How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls

[auntie]

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.



The pipeline for women to enter math and science occupations narrows at many points between kindergarten and a career choice, but elementary school seems to be a critical juncture. Reversing bias among teachers could increase the number of women who enter fields like computer science and engineering, which are some of the fastest growing and highest paying.



“It goes a long way to showing it’s not the students or the home, but the classroom teacher’s behavior that explains part of the differences over time between boys and girls,” said Victor Lavy, an economist at University of Warwick in England and a co-author of the paper.



Previous studies have found that college professors and employers discriminate against female scientists. But it is not surprising that it begins even earlier.



In computer science in the United States, for instance, just 18.5 percent of the high school students who take the Advanced Placement exam are girls. In college, women earn only 12 percent of computer science degrees.



That is one reason that tech companies say they have hired so few women. Last year, Google, Apple and Facebook, among others, revealed that fewer than a fifth of technical employees are women.



“The most surprising and I think important finding in the paper is that a biasing teacher affects the work choices students make and whether to study math and science years later,” said Mr. Lavy, who conducted the study with Edith Sand of Tel Aviv University.


Beginning in 2002, the researchers studied three groups of Israeli students from sixth grade through the end of high school. The students were given two exams, one graded by outsiders who did not know their identities and another by teachers who knew their names.



In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names. The effect was not the same for tests on other subjects, like English and Hebrew. The researchers concluded that in math and science, the teachers overestimated the boys’ abilities and underestimated the girls’, and that this had long-term effects on students’ attitudes toward the subjects.


For example, when the same students reached junior high and high school, the economists analyzed their performance on national exams. The boys who had been encouraged when they were younger performed significantly better.



They also tracked the advanced math and science courses that students chose to take in high school. After controlling for other factors that might affect their choices, they concluded that the girls who had been discouraged by their elementary schoolteachers were much less likely than the boys to take advanced courses.



Although the study took place in Israel, Mr. Lavy said that similar research had been conducted in several European countries and that he expected the results were applicable in the United States. The researchers also found that discouragement from teachers in math or science wound up lowering students’ confidence in other subjects at school, showing again the potential importance of nods of encouragement.


www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/upshot/how-elementary-school-teachers-biases-can-discourage-girls-from-math-and-science.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&abt=0002&abg=0

[cattledogkisses]

I'm so grateful that I had some awesome science teachers in school. And not all of them were women either; one of my favorites was a man. I had him from 8th grade through my senior year of high school (he moved up from the middle school to the high school with my class) and he would often come up with extra projects or exercises to challenge and encourage me. Teachers can make such an impact on how you feel about a subject.

[wawa]

Feb 6, 2015 14:55:12 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

I'm so grateful that I had some awesome science teachers in school. And not all of them were women either; one of my favorites was a man. I had him from 8th grade through my senior year of high school (he moved up from the middle school to the high school with my class) and he would often come up with extra projects or exercises to challenge and encourage me. Teachers can make such an impact on how you feel about a subject.

they really can.  I'm not sure I'd have ended up in engineering if it weren't for my calculus teacher.  He was amazing. 
I also had some really really fantastic science teachers in middle school.  The one of them let me just hang out in the lab whenever I pretty much wanted to - came up with all kinds of stuff for me to do. 

The OP is interesting.  I think I remember reading something posted here way back when about how elementary ed teachers are 1. overwhelmingly women and 2. tend to enjoy and have an interest in the English/LA side of things more than science and math (for a variety of reasons).  Which means our children are being taught in their formative years by people who are WAY more likely to struggle with math a bit, or at least just be slightly less comfortable with it.  That's going to have an effect!   I'm not sure how you fix that exactly.

[bugandbibs]

DD1 has always struggled in school. The year she finally caught up to grade level (4th grade) was the year she had a female math/science teacher. I really think that was a factor.

[eclaires]

Feb 6, 2015 15:18:54 GMT -5 wawa said:

Feb 6, 2015 14:55:12 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

I'm so grateful that I had some awesome science teachers in school. And not all of them were women either; one of my favorites was a man. I had him from 8th grade through my senior year of high school (he moved up from the middle school to the high school with my class) and he would often come up with extra projects or exercises to challenge and encourage me. Teachers can make such an impact on how you feel about a subject.

they really can.  I'm not sure I'd have ended up in engineering if it weren't for my calculus teacher.  He was amazing. 
I also had some really really fantastic science teachers in middle school.  The one of them let me just hang out in the lab whenever I pretty much wanted to - came up with all kinds of stuff for me to do. 

The OP is interesting.  I think I remember reading something posted here way back when about how elementary ed teachers are 1. overwhelmingly women and 2. tend to enjoy and have an interest in the English/LA side of things more than science and math (for a variety of reasons).  Which means our children are being taught in their formative years by people who are WAY more likely to struggle with math a bit, or at least just be slightly less comfortable with it.  That's going to have an effect!   I'm not sure how you fix that exactly.

Anecdotally - Ive noticed this with some of Jackson's teachers. His 1st grade teacher looooved math and made it fun. He was kind of meh on math in K even though he enjoyed it at home (MH is always doing math games and science stuff with the kids), but really loved it in 1st and really started to be more into it. I think K math bored him to a degree but I also think his teacher being excited about math and enjoying it made him think it was fun/interesting too.

As a student I guess I was above average across the board (took AP and honors math/science along with history/English classes) but I never really enjoyed them as much and they were more work for me, mostly because I was more likely to daydream in class vs being interested in the other subjects. But those are MH's strengths which I'm glad about. He's always doing math with the kids and Scarlett loves it, so I'm glad she has him. I don't care if she ever becomes an engineer like him, but I want her to feel like she has the choice if she is interested in those subjects/fields.

[mbcdefg]

My sister and I went to the same all-girls high school - four years apart, so we were never there together. My sister dropped out of college and has had a string of low-paying PT jobs since then while she goes to the bar nearly every night, and has absolutely no interest in going back to complete her degree.

My mom's always blamed the freshman-year science teacher (a woman) for screwing with my sister's self-esteem and causing her to hate school. They had a parent-teacher meeting and, according to my mom, the teacher basically called my sister stupid and my mom had to leave the room so she wouldn't wind up smacking her in the face. I had the same teacher while I went to school there ... her class was confusing and she was just a bizarre, rude person and nobody liked her.

It's a shame - my sister was/is naturally smart and seemed to do really well in math and computer science.

[Deleted]

I think I was lucky and had some pretty encouraging math and science teachers through the years. Especially my 7th grade female science teacher.

My school was rural and my math skills were not that strong compared to a lot of the other college students so I became discouraged at that point. But honestly I don't think it something I would have a passion for anyway.

[sparrowsong]

I always had an aptitude for math and science from very early on. I have no memory of any issues or challenges with teachers at all. I do remember a couple boys in my grade being pissed that a girl beat them on basically everything over and over and that making me deliciously happy.

[sugarglider]

Math was big in my hometown. There's a really good engineering school, and there's a middle school teacher whose math counts teams often rank nationally and chess teams compete internationally.

However, as a college student in NYC, I helped in middle school math classrooms at a decent public school. My kids struggled with math I had learned as a 3rd and 4th grader, while reading books I had read in advanced world lit in high school. I don't remember if it was pure speculation or based on what my students told me, but I got the impression their elementary school teachers simply favored humanities in their curricula.

[redheadk]

Feb 6, 2015 15:18:54 GMT -5 wawa said:

Feb 6, 2015 14:55:12 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

I'm so grateful that I had some awesome science teachers in school. And not all of them were women either; one of my favorites was a man. I had him from 8th grade through my senior year of high school (he moved up from the middle school to the high school with my class) and he would often come up with extra projects or exercises to challenge and encourage me. Teachers can make such an impact on how you feel about a subject.

they really can.  I'm not sure I'd have ended up in engineering if it weren't for my calculus teacher.  He was amazing. 
I also had some really really fantastic science teachers in middle school.  The one of them let me just hang out in the lab whenever I pretty much wanted to - came up with all kinds of stuff for me to do. 

The OP is interesting.  I think I remember reading something posted here way back when about how elementary ed teachers are 1. overwhelmingly women and 2. tend to enjoy and have an interest in the English/LA side of things more than science and math (for a variety of reasons).  Which means our children are being taught in their formative years by people who are WAY more likely to struggle with math a bit, or at least just be slightly less comfortable with it.  That's going to have an effect!   I'm not sure how you fix that exactly.

Anecdote! But, seriously, I am an educational consultant and I work with elementary science teachers. I can absolutely attest that MANY are very uncomfortable with anything more than very basic science (classifying matter, a smattering of life science, etc). They do the bare minimum to teach to the standards, mostly because they are not confident in their knowledge and there is little attention/support given by admin. It's just not a focus. I taught 5th grade science, which is tested in my state, and that is the first time that many students really have a solid, focused year of science education. In earlier years, it's sort of stuck off to the side with social studies.

It's sad and it sucks because science is fucking awesome and a blast to teach. It does not have to be intimidating to teach or time-intensive to prep. Kids really enjoy it and it's something that I found that all of my students, from the ones who came to my room from the Applied Skills classroom for socialization to my highly gifted students, could enjoy, understand (to varying degrees), participate in, and feel successful at while all in the same room working with the same materials. 

Man, I will just never understand why people don't like teaching science. I mean, I know the reasons but I love it and am kind of miffed that others don't love it.

ETA: I also feel that lack of confidence in the material is very damaging to students. They pick up on that and perceive it as something that is hard to learn and understand so many can be resistant to science class. Students get to middle school, perceive science as hard just as it's ramping up, they don't have the knowledge base they ought to have, and then it truly is hard.

[Dumbledork]

My high school science teacher was a woman. She was one of the most hated teachers in our school because she was so strict, but my sisters and I all loved her. I learned a lot from her and she's probably the main reason I still have an interest in science now.

I'm a pre-k teacher in the South. Traditional gender roles are big here, and the girls never want to play in the building, math, or science centers because "there's no girl toys." Once we get them in though, they never want to leave. Same goes for the boys in the art and language centers. Half my job the first month is convincing them that there are no boy toys and no girl toys, just toys.

ETA: Oh, and my Teaching Math and Teaching Science education professor in college was a woman and she is, hands down, the best teacher I've ever had in school. She's awesome. I love her. I was uncomfortable with the idea of teaching math and science before her, but she honestly helped me understand it in a whole new way and I love teaching that stuff now. 

[pt716]

I always was better at math and science and it never occurred to me to I wasn't supposed to be good at it. I also had teacher from middle school on telling me to go into science. Then I went to grad school and it killed science for me. So even with all that early encouragement and a natural aptitude I do not do anything science related now.

[Deleted]

Can I just ask a sort of relevant question?
Why do we measure girls interest in science with engineering and computer science only?
My pharmacy class was over 80% girls. Is that not sciencey enough? Medical schools are close to 50/50 these days.
I just get annoyed that I don't seem to be measured in the girls who majored in science count.

[curbsideprophet]

Interesting. I am curious to know more details on the math tests in the study. It seems like there should not be much room for variation of test scores given the subject.

I love math and science, hopefully DD does too.