Study debunks myths about gender and math performance

[redqueen]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/uow-sdm120911.php

MADISON — A major study of recent international data on school mathematics performance casts doubt on some common assumptions about gender and math achievement — in particular, the idea that girls and women have less ability due to a difference in biology.

"We tested some recently proposed hypotheses that try to explain a supposed gender gap in math performance and found they were not supported by the data," says Janet Mertz, senior author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Instead, the Wisconsin researchers linked differences in math performance to social and cultural factors.

The new study, by Mertz and Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematical and computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, was published today (Dec. 12, 2011) in Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The study looked at data from 86 countries, which the authors used to test the "greater male variability hypothesis" famously expounded in 2005 by Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, as the primary reason for the scarcity of outstanding women mathematicians.

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More at link of course.

Imagine that... social and cultural factors. Who would ever have guessed!

[iris27]

1. I always wondered what proponents of those theories had to say when shown proof of the

phenomenon of stereotype threat?

[redqueen]

2. I'd be curious to know as well,

at least regarding the academic proponents. About the average Joe's response, I'm not so curious.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. if they really know about stereotype threat

they say, that as a phenomenon it doesnt exist outside the lab. as in, it has never been proved to exist outside the lab

[ZombieHorde]

4. Math is my daughter's favorite school subject.

She loves science too, but math seems to come fairly naturally to her.