Gender Gaps in Student Self-Efficacy From Kindergarten Through High School

• In Event: 47.021 - Gender Inequality in Achievement, Self-Efficacy, and Classroom Interactions in U.S. Education

Abstract

Academic self-efficacy – a student’s belief about their ability to learn or to perform within a school environment (Bandura, 1986; Bandura, 1997; Multon, Brown, & Lent, 1991) – has been shown to influence high-stakes academic performance differentially by gender (e.g., Bussey & Bandura, 1999; Pajares, 2005). However, gender differences in students’ self-efficacy, and how they change over grades, have not been studied systematically throughout their school careers.
In this paper, we build on prior work (West et al., 2018) by exploring differential trends by gender in academic self-efficacy for a large population of students across grade levels using data from a research partnership with six CORE districts in California (Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Santa Ana Unified). We use longitudinal student-level administrative and self-efficacy survey data for third through twelfth grade students from the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years. In contrast to prior work, which has typically captured the predictive nature of self-efficacy on subject-specific academic tasks, our survey data provides information on students’ general academic self-efficacy.
We use hierarchical linear modeling to explore four research questions: 1) Are there differences in male and female students’ self-reported self-efficacy during school?; 2) Do gender gaps in self-efficacy change during school?; 3) Are self-efficacy gender gaps and trends constant for student of all backgrounds (achievement, SES, race/ethnicity)?; 4) Are self-efficacy gender gaps and trends similar across school-environments?
With regard to the first two questions, our results show that girls report significantly higher self-efficacy in elementary school compared to boys. In middle school, students’ self-efficacy declines for both boys and girls; however, this drop off is significantly faster for girls leading to girls reporting significantly lower levels of self-efficacy than boys. In high school, the decline levels off for both groups and girls reported self-efficacy remains lower than boys (Figure 2.1).
We further find that students’ average self-efficacy differs significantly among subgroups: black, Hispanic, Asian, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and low-achieving students generally report lower average self-efficacy than their peers. In contrast, the female-male gap in self-efficacy and the trend in this gap over grades are largely consistent across all subgroups, although more pronounces for some. For example, the self-efficacy of Black and Hispanic female students drops off faster compared with their White and Asian Pacific Islander peers (Figure 2.2).
Finally, we do not find that school demographics are strongly associated with the female-male self-efficacy gap and trend over grades. However, the school culture and climate results suggest that self-efficacy may be higher on average and decline less over grades in schools with more support for academic learning, Moreover, they suggest that the female-male gap in self-efficacy is less pronounced at the end of middle school in these environments.
Overall, this work confirms that we need to be concerned about the variability of students’ self-efficacy among subgroups, as it may mediate their academic success or willingness to seek academic help. Moreover, our work highlights that middle school is a critical time for intervening to counteract the rapid decline in female students’ self-efficacy.

Authors

• Erin Michelle Fahle, St. John's University

• Monica G Lee, Stanford University

• Susanna Loeb, Brown University