How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science

[n2doc]

We know that women are underrepresented in math and science jobs. What we don’t know is why it happens.

There are various theories, and many of them focus on childhood. Parents and toy-makers discourage girls from studying math and science. So do their teachers. Girls lack role models in those fields, and grow up believing they wouldn’t do well in them.

All these factors surely play some role. A new study points to the influence of teachers’ unconscious biases, but it also highlights how powerful a little encouragement can be. Early educational experiences have a quantifiable effect on the math and science courses the students choose later, and eventually the jobs they get and the wages they earn.

The effect is larger for children from families in which the father is more educated than the mother and for girls from lower-income families, according to the study, published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/upshot/how-elementary-school-teachers-biases-can-discourage-girls-from-math-and-science.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=2&abt=0002&abg=1

[niyad]

1. k and r and bookmarking for later, with thanks.

[Downwinder]

2. Perhaps the role models are there

and the people who write the texts intentional ignore them. Is there a better role model for science than Marie Curie?

[exboyfil]

4. Then you have this abomination

Neither of my STEM pursuing daughters were pleased.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/22/science-its-a-girl-thing-_n_1620235.html

[Downwinder]

5. I can see why!

[exboyfil]

3. I will give you one that still amazes me

My daughter met with her college adviser, a woman, in the summer before she started at Iowa State. Because of her hard work she had most of her freshman year and a large portion of her sophomore year done in mechanical engineering prior to graduating high school. Her adviser questioned my daughter signing up for Sophomore Design because of the older "boys" in this team driven class. I am glad I was not at that meeting. As I looked at her schedule there was one course in which I was certain she would do well, and that was it. My daughter was offended, and I would have probably said some unfortunate things.

Needless to say that not only did she get an A in the class. She pretty much anchored it especially when it came to the presentations (she was in Broadcast Journalism for three years and swept the state awards in stories her final two years). She also happened to fight off the older "boys" and achieve Dean's List someone.

It has been one observation in the time that my daughters' were in public school that women were a bigger problem in slowing their progression in math and science. In particular their primary sixth grade teacher and their junior high adviser for acceleration. My engineering daughter's two engineering teachers in high school, her two math teachers in junior high, and her fifth grade math teacher, all men, were the most supportive of her going into a STEM field. Even her male journalism teacher told her to not major in journalism but pursue math and science even though she was his best broadcast journalism student. I actually cannot think of a single male teacher that was anything but supportive of my two daughters going into STEM fields. Most but not all women were supportive as well.

[Victor_c3]

6. I've been trying to keep my daughters out of science their whole life

I constantly tell my oldest daughter (she is 6) that science is something only boys are good at. She just laughs at me. The notion that boys are "smarter" in science than girls is a joke and totally ridiculous to her. My youngest (she is 4) doesn't buy it either. I'm doing an awful job raising two girls to be totally subservient women who depend on men for everything.

FWIW, I'm a chemist by trade and I expose my kids relentlessly to science and engineering in any manner that I can.

However, the article is interesting and is all stuff that I've heard for years from my wife. My wife is a feminist and has done a great job exposing me to the subtle ways in which society treats girls/women different from boys/men and how it all starts with early childhood. Being aware of the process does a lot to bring about change.