a gender gap in science achievement, which is The study further shows the SC scores based on gender revealed no significant differences. It suggests that no statistical disparity can be identified between male and female in terms of their SC scores.…”

“…Gender gaps research in science has been investigated multiple times in the literature (i.e. Makarova, 2019;Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019;Huang et al, 2020;Sá et al, 2020;Al-Balushi et al, 2022;Cimpian et al, 2020;Meinck & Brese, 2019;Nygaard et al, 2022;Frandsen et al, 2020;Gupta, 2019;Reinking & Martin, 2018;Kiran et al, 2023;Marescotti et al, 2022). Makarova et al (2019) contended that genderscience stereotypes of math and science can possibly impact young women and men's goals to register in a STEM major at university by showing that a less definite masculine image of science has the potential to increase the probability of STEM career aspirations.…”