Top 5 Myths About Girls, Math and Science
- Myth 1: From the time they start school, most girls are less interested in science than boys are.
- Myth 2: Classroom interventions that work to increase girls’ interest in STEM run the risk of turning off the boys.
- Myth 3: Science and math teachers are no longer biased toward their male students.
- Myth 4: When girls just aren’t interested in science, parents can’t do much to motivate them.
- Myth 5: At the college level, changing the STEM curriculum runs the risk of watering down important “sink or swim” coursework.
LiveScience details why each is a myth, and shows how gender acculturation continues to act insidiously in the attrition of girls and women from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) areas of learning. Fascinating reading.
Via Amy G. Dala
Monash University has a great attitude to women in science, once they get there. This might help, the government is building the John Monash Science School for year 10 to 12 pupils. The students will be selected from a combination of academic results, portfolio and interview. I know that makes it a select entry school but I’m hoping that girls will be on an equal footing with boys in a science environment and not feel they have to dumb down.
The aspect that most struck me in the article was the discussion of Myth 3 – the teaching bias towards boys, where boys are taken through a process step by step in a “this is how you do it” approach, whereas girls are shown the procedure in a “this is how it is done (by someone other than you)” approach, and teachers apparently don’t even realise that they’re doing this.