<
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/18/parents-overestimate-sons-maths-skills-more-than-daughters-study-finds>
"Parents are more likely to overestimate maths ability in sons than daughters,
according to research that suggests that gender stereotypes at home may hinder
the progress of female students.
The findings, presented in a lecture at University College London this week,
found that parents tend to be overconfident about their children’s academic
performance in reading and maths regardless of gender. But, in maths, parents
overestimated boys’ skills to a significantly greater extent.
“We know that gender stereotypes can be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Dr
Valentina Tonei, an economist at the University of Southampton who presented
the research in a talk at the Institute of Education. “We sometimes hear that
girls don’t like maths, but what has been done to look at why they don’t like
maths? I’m quite convinced that this is not that girls dislike maths, but that
it is the result of years of being exposed to stereotypes.”
There continues to be a substantial gender gap in maths, physics and
engineering, with female students only making up 23% of A-level candidates for
physics and 37% for maths in the UK and forming an even smaller proportion
beyond degree level. The government’s former social mobility commissioner, the
headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh, told a select committee in 2022 that girls
did not choose physics A-level because they disliked “hard maths”, prompting
anger from leading scientists.
The latest work, suggesting that parental bias could play a role, follows
previous findings that teachers expect girls to be worse at maths and mark them
accordingly."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
