How Gender Impacts the Children’s Math

How Gender Impacts the Children’s Math Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation The issue of gender differences in mathematics learning outcomes has been a major problem for the past five decades. Before it was considered as an issue in education, it was not considered to be unusual that more males will study math related disciplines than females and females’ achievements will be lower than their male counterparts. Mathematics has been considered as the base for both scientific and technological knowledge across the world. Therefore, most people across the world have considered it to be the instrument for scientific, technological, political and socio-economic developments. This explains why every child has to study maths in early years. Gender is a complex force which affects every setting including education. Its impacts are felt in educational outcomes contributing to some of the complicated disparities especially in the discipline of math. Some studies have demonstrated these complicated disparities. For instance, Forgasz, Becker, Lee, and Steinthorsdottir (2010), highlight three critical observations; first, that females in the United States score higher grades in mathematics than males, yet females have more negative attitudes, higher anxiety, lower interest and lower self-confidence than male across the world. Second, Females receive less support in math from their parents and teachers, but they do not recognize this problem. Third, females tend choose math-related careers less than their male counterparts even if they are qualified for the positions. Much research has been done in respect to Forgasz, Becker, Lee and Steinthorsdottir’s (2010) intriguing observations in regard to gender issues in math. The objective of this paper is to review some of the available literature and highlight some of the recurring and overarching themes that tend to have practical implications for the involved stakeholders. In order to find the relevant literature for this study, various academic journal databases were accessed to get the required materials. Some of the accessed databases include ProQuest, EBSCOhost, PubMed and Google Scholar. Moreover, the general internet search engine such as Google was used to find additional information. However, to retrieve the relevant materials, the search was narrowed by using specific keywords like gendered math, math outcomes in children and others. Literature Review Carmichael (2013) explored the differences in teachers’ ratings of children’s achievements in various mathematical aspects. Carmichael conducted a secondary analysis on the data obtained from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). The study focused a group of children aged between four and five years in 2006 and later in 2008. Teachers of these children were requested to provide their ratings on the performance of these children when they are between four and six years and later when they are between eight and nine years. The teachers had to assess the proficiency of their students on various aspects such as patterns, place values, whole numbers, quantity estimation, utilization of various strategies to solve math problems, fractions quantity estimation among others. The general results of this study are in line with the cited literature in the paper. The results demonstrate that there are no significant differences in the students’ performance in respect to gender. However, there was evidence which demonstrated that more males occupied the upper performance group than females in the second wave. Moreover, although the achievement levels between males and females were small, it appears to increase between the two waves supporting the claims that male performance may exceed those of females. The DIF analysis results demonstrate that the gender differences in performance may be influenced by content. In both phases, females demonstrated higher achievement levels in data related aspects than boys whereas boys’ achievements in place values are rated higher than girls. The results of this study demonstrate that there is a need for a study to establish this gender differences in math achievements in young children. In Van Mier, Schleepen and Van den Berg’s (2018) study, they aimed at exploring the impact of math anxiety on the acquisition of mathematical skills. This study was motivated by the higher prevalence of math anxiety in the society. Therefore, this study was conducted to fill the gaps in literature since studies on the relation between math anxiety and math performance in adolescents and adults have been conducted before. Therefore, the authors focused on children especially boys and girls who are in their elementary school years. The study used 124 children from the second and fourth grades. From the results, although the boys and girls demonstrated differing levels of math anxiety but similar performance levels in arithmetic tasks, detailed analysis demonstrate that higher math anxiety levels have a negative impact in math performance in girls only with 2nd grade girls being more vulnerable. The gender differences in math performance have been linked to being exposed to negative math attitudes towards math from role models such as teachers and parents. Additionally, exposure to gender stereotypes is another factor contributing to gender differences in math anxiety and performance levels. These findings demonstrate the need of identifying and addressing math anxiety in girls to prevent its long-term impact. Vukovic et al. (2013) conducted a longitudinal study to explore math anxiety in children from 2nd and 3rd grades. Therefore, the authors sought to examine the relationship between math anxiety and math performance in the working memory of young children. Unlike other previous studies, this paper introduced a new perspective into the issue of gender differences in math outcomes. The study used a sample of 113 children in their second grade and followed them through to their fourth grade. In order to answer the study question, the researchers addressed various math concepts such as calculation skills, geometric reasoning and mathematical applications. In general, the results showed that math anxiety contributes to gender differences in math applications and calculation skills but not geometric reasoning. Additionally,...