Editor’s Note: NAIJAGRAPHITTI Blog advocates for STEM Education for everybody as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics—STEM, and
therefore, STEM education—are vital to our future. Sciencepioneers puts it
this way:
“Science
is our natural world— sun, moon and stars…lands and oceans…weather, natural
disasters, the diversity of nature, animals (large, small, microbial)…plants
and food…the fuel that heats our homes and powers transportation…The list is
almost endless. In today’s world, technology means computers and smartphones, but it goes back
to television, radio, microscopes, telegraph, telescopes, the compass, and even
the first wheel. Yes, engineering designs buildings, roads, and bridges, but it also
tackles today’s challenges of transportation, global warming and
environment-friendly machines, appliances and systems. We only have to look
around to see what improvements to our lives and our homes have been engineered
in the last decade alone. We encounter mathematics at the market place, the bank, on tax forms, in
dealing with investments and the family budget. Every other STEM field depends
on mathematics.”
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Men may be more likely to pursue careers in science
and engineering simply because they think they are better at the subjects than
women, a controversial new study has found.
|
By Mark Prigg, Dailymailonline.com
Men may be more likely to pursue careers in science
and engineering simply because they think they are better at the subjects than
women.
Researchers found that men think they are much better
at math than they really are.
Women, on the other hand, tend to accurately estimate
their arithmetic prowess, the study found.
'Gender gaps in the science, technology, engineering
and maths fields are not necessarily the result of women's underestimating
their abilities, but rather may be due to men's overestimating their
abilities,' said Shane Bench of Washington State University in the U.S., leader
of a study in Springer's journal Sex Roles.
There is a sizeable gap between the number of men and
women who choose to study and follow careers in the so-called STEM fields of
science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the U.S.
This is true even though women outperform their male
counterparts on mathematical tests in elementary school.
Bench's study examined how people's biases and
previous experiences about their mathematical abilities make them more or less
likely to consider pursuing math-related courses and careers.
His team also found that women who had more positive
past experiences with mathematics tended to rate their numerical abilities
higher than they really were.
This highlights the value of positively reinforcing a
woman's knack for mathematics especially at a young age.
'Despite assumptions that realism and objectivity are
always best in evaluating the self and making decisions, positive illusions
about math abilities may be beneficial to women pursuing math courses and
careers,' says Bench.
'Such positive illusions could function to protect
women's self-esteem despite lower-than-desired performance, leading women to
continue to pursue courses in science, technology, engineering and maths fields
and ultimately improve their skills.'
Two studies were conducted, one using 122 undergraduate
students and the other 184 participants. Each group first completed a math test
before guessing how well they had fared at providing the right answers.
In the first study, participants received feedback
about their real test scores before they were again asked to take a test and
predict their scores. In the second study, participants only wrote one test
without receiving any feedback.
They were, however, asked to report on their intent to
pursue math-related courses and careers.
Across the two studies it was found that men
overestimated the number of problems they solved, while women quite accurately
reported how well they fared.
After the participants in Study 1 received feedback
about their real test scores, the men were more accurate at estimating how well
they had done on the second test.
The
results of Study 2 show that because the male participants believed they had a
greater knack for maths than was the case, they were more likely to pursue
maths courses and careers than women.
Originally published in Daily Mail Online
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