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Some Female Teachers Bring Girls Down
Hey, ladies, are you bad at math? Know who might be to blame? Mrs. Rutledge, your second-grade teacher, because she was bad at math too!
(A nice break for your mother, who is to blame for all of your other shortcomings.)
A new study shows female teachers who are scared of math teach their girl students to fear it as well. The result? A gender gap.
The study looked at elementary school teachers — specifically females — who said they struggle with math and have math anxiety. Researchers found such teachers were more likely to believe that boys are hard-wired for math and that girls are more skilled in language.
They passed on this belief to their female students.
Not surprisingly, girls who bought into that notion scored significantly lower on math tests than their peers who didn’t make the gender/talents distinction.
From the LA Times:
“Teachers who are anxious about their own math abilities are translating some of that to their kids,” said University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, who led the study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This was the first study to look at math attitudes among teachers and test whether they could spread to students.
Here’s how it worked: students were tested at the beginning of first and second grade. Later in the year, they were tested again. Teachers, all female, were surveyed about their attitudes and abilities in math.
Gaps in performance weren’t found in the first round of tests in the fall. But a difference did emerge by the end of the year in classes where the teacher had reported math anxieties.
Researchers weren’t sure how the anxiety — and therefore lower performance — was expressed. Did teachers call on boys more often? Did they use a different tone with girls? Did they dismiss the girls all together?
Call me an intellectual snob, but I think that teachers with math anxiety at the first- and second-grade level is tragic. Sure, have your struggles in calculus. But addition and subtraction? Simple fractions? Word problems? Work that out before you head a classroom. And, by all means, blame yourself not your gender.
Women giggling and claiming and inability to do math in front of a crowd — students or otherwise — gets on my nerves nearly as much as women calling themselves “bad” for ordering dessert.
It’s not funny. You’re not naughty. Let’s get out of that girl ghetto and take our daughters with us.
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5 Comments
[...] Some Female Teachers Bring Girls Down [...]
Another Pregnant Man Prepares for Birth | Strollerderby commented on Jan 27 10 at 1:56 pmLaure68 commented on Jan 26 10 at 6:51 pmI have no problem believing this. I hate how acceptable it is (and expected) that girls not like math. I was very lucky that I had 2 wonderful math teachers, both women, who were proud of their ability. They were actually harder on the girls, expecting that we would actually do better than the boys. When I saw one years later I told her what a positive influence she was on me, and she said that she felt she had to make up for all those other teachers who thought girls weren’t as good in math.
Yes, women can excel in math. Seeing how badly we as a country are doing in the sciences, it is just awful that we are discouraging half the population from seeking careers in math and science.
Lisa commented on Jan 27 10 at 12:17 pmI see this all the time. But I also hear all the time, “thank you, my daughter used to hate math..”
Dee commented on Feb 17 10 at 5:52 amCommentsThis happened to me. My third grade teacher told me that not all girls are good in math and instead of helping, allowed me to write stories instead of doing math work. This set me up for a lot of heartache in school. It wasn’t until remedial math in college that I realized that I could do math and went on to take several statitics courses and the like, successfully. Better training for teachers is key.
Amanda commented on May 14 11 at 11:03 pmI had a female math teacher in 5th grade who, after giving a pop quiz, held everyone to the standard they set with that quiz. Her doing this made me realize I could do math. She also tended to push us girls harder to succeed. I loved Mrs. Taylor
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