MATHEMATICALLY ABLE GIRLS: A Special ChallengeAuthor(s): Lynn FoxSource: The Arithmetic Teacher, Vol. 28, No. 6 (February 1981), pp. 22-23Published by: National Council of Teachers of MathematicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41191800 .

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MATHEMATICALLYABLE GIRLS: A Special Challenge

by Lynn Fox

Susan and Ted were identified as mathematically talented when they were in the seventh grade. Ted began to accelerate his educational progress and completed a four-year high school program in three years. At age seven- teen he entered a university with soph- omore standing. He had acquired a year's worth of college credits by tak- ing the Advanced Placement program's examinations in several subjects and college courses on a part-time basis while in high school. He is planning a career in electrical engineering. Susan, on the other hand, did not accelerate her progress in school and did not elect a physics or calculus course in her jun- ior or senior years of high school. Her career plans are vague and she is not excited about going to college.

Mary was also identified as very mathematically able when she was in the seventh grade. Although she was in an Algebra II class as an eighth grader, her mother overheard her tell a friend that she was taking general mathe- matics because she was "too dumb" to be in an Algebra I class. The following year she chose to not take a mathe- matics course instead of going to a high school one period a day for a plane ge- ometry course. Mary apparently feared rejection by her peers if she did some- thing atypical.

Recent research on highly able mathematical reasoners in grade seven provides insight into the needs of highly able girls. Over the past eight

Lynn Fox is an associate professor of education and the coordinator of the Intellectually Gifted Child Study Group at the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity. She has also had experience as a classroom teacher of mathematics and has worked at the Na- tional Center for Educational Statistics.

years almost 20 000 students, primarily seventh graders, have participated in talent searches at the Johns Hopkins University (Stanley, Keating, and Fox 1974; Keating 1976; Stanley, George, and Solano 1977). Even though the mean score for boys in the talent search has been about 35 points higher than the mean for girls, all boys do not score higher than all girls. Many girls are extremely gifted, as evidenced by the fact that each year about a fourth of the girls in the talent search have scored higher than the average of col- lege-bound senior girls on the mathe- matics portion of the Scholastic Apti- tude Test (SAT).

Thus, although it is true that more boys than girls exhibit extreme mathe- matical ability in adolescence, enough girls show real ability so that the gap between the sexes in achievement and career attainment in mathematics and science cannot be explained solely in terms of differences in aptitude. Many girls who are quite talented in mathe- matics, like Susan and Mary, simply do not develop their skills to the fullest. Some girls fall victim to societal stereo- types about intellectual giftedness and mathematics being more appropriate for men than for women.

The boys and girls who have partici- pated in the talent searches have tended to differ in several ways with re- spect to attitudes and interests. The girls generally have less self-confidence than the boys. The girls are less inter- ested than the boys in trying to acceler- ate their learning of mathematics. And, although the vast majority of the boys have interests in mathematical and sci- entific careers, many of the girls appear to have conflicting career interests. Sometimes girls lean toward an in- tellectual career and yet are also pulled toward careers of an artistic of social-

service nature. Some girls have con- cerns about how to combine a career with the role of wife and mother. Boys do not perceive comparable conflicts in their career interests.

Women who have developed their abilities in mathematics and science of- ten recall the support and encourage- ment of a teacher or a parent (Luchins and Luchins 1980; Helson 1980). Young women who elect difficult courses in physics and calculus some- times recall that they were identified for an academic track or a gifted pro- gram while still in elementary school. This helped them to form a peer net- work that reinforced their interests in taking advanced courses in mathe- matics and science (Casserly 1980). Unfortunately many gifted girls are not recognized as being very talented by their parents or teachers, and fewer than one in five have access to special programs in their schools.

In the early years of the talent searches, it was clear that parents of girls were more likely than parents of boys to be surprised to learn of their child's ability. Nor were the parents of girls as eager as most of the parents of boys to have their children accelerate their study of mathematics, especially if it involved taking college courses early. In the last two talent searches, parents of girls seemed to be less con- cerned about stereotypes of a "mathe- matical whiz," than were parents in the past.

Encouraging Mathematically Able Girls No matter how much support girls may receive at home they still need en- couragement from their teachers. Even if special programs for the highly able are not available in a school, there are

22 Arithmetic Teacher

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many ways in which teachers can inter- vene and create a more supportive school environment for these girls. The following paragraphs detail specific suggestions for helping mathematically able girls.

Identify gifted girls early If girls are to be encouraged to develop their interest and competency in mathematics, it may be very important to identify at an early age girls who have great potential. High scores on standardized tests are the most reliable indicators of talent (Keating 1980). Some teachers may be surprised to find that a girl considered a behavior prob- lem or a student with a poor attitude is actually very talented. Indeed some teachers dislike girls who are analyti- cal, unconventional, and independent because the teachers view these traits as unfeminine and inappropriate (Welsh 1977). One mother of a very precocious third-grader was told by her daughter's teacher that there might be something wrong with the girl because she preferred the company of boys to girls at her school. Highly able girls are often described as "tomboys" in the early childhood years because they like the toys and games that are often con- sidered masculine. Such "deviant" in- terest may actually be an indication of a budding interest in science.

Counsel parents Once a girl has been identified as mathematically able it is important to make her parents aware of this fact. They may not have thought to encour- age her to become a scientist or an en- gineer, to have bought her a micro- scope, or to have enrolled her in a summer science enrichment program.

Encourage girls directly

Telling girls that they are very good at mathematics and helping them to view this as appropriate for girls as well as boys may have both long- and short- term effects on their self-confidence, and their career and educational aspi- rations. Encouraging girls to study mathematics on their own and in- troducing them to the world of recrea- tional mathematics materials in the li-

brary may be beneficial. It is also important to urge these girls to elect the most advanced mathematics and sciences courses in high school.

Individualize instruction At present some form of acceleration is the most direct and least expensive way to provide more difficult content at higher levels of abstraction for highly able students. Although these methods work well for some students, they are unattractive to many girls (Fox 1977). The use of more diagnostic testing and prescriptive instruction and a wide va- riety of alternatives is necessary to al- low gifted children to proceed at what- ever pace their abilities dictate, with and without grade-skipping. Stanley (1980) has developed an excellent model for small-group tutoring in mathematics for highly able students.

Reduce sexism in the classroom Textbooks and other materials avail- able in the classroom should be exam- ined for evidence of sex-role stereo- typing. And teachers' expectations for girls should be the same as for boys. If at first they don't succeed, girls should be encouraged to try again; they should not be helped sooner than the boys. Girls should not be expected to be neater, less noisy, and more polite than boys. As a check on themselves, teachers might be encouraged to tape record an hour of their classtime to see if they interact more or differently with boys than with girls.

Provide career education and role models

Creative and productive behavior of both males and females in school and in life may increase as unrealistic sex- role stereotyping of careers gives way. Career awareness programs for stu- dents could be a form of relevant en- richment that opens new vistas for girls and breaks down sex-role stereotypes. Highly able boys and girls both need moral and intellectual role models who exhibit the heights that talented people can achieve. For girls the exposure to women who use the full range of their talents and gifts may be crucial. The exposure of boys to such female role

models may make them more suppor- tive of the girls in their class. A model for career awareness programs for mathematically able girls is described in Women and the Mathematial Mys- tique (Fox, Brody, and Tobin 1980).

The challenge for educators lies in finding mathematically able girls and helping them discover their potential and maximize their development. To do this, negative and inaccurate stereo- types of giftedness and gender-appro- priate behavior must be replaced by in- formed understanding of the many facets of intellectual talent and recog- nition of the value of mathematical and scientific competence for both women and men.

References

Casserly, P. L. "Factors Affecting Female Partic- ipation in Advanced Placement Programs in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics." In Women and the Mathematical Mystique. Ed- ited by L. H. Fox, L. Brody, and D. Tobin. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Fox, L. H. "Sex Differences: Implications for Program Planning for the Academically Gifted." In The Gifted and the Creative: A Fifty- Year Perspective. Edited by J. C. Stanley, W. С George, and С. Н. Solano. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Fox, L. H., L. Brody, and D. Tobin. Women and the Mathematical Mystique. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Helson, R. "The Creative Women Mathemati- cian." In Women and the Mathematical Mys- tique. Edited by L. H. Fox, L. Brody, and D. Tobin. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press, 1980.

Keating, D. P. "Discovering Quantitative Pre- cocity." In Intellectual Talent: Research and Development. Edited by D. P. Keating. Balti- more; The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.'

Luchins, E. H., and A. S. Luchins. "Female Mathematicians: A Contemporary Appraisal." In Women and the Mathematical Mystique. Edited by L. H. Fox, L. Brody, and D. Tobin. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Stanley, J. C, D. P. Keating, and L. H. Fox. Mathematical Talent: Discovery, Description, and Development. Vol. I of Studies of In- tellectual Precocity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

Stanley, J. C, W. С George, and С. Н. Solano. The Gifted and the Creative: A Fifty- Year Per- spective. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press, 1977.

Stanley, J. С "On Educating the Gifted. In Ed- ucational Researcher, 9, 3 (1980):8-12.

Welsh, G. S. "Personality Correlates of In- telligence and Creativity in Gifted Adoles- cents." In The Gifted and the Creative: A Fifty - Year Perspective. Edited by J. C. Stanley, W. С George, and С. Н. Solano. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. W

February 1981 23

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