Journal Four

What are the names of the authors you are using for your Gender Research Report –
Updated 2019, and what is their central argument about the challenges or benefits
experienced by male and/or female learners in your teaching licensure area?

The authors for my Gender Research Report are Muriel Niederle and Lise Vesterlund.

Throughout their article their main idea revolves around how competition in a testing environment

provides challenges to women and allows benefits for men. Competition makes men and women

perform differently. Men thrive off of high-pressure environments and this can cause their test

scores to increase during competitive situations such as entrance exams, ACT testing, or SAT

testing. High-pressure environments cause females to perform equally or worse to their scores in

non-competitive environments. So, while the scores of women remain about the same, the scores

of men increase under pressure causing more men to have higher test scores. These different

responses to pressure cause men to have opportunities, while the women have challenges when

trying to apply for various events that use test scores as the deciding factor. Also, due to these

lower test scores women are less likely to choose to enter a math-based field of study.

What EDFD 401 Developmental or Learning theorist(s) can help you think
about WHY these challenges or benefits may exist in classrooms?

One theorist who ideas assist with explaining why these challenges and benefits might be

present in the classroom is Thorndike and the three laws of connectionism. The three laws of

connectionism are the law of readiness, the law of exercise, and the law of effect. The first law

represents the idea that students cannot be forced to produce a certain outcome if they are not ready

in terms of food, sleep, surrounding environment, and other factors that could affect how prepared

for the exam they are. The second law shows that students must repeat things for a certain amount

of time in order to practice their skills. Practice alone will not assist them however, they must also

find ways that work for them to internalize the material in order to achieve a better understanding.
The third law gives the idea when students do something and get a positive result, they are going

to want to repeat that action, if it gives a negative result, they will attempt to avoid the situation.

The third law explains the reasoning for women tending to choose fields that are not math

intensive, as well as their dislike for competition against men in math subjects specifically. Many

women have had negative situations in the past relating to the math environment, as well as

competition against men. Since they have experienced negative results from this situation in this

past, they attempt to avoid the same bad result from happening again by avoiding the situation that

caused the negative result the first time. Men have had positive experiences over the course of

their life in competitive environments which causes them to thrive off of the competition that

women avoid. Past situations in competition and math tend to be positive for men and negative for

women causing these differences in responses to competitive math environments.

What specific educational strategies or interventions can you identify in your Gender
Research Report to increase gender equity in the teaching and learning in your licensure
area?

There are many good ideas in this article for ways to increase equity between the genders

in math classrooms. Since the bias in test scores is caused by pressure during test taking

environments the authors encourage teachers to be mindful of this pressure. Teachers should

reflect on whether or not the pressure is necessary to observe the intended performance. If the goal

is not to see how students react under pressure, then a high-pressure testing environment should

not be present in the classroom at all. If there must be some pressure the key to get rid of the bias

is to separate the classroom so the women are only competing against women, and the men are

only competing against men. Also, if testing is mandatory in the classroom teachers should not

look at test scores to determine the understanding of men and women. Daily assignments and other
low-pressure interactions in class give a better indication of the skills and understanding that the

students in the classroom possess.

How can you use examples and experiences from your clinical placement setting to
identify WHERE you can include these suggested strategies or interventions in your own
future teaching?

The AVID classroom is a very low-pressure environment. Students are there to assist each

other and to get their questions answered. In an ideal world every student in the classroom enters

every Tuesday and Thursday with something that they do not know how to do and need help with.

This causes the students to feel very little pressure, because they are not the only person in the

classroom that does not know how to do something, every student is there because they need some

assistance. The lack of academic pressure in this environment causes the students to get

comfortable with each other, with the teacher, and with the peer and college tutors. Competition

is something that can be necessary in some environments, while AVID is a classroom that shows

that competition is unnecessary in all environments. Also, students are highly comfortable in these

classrooms where the goal is individual learning and improvement, rather than scoring well

compared to the others in your class. I plan to use these strategies in my future classroom to take

away competition as much as possible in order to remove the bias that is present between men and

women in competitive environments. When this is not possible, I will find ways to change the

nature of the competition in order for all students to feel comfortable and competent in my math

classroom. The goal is for my classroom to promote individual learning and understanding, rather

than promoting memorization and performance in high-pressure environments.