Right - Primary aged girls and Maths

[CatKisser]

I've been looking at the list of children I'm teaching in September and once again, the highest achieving children in Maths are all boys. Every single one. Don't get me wrong, they're nice boys, but I'm so frustrated and really wondering why this is the case.

Two things stand out to me.

1. At parents' evenings, its crazy how many mums tell me "she's not great at Maths, I never was either. She's more into her writing." And they're talking about intelligent girls with bags of potential.

2. I find many of the girls I've taught struggle when it comes to investigations and open ended challenges. It comes with practice, but I do get the impression many of them would just prefer to have a nice page of sums where they can get a nice set of green ticks...

I was talking to a colleague today who claimed it's simply the fact that girls and boys are wired differently, which I totally disagree with, but I felt I couldn't give a coherent argument in return.

Can anyone, teachers or not, shed any light on this or offer any comment? For the record, I'm very proud of my Maths teaching and put a lot of time into making interesting lessons with a wide range of challenge, and our results are great.

If your colleague believes that boys and girls are wired differently for maths and has taught this class before, then that certainly could have had an influence, especially if that belief is shared with other teachers across the school. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'd be interested in the data across the years and whether this is a theme. Boys do outperform girls in maths at KS2, but not by that much that all your top students should be boys.
We seem to have the same problem with our feeder primary. Boys come in having way outperformed the girls at KS2 and this then follows them all the way up the school. This then affects how many take maths and further maths A-level, which affects career prospects and earning potential. Girls get nearly as many A*/A grades at GCSE as boys nationally, but not in my school. However, as they don't do as well at KS2, they still meet their targets.

I would definitely be examining the culture at your school as it is something that you could possibly challenge.

seven sorry to wade in but I am really interested to know what the noticing things that reinforce what you think thing is... If you happen to remember. Is it like wanting to be pregnant and suddenly noticing millions of bumps?

Sorry, I just realised that I posted a very ambiguous statement and then ran off to settle a crying baby!

I meant that I hadn't seen differences at reception level. What I have definitely seen though is lots of women saying things like "ooh, she's like me, I'm rubbish at maths". Which must send a message. They don't seem to compare themselves to their sons in the same way. Only anecdata, but I'd be interested to know if there is something there. I do try and actively combat this for DD by telling her how much both her Dad and I loved maths at school and how it was my favourite A level subject.

I think it's the Cordelia Fine book which has some stuff about the effect of having to write your sex on the top of a maths test. It would also have some general reading around the subject of hardwiring/conditioning if you are interested.

RE: Boys and literacy -- interestingly, DS won a county-wide story-writing prize in yr 6. When he went up for the prize, the organisers were quite obviously startled that he was a boy. He has a unisex name when shortened.

I did wonder if they would have graded it differently if they'd known.

Sadly DD is stereotype personified when it comes to maths. I have maths at A-level, both her aunts have maths at degree level, and her cousin is a bit of a mathmo star, but poor old DD still does the rabbit-in-headlights thing unless it's cash in which case she's right onto it.

Interesting reading some of the recent posts next to each other.

Two comments that girls are poor at tasks which are not clearly defined etc. Then one about cowmop's girl enjoying English precisely because it is more open-ended.

These don't meet do they? If girls want clearly defined short tasks (gather the ticks) then that does not meet things which are typical in more "girls" topics like English, History (?) which are very open ended, very imaginative, very "thinking outside the box" and so on.

Not sure how those things tie up, anyone got any ideas?

I don't know if this would apply to younger primary school aged girls, but I have noticed that some girls do tend to be more afraid to make mistakes than boys. When there's something to be figured out, boys are more likely to plough on. Their approach isn't always correct, but they're at least making an attempt which can be refined. Girls are more prone to sitting and staring at each other, not being willing to be the first to try and fail. Some are really bad at talking themselves out of something that they've already demonstrated capability in.

I think a cultural collective lack of confidence would play a big role - and go part way to explain why the problem of girls underachieving in maths is greater in some schools than others. I caught sight of something, not so long back (though didn't read in detail and I've had a sleep since seeing it) that learning style might be a better way of grouping than "ability" for some subjects and I suspect that maths is a prime candidate.

I've got 2 girls, Dd1 loves maths and DD2 hates it. DD2 isn't bad at maths, she is level 5 at end of year 5, but she seems to struggle with lack of confidence, and thinks she can't do it. I liked maths at school myself, and did physics at uni.
DD1 got a level 6 at end of year 6, as did quite a few other girls, I think there were as many girls as boys in the group that did level 6.

What seven says, absolutely.

Incidentally, the idea that boys struggle with literacy (whether for bogus 'wiring' reasons or genuine social reasons) and that therefore this is the same as girls struggling with maths is not borne out in academia.

In the UK, around 7% of professors of maths are women. Whereas, I believe women are outnumbered by men as professors of English, and certainly at prestigious universities it is often the case - these days Cambridge has 13 male profs and just one woman.

I mention this because the idea that boys and girls have 'hard wired' differences in skills somehow falls apart when you look at kinds of jobs those skills supposedly predict. I am sure that similar stories would apply to business, or politics, or other areas - I just mention academia because I know of it.

Teaching according to 'learning styles' is unevidenced nonsense and schools really shouldn't be referring to them at all any more.

I don't really know (this was the only maths I did with them), I presume a mixture of many things including confidence, natural ability, determination, competitiveness.
The girls seemed to be more concerned with getting it right whereas the boys actually found the process rewarding. I think they weren't used to getting things wrong and didn't like it, it goes against how they (and others) see themselves and perhaps makes them question their ability.

I taught a Year 1 and 2 and I'd say there was no difference. However, I always had a couple of boys who really struggled with analogue time but were great at all other maths topics.
My daughter is really good at maths but my son seems to be better at problem solving and logic.

The girls seemed to be more concerned with getting it right whereas the boys actually found the process rewarding

Yes, and this is true across the board - girls are conditioned to think they must get things right, and that is more important than enjoying the subject, or than being subversive/original.

Boys, meanwhile, lose out because they are often conditioned to think that they should always question and focus on enjoyment, and shouldn't be conscientious about accuracy.

Making gendered distinctions harms both groups, obviously.

In my industry there is a job which is v v maths and v v well paid and I've not counted but my feel is that at graduate entry level girls prob outnumber boys. In my company anyway. And on my floor of the office So not a hugely scientific study. But. I suspect that 20 years + ago that job would have been v v v male, what with them having the logical brains & all.

Interestingly, our family is very heavily heavily into literacy, science and maths, so I think all the kids get from DH and I a solid base of these things are all for you.

But, on the other side DS has never been as interested in books as DD1 was. Turns out DD has some ASD symptoms and DS has hearing problems. Both of which would have been so easy to ignore and say 'oh it's a boy/girl' thing.

I would love to do research on the impact of stereotypes on missed diagnosis and whether social moderation to make a child fit their labels impacts on how they present.

I watched a man bugger up a "male" task (reversing a trailer) the other day whilst other people were watching. He shrugged, had another go, and got it right. I thought to myself, hmm I would have gone bright red and handed the keys to the first of the kindly menfolk who said "Would you like me to do it for you love?" I'm wondering whether this relates to the difference in attitudes to the "have a bash even if it takes lots of goes to get the solution" maths tasks. I also wonder if there have been any studies done into time taken to interruption of each sex with "let me help you love" with little children bashing shapes into holes with toy hammers; and if there's any difference in literary tasks such as time taken to butt in when the child is learning to pronounce a word.

In my year 6 class, the top 3 in maths were all girls (we were very competitive.. I don't even remember who was next down because we were so far ahead). In my case my mum was always good at maths, and passed on that assumption to me (I have a foggy memory of her showing me algebra on a blackboard before I even started school - because she wrote her 'x's differently to how she was teaching me).

I've always preferred exams to coursework because of the waffliness of maths coursework, just to get an answer everyone knows anyway (which is odd, because in my work I really enjoy investigations and problem-solving) - although I do absolutely understand now that the journey is as important as the destination.

I actually found that once English became more about creativity and less about getting it write I enjoyed it a lot less too - I'm very literal minded though (as is my son - although he's only just 4 and they probably all are at that age)

Whotheduck are you thinking of confirmation bias?

In Iceland, horses are a boy thing, maths is a girl thing, apparently.

Might be worth googling Carol Dweck and "bright girls" - if I can get the link to work, this looks interesting:

psycnet.apa.org/books/11546/004

There's a PDF that comes up in the Google search but can't grab the link on my phone.

Also:

m.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-success/201101/the-trouble-bright-girls

My dd wasn't as quick as maths as other subjects - I think there were two boys in her class who were amazing at maths and she used to call the hardest extension activities 'John and Joe sums'. When she moved schools, she decided she was terrible at maths, and that it bored her. I was really irritated - always been good at maths, have done the homework with her, spoken about it positively etc.

It's taken one really great teacher to engage her properly - and it has all clicked. I make her do maths exercises once a week or so, so I can see where she is at and help her work through the blockages. But really it is the school that is the key - and a lot of primary teachers don't seem that keen on maths.

And I wonder if this article provides a clue. Non-sporty girls may be less familiar with exertion or pain, and so perhaps react more strongly to the mental challenge of maths?

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2226247/Maths-really-CAN-make-head-hurt-researchers-say.html

This may have something to do with it. When I studying Primary PGCE (majority women) when it came to the Maths part loads of women would throw their hands up and say "oh I'm rubbish at Maths" whilst the lecturer purposefully talked about the anxiety they might feel at the thought of teaching it.

I almost felt obliged to say I hated Maths too which is crazy bcs I love it.

The vast majority of those maths-hating women passed their end of year Maths skills test first time though.

Btw your second link SlightlyGlitterStained describes my childhood experience perfectly. My DB was in a lower set than me but I always believed that he was way cleverer, if only he would just apply himself!

And the subjects I was best in were the ones I suffered most anxiety in if I got so much as one question wrong! It didn't help that our teachers were firmly of the position that talents were innate and immovable.

That really is a good article!

We must be quite lucky that our feeder primaries don't seem to produce this gender bias in maths. The year 7s when they arrive are fairly evenly distributed all the way along the ability scale. Obviously, some years we just happen to have some particularly bright boys, but we also have years when the top sets are very girl heavy. We don't have any gender bias in maths at gcse or a level at our school which is something we're really proud of and we've worked very hard over the past 10 years to eliminate the gender bias that had been there before. I can't say the same about other subjects though, English has a MASSIVE gender bias with almost 100% of girls achieving A-C, but only 50% of boys getting that magic C grade. I'm sure a lot of that is hanging on to attitudes they've picked up at home and/or primary schools.

My dd1 has been top of the class for maths throughout her schooling. She's getting the maths prize for her year again. Her year seems to have a pretty even split with the top 6 mathematicians being 3 boys and 3 girls who are all really, really competitive about it.

English has a massive gender bias nationally. This year 69.7% of girls got A*-C in English GCSE, but only 53.8% of boys. In maths it was 62.5% for boys and 62.3% for girls.

whotheduckisalis it's called confirmation bias as per stealthpolarbear.

When you have a pre-existing idea e.g. women love cake and men aren't that interested, and only notice/pay attention to the behaviour that supports your belief.

I'm fairly sure the top sets at the DC's school (junior) are fairly evenly split 50/50. What I find interesting with my own DD is that she is good at maths but she thinks she isn't. Whereas she does think she is good at English. I have no idea but would be interested to know why her brain works this way (it's not from me, I'm a maths graduate)