Girls Good at Math, But Teachers May Make Them Anxious About it

Jan. 26, 2010— -- Elementary school teachers who are nervous about doing math in public may be unintentionally grooming young girls to think they are bad at math -- even if they are just as capable as the boys in their class -- a small study suggests.

Psychologists tested 17 female elementary school teachers on a widely-used Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale to see how comfortable the teachers felt doing math in public situations. The researchers also measured the ability -- and self confidence -- of 52 boys and 65 girls starting in the first or second grade.

In the first few months of the school year, there was no measurable difference between boys' and girls' math capabilities. But by the end of the year, girls who had math-anxious teachers were more likely to do worse on math achievement tests than boys in their class -- and worse than girls who were in classrooms with teachers who felt confident in math.

"The more anxious a teacher is in the situation, the more likely girls are going to pick up on this," said Sian Beilock, lead author of the study published yesterday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As the year went on, girls in classrooms with a math-anxious teacher were also more likely to express the attitude that "girls are good at reading, boys are good at math." The more a girl stereotyped herself as bad at math, the worse she usually performed on the test by year's end.

However, Beilock and her colleagues noted that the gender differences in the study "although significant, are small," and that other influences in the children's lives likely shaped their attitudes about math.

"Basically what we showed for boys, regardless of the stereotype, is they performed the same in math," said Beilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

Beilock said the difference in boys and girls reactions to an anxious teacher didn't surprise her.