Educators’ Beliefs on the Gender Difference in Mathematics Performance of their Students

Abstract

Boys outperformed girls in mathematics test scores as per the recently conducted PISA-D test in Bhutan. Further, as of 2017 from a total of 28,070 STEM-related jobs, 34.3% are female and 64.7% are male. Since educators’ teaching practices are associated with their beliefs, this study aims to investigate some of the specific beliefs held by mathematics educators on the gender difference in the mathematics performance of their students. It employed an explanatory sequential mix-method design. Three districts of Bhutan namely Tashigang, Samdrup Jongkhar, and Samtse were covered, from July 2019 to July 2020. From three districts, a sample of 33 mathematics teachers was selected from 18 schools (6 primary schools, 6 middle secondary schools, and 6 higher secondary schools) and 3 colleges. To investigate educators' beliefs a semi-structured survey questionnaire which is the adaptation of Tiedemann [1] was employed. This was followed by interviewing 8 participants from 33 participants. Some of the specific beliefs held by mathematic educators are that educators believe that both the genders can perform equally well in mathematics, average achieving female students are more likely to deteriorate in the subsequent year and average achieving male students endures more in solving difficult questions than their counterparts. Also, 66.7 % of the participants agreed to the gender difference in mathematics performance being prominent in higher secondary schools when compared to other types of schools and colleges. Educators believe that male students can perform better in mathematics than female students.