Girls’ and Boys’ Attitudes and Beliefs about STEM: Sources, Development, and Relations to Achievement

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children’s attitudes and beliefs about STEM develop, in part, based on environmental input from their culture, and perpetuate gender-based inequities in participation/achievement in STEM fields. This symposium distinguishes between children’s affective (e.g., math attitudes and math anxiety) and cognitive (e.g., gender stereotypes and math self-concepts) orientations toward STEM. This distinction is important because children’s affect and cognitions about STEM seem to uniquely predict outcomes in these domains, including gender differences. The symposium will integrate new advances in the study of developing attitudes and beliefs about STEM, as they operate at different levels (implicit, explicit), across STEM contexts (math, spatial) and development (early childhood, adolescence, young adulthood).

Paper 1 examines the relations among math attitudes, math self-concepts, and math achievement, showing that first-grade girls already demonstrate a strong implicit negativity about math. Paper 2 extends this work to math stereotypes demonstrating that, by age 6, girls expect that women are more likely to succeed in math as a result of effort rather than ability. Paper 3 presents how math and verbal achievement relate to high-school students’ self-concepts, and how theories of intelligence moderate dimensional comparisons that shape students’ self-concepts. Paper 4 explores the emergence of gender differences in math and spatial anxiety and self-concept in children and adults, and the distinct mechanisms that account for gender differences in math and spatial anxiety. Collectively, this work converges to document developmental changes in attitudes and beliefs about STEM within a context of group membership (gender) and their relation to children’s behavior (STEM achievement).

Sub Unit

• Sex, Gender

Chairs

• Dario Cvencek, University of Washington

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Relations of Math Attitudes and Math Self-Concepts to Math Achievement: Evidence from Implicit and Explicit Measures - Presenting Author: Dario Cvencek, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Ružica Brečić, University of Zagreb; Non-Presenting Author: Dora Gacesa, Faculty of Economics and Business, Zagreb; Non-Presenting Author: Andrew N Meltzoff, University of Washington

• Gender Stereotypes About the Roles of Effort and Ability in Math Achievement During Childhood - Presenting Author: Jillian Lauer, University of Cambridge; Non-Presenting Author: Andrei Cimpian, New York University

• Incremental Theorists Are Less Dependent On Their Math Achievement When Forming Their Competence Self-Concepts - Presenting Author: Kexin Ren, Temple University; Non-Presenting Author: Nicole Sorhagen, Millersville University; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth A Gunderson, Temple University

• Comparing Math and Spatial Attitudes and Beliefs Across Development - Presenting Author: Lindsey Hildebrand, Boston College; Non-Presenting Author: Sara Cordes, Boston College