Gender Differences in Gifted Achievement

Gender Differences in Gifted Achievement
In Britain and the USA

By Joan Freeman [Part 2/4 - see Part 1]

Cultural Influences on Achievement

Not everyone agrees with Hedges and Nowell (1995) or Benbow and Lubinski (1993) that there are significant difference between the innate abilities of males and females.

From the USA, Golombok and Fivush (1994) have written, "Careful statistical analyses across hundreds of studies have demonstrated that gender differences in ability in math and language are so small as to be virtually non-existent for all practical purposes" (p.177).

They concluded that the measurable sex differences in aptitude are due to "a complex interaction between small biological differences and larger gender differences in socialisation experiences" (p.176).

Concurring, Heller & Ziegler (1996) in an international review of research on gender differences in mathematics and natural sciences, failed to find any reliable evidence that girls are inherently less able than boys.

They suggested that girls and boys can consequently act as experimental controls for each other to gauge the power of social effects, probably best seen in career outcomes. They pointed out, for example, that even on present tests of spatial abilities at which boys do better, one would expect only twice as many male engineering graduates as females, whereas there are 30 times as many.

Wilson, Stocking, and Goldstein (1994) reported that in the USA female and male adolescents generally selected courses that followed traditional gender stereotypes, males generally preferring mathematics and science.

Gifted girls, Heller and Ziegler (1996) found, were more influenced by social pressures than gifted boys, that is by the “unfemininity” of subjects such as physics, as well as much less early practice and fewer adult role-models.

In contradiction, Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen (1993) suggested that the high level of "androgynous traits" in gifted girls give them a stronger resistance to gender role pressures than girls of more average ability. Yet if this were so, one would not expect to see the significantly higher grades in the sciences for boys in the United States, where this work was done.

In her UK government overview of international research on gifted education, Freeman (1998) concluded that although both gifted boys and girls were sensitive to societal gender pressures, strength to overcome them came from their upbringing and personality.

This was also seen in her 27-year comparison study of 210 gifted and non-gifted children in Britain: higher socio-economic status (SES) students were normally more successful in education and careers than lower SES students (Freeman, 2001).

Not only do the current British examination results seem to refute innate ability differences between boys and girls, but they also highlight strong cultural influences. Such influences clearly affected gifted achievements in a 38-country investigation of 8th grade mathematics achievements (Third International Mathematics and Science Study, 1999).

That report states that, across the whole ability range, “in most countries the gender difference was negligible” (p. 48). But among the highest scoring 25% of students there were significant differences. Within that group only three countries showed sadistically significant male superiority: “In Israel, Tunisia, and the United States, the percentages of boys reaching the upper quarter level were significantly greater than the percentages of girls reaching this level” (p. 48).

For those three countries, there appear to be considerable cultural differences, such as gender expectations, gender role models and provision, affecting gender achievements in high-level mathematics, which was not seen in the others.

Further study of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) report by Fox, Engle and Paek (2001) indicated that in the United States “girls’ lower levels of confidence in mathematics become even more problematic in the middle school years”—just the time of the “Ophelia years”, which Pipher (1994), drawing on her years of psychotherapy with adolescent American girls, describes as a “sexualized” culture which “limits girls’ development” (p.47).

As Noble, Subotnik, and Arnold (1999) point out, the lives of adolescent American girls have more often been molded by gender roles of family and cultural group than by encouragement to be true to themselves. Yet this is just the age at which British girls are obliged to choose their academic specialization.

Interestingly, at the Weizmann Institute of Science summer school in Israel for scientifically gifted teenagers, the Israeli participants are normally heavily male dominated; however, the early-90s wave of Russian immigrants brought a temporary change.

The gifted youngsters fresh from Russia were accepted, based on their school grades, in equal gender proportions for the courses. But, as the newcomers became aculturized into Israeli society, this gender equality at the Institute faded away and males regained achievement dominance (Freeman, 1996).

As further evidence of cultural effects, Chinese- and Japanese-American children show up the doubtfulness of the gender stereotype as both girls and boys within these Asian cultures present a “spectacular case of overachievement” (Flynn, 1991. p. 125) on both the mathematics and the verbal portions of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) compared with non-Asian-Americans of the same IQ.

Dweck and Licht (1980) have presented and researched the idea of “learned helplessness”, a state in which people have come to believe that success and failure depend on circumstances beyond their control. Because they think their fate depends on luck, they give up their goals too easily, offering a variety of excuses for failure.

Dweck and Licht concluded that the American girls they studied had greater learned-helpless orientation in mathematics and science than boys. In Britain too, there is evidence that some females may be so ego-defensive that they become self-handicapping (Thompson & Richardson, 2001).

Females are more likely than males to offer excuses, such as inherent handicaps, test-anxiety, or recent traumatic events, prior to beginning a task, especially if the task is personally threatening. And parents and teachers, Dweck (1999) suggests, can foster adaptive (mastery), rather than maladaptive (learned helplessness) motivational patterns.

There are further American studies that support Dweck and Licht (1980). For example, Weinburgh (1995) conducted a meta-analysis of gender differences in attitudes toward science and the relationships between attitudes toward science and science achievement.

Weinburgh reported that boys are more likely to have a positive attitude toward science and achievement in biology and physics, as did Terry and Baird (1997) when they questioned mixed-gender high school students about women in biology.

In spite of the differences in examination results, parents and students still appear to hold similar gender attitudes towards areas of study in both the USA and Britain.

Taking a long-term look at giftedness in mathematics in the USA, Jacobs and Weisz (1994) found that parents held somewhat fixed and conventional gender expectations, which influenced girls' self-esteem more than their actual performances, and so inhibited their ambitions.

In accord, teachers questioned in 722 schools and 136 colleges in England and Wales, reported that the main reason relatively fewer students chose to specialize in advanced mathematics and science was the perceived difficulty of the subject.

This was more often the case for girls than for boys, and for girls there was the added factor of the lack of women teachers as role models in these subjects (Sharp, Hutchison, Davis & Keys,1996).

Confidence, at least in mathematics, has been found to predict achievement, and so where ability is equal, it is probable that more confident students would select mathematics for study (Fox, Engle & Paek, 2001).

The negative influence of expectations, attitudes and media influences on young females in North American society has been well documented (see, e.g., Noble, Subotnik, & Arnold, 1999; Pipher, 1994; Wilgosh, 2001). Indeed, the relatively poor performance of American adolescent girls in “boys’ subjects” is attributed by Kerr (2000) to cultural gender effects and described as “intractable, excluding gifted women from colleges and academic opportunities” (p. 649).

However, girls’ cultural exclusion is contended by selections from American research that either claim cultural discrimination to be against boys (Hoff Summers, 2000) or that there is no cultural exclusion because many innate gender biases in brain function (in favor of science for boys and in favor or the arts for girls) inevitably limit their choice of education (Gurian, 2001).

Yet differences in cultural attitudes are clear. Evidence from international surveys (e.g., Stetsenko, Little, Gordeeva, Grasshof & Oettingen, 2000; Third International Mathematics and Science Study, 1999) shows a distinct and measurable cultural variation in gender attitudes and achievements in different areas of study.

It is probable that American results are not representative of all boys and girls. After all, tests tapping the abilities of teenagers are bound to include a significant loading of cultural learning.

Programs for the Gifted

There are neither gifted programs, as such, in Britain nor specially designed lessons, though there are some scattered, locally based provisions, such as pull-out groups and attempts at differentiated teaching in mixed-ability classrooms (usually by teacher-judged grouping).

But there has always been a great variety of stimulating, non-classroom activities available within and outside school hours, such as discussion groups during the lunch break, school trips, and art classes in museums. A small proportion of (mostly private) schools are selective, in that the applicants have to pass high-level examinations to be accepted and so could be considered schools for the gifted, even though the teaching is not essentially different from that in other schools.

However, since the new Labour government took office in 1998, there has been a sharp educational policy thrust to nurture the development of untapped gifted potential (Freeman, 2003). The main effort is via enrichment schemes which emphasize networking facilities for study support such as funded homework clubs, mentors and the use of educational partners such as museums, galleries, libraries, sports clubs, theatres, universities, etc.

Gifted provision is very different in the USA, where a report from the Office for Educational Research and Improvement (1993) states that in "1990, 38 states served more than 2 million gifted students" and since then "the number of programs for gifted and talented youngsters has grown substantially" (p. iii).

Winner (1996) writes that when girls start school they are identified in equal proportion to that of boys for gifted programs, but as they get older there is a striking decline in the proportion of girls selected for gifted education. Although girls make up half the gifted population in kindergarten, this proportion shrinks to less than 30% in junior high school, and even lower at high school.

But there is evidence that it is possible to affect the relative proportion of boys and girls in gifted programs. For example, an experimental intervention program in Indiana provided teenage girls “directed enrichment”, after which they were able to reach much higher levels in a variety of talent areas (Moon, Feldhusen & Dillon, 1994).

One might question the purpose, selection procedures, and effects of the gifted programs, particularly if they appear to be losing so many bright girls.

[Part 2/4] Continued in Part 3

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