Grade Sensitivity Revisited: Gender Differences in the Association between Course Grades and Math Attitudes among High School Students

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Abstract

Grade Sensitivity Revisited: Gender Differences in the Association between Course Grades and Math Attitudes among High School Students

Despite swiftly vanishing gender inequality in mathematics achievement and coursetaking, women are far less likely to enter a number of STEM fields than their male counterparts. One explanation for this posed by Rask and Tiefenthaler (2008) is that women are more sensitive to grades in their college STEM courses. They found that women earn higher grades on average in these courses than men but are more likely to attrite from a STEM major when they do receive a poor grade. Prior research could not clarify whether gender differences in grade sensitivity are the result of men making up the vast majority of students in highly gendered STEM majors or because those subjects are gendered. I clarify this by analyzing gender differences in grade sensitivity in high school math classes, since in this setting has a roughly equal number of men and women studying a gendered topic. I analyze data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) using a lagged-dependent variable, school fixed effects regressions. I find that all students’ math identity and math self-efficacy are strongly associated with their most recent math grades, and that this relationship exists net of differences in coursetaking and grades earlier in high school and is significantly stronger for women than men. So, similar to prior work, I find that women earn higher grades in high school math courses than men but that they are more likely to internalized a low grade. This finding suggests that gendered grade sensitivity is not unique to male-dominated settings.

Author

• Brian Fitzpatrick