What Am I Best At? Grade and Gender Differences in Children's Beliefs About Ability Improvement

Freedman-Doan, Carol; Wigfield, Allan; Eccles, Jacquelynne S.; Blumenfeld, Phyllis C.; Arbreton, Amy J. A.; Harold, Rena D.

doi:10.1016/s0193-3973(00)00046-0

Cited by 65 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…This finding is not surprising because older children tend to participate in more organized sports activities that are more physically strenuous and that require them to negotiate the rules of the game; these activities are considered "masculine" in American society. These activities often require social competence, cooperation, and leadership potential, and they may provide children with a source of positive self-esteem (Freedman-Doan et al, 2000) and promote spatial imagery (Ozel, Larue, & Molinaro, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender-linked Differences in the Toys, Television Shows, Computer Games, and Outdoor Activities of 5- to 13-year-old Children

2006

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This study was designed to compare how 5-to 13-year-old children's leisure activity preferences differ with age and gender. Responses from 60 boys and 60 girls about their favorite toys, television shows, computer games, and outdoor activities were compared across leisure categories. The results showed that gender was a significant factor. Overall, boys spent more time in these leisure activities than girls did. They spent the most time engaged in sports, watching television, and playing computer games, whereas girls spent the most time watching television. Results from a gender index for all activities indicated that boys' leisure preferences became slightly more masculine with age. For girls, preferences for television shows became more feminine with age, but preferences for toys, computer games, and sports became less feminine. These self-chosen preferences may provide differential opportunities for the development of visual-spatial skills, achievement, initiative, self-regulation, and social skills.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender-linked Differences in the Toys, Television Shows, Computer Games, and Outdoor Activities of 5- to 13-year-old Children

2006

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“…Email: isabelle.plante.1@umontreal.ca in mathematics than with their 'over-achievement' in language. Thus, although the existence of stereotypes favouring females in language is often presumed by many researchers (Eccles, 1994;Freedman-Doan et al, 2000;Jacobs, Lanza, Osgood, Eccles, & Wigfield, 2002), the actual prevalence of such stereotypic beliefs remains to be assessed. Accordingly, the present study intends to evaluate maths and language stereotypes using a questionnaire that explores students' stereotypic views more fully than previously.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student gender stereotypes: contrasting the perceived maleness and femaleness of mathematics and language

Plante

Théorêt

Favreau

2009

Educational Psychology

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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the gender stereotypes endorsed by elementary and high school students regarding mathematics and language. We developed a questionnaire allowing students to rate mathematics and language as either male or female domains and administered it to a sample of 984 elementary and high school French-speaking Canadian students (Grades 6, 8, and 10). Results showed that, with the exception of Grade 6 boys, students did not believe that mathematics was a male domain, or even conceived of mathematics as a predominantly female domain, suggesting that the traditional stereotype favouring boys in mathematics might have changed over the past few years. Moreover, language was clearly viewed as a female domain. Overall, our findings suggest that boys seem to be in need of encouragement in school, especially regarding language, where the advantage given to girls is particularly salient.

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“…The children's notions were examined in terms of two academic school subjects, mathematics and Finnish (= the mother tongue), whose school assessment was already familiar to them. Earlier studies have suggested that children's notions of the malleability of their competencies depend on the ability domain or the school subject in question (Bempechat et al 1991;Freedman-Doan et al 2000;Räty et al 2004;Spinath and Stiensmeier-Pelster 2001). The findings of a previous study of ours concerning children from the second, fourth and sixth grade also suggested that the extent of the differences between older and younger children's assessments of the malleability of their competencies depend on the subject domain: the children's ratings of their possibilities of improving their performance became more pessimistic with advancing grade-levels in Finnish but not in mathematics (Räty et al 2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

Children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies

2008

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This study set out to examine children's notions of the malleability of their academic competencies and the relations of these notions to the child's grade-level and gender and the parent's educational level. In interviews of a total of 103 boys and girls of the third and the sixth grade, children of academically and vocationally educated parents were asked to rate their potential for improving their competencies in mathematics and Finnish. The children were asked to use intrapersonal and normative criteria in their ratings. The ratings were found to form distinct domains of the notions of malleability, as they did not correlate with each other. The children's ratings of their current competencies, i.e. their academic self-concepts, turned out to be related to their normative ratings of the malleability of their competencies. The findings further suggested that the children's notions of the malleability of their academic competencies became more pessimistic in the course of their school years.

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What Am I Best At? Grade and Gender Differences in Children's Beliefs About Ability Improvement

Cited by 65 publications

References 19 publications

Gender-linked Differences in the Toys, Television Shows, Computer Games, and Outdoor Activities of 5- to 13-year-old Children

Gender-linked Differences in the Toys, Television Shows, Computer Games, and Outdoor Activities of 5- to 13-year-old Children

Student gender stereotypes: contrasting the perceived maleness and femaleness of mathematics and language

Children’s notions of the malleability of their academic competencies

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