Are Men More Likely Than Women to Voluntarily and Publicly Express Their Mathematical Reasoning?

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 9:00 am
  In Roundtable Session: Feminist Issues in Mathematics Education (Table 12)

Abstract

Prior evidence of gender differences in risk taking, confidence, and classroom experiences suggests that men are more likely than women to voluntarily and publicly express their mathematical reasoning. On thirteen separate occasions, students were instructed to solve a precalculus problem, report their confidence in the correctness of their solution, and then indicate whether they volunteer to publicly discuss their solution in class. The problems ranged in difficulty from moderate to extreme. Except for the lowest performers, men were more likely than women to volunteer to discuss their solution, and this gender gap increased as students’ performance increased. These results imply that men might publicly demonstrate higher mathematics ability than women, even if there are no gender differences in mathematics ability.

Authors

• Meaghan Beth McMurran, University of California - Riverside

• David Weisbart

• Kinnari Atit, University of California - Riverside