Is Math a Gift? Beliefs That Put Females at Risk.

Abstract

Why aren’t more of our brightest females pursuing careers in math and science? I was catapulted into this issue by a strange finding. In our research, we were looking at how students cope with confusion when they’re learning brand new material. Confusion is a common occurrence in math and science, where, unlike most verbal areas, new material often involves completely new skills, concepts, or conceptual systems. So we created a new task for students to learn, and for half of the students we placed some confusing material near the beginning (Licht & Dweck, 1984). What we found was that bright girls didn’t cope at all well with this confusion. In fact, the higher the girl’s IQ, the worse she did. Many high IQ girls were unable to learn the material after experiencing confusion. This didn’t happen to boys. For them, the higher their IQ, the better they learned. The confusion only energized them. These findings were all the more striking because we were working with fifth-grade students. Girls were still earning higher grades than boys in just about every subject. There was no stigma attached to girls ’ achievement yet. And the material and problems we gave them did not involve math—so the stereotype about females and math

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