Diferencial Treatment of Females and Males in Math

Differential Treatment of Females and Males in Mathematics Classes
Author(s): Joanne Rossi Becker

Source: Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 40-53
Published by: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
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Journal for Research in Mathematics Education
1981, Vol. 12, No. 1, 40-53
DIFFERENTIAL
TREATMENT
OFFEMALES
INMATHEMATICS
ANDMALES CLASSES
JOANNEROSSIBECKER
Universityof Maryland, College Park*
Mathematics courses in high school continue to attract fewer women than

men. Recent data gathered concerning the background of first-year students
at the University of Maryland (Sells, Note 1) show that 53% of white men
had at least 4 years of mathematics in high school; only 20% of white
women had the same preparation. For black men and women, the figures
were 22% and 10%, respectively. As Sells (Note 2) has suggested, mathe-
matics acts as a critical filter that keeps many women out of a variety of ca-
reers because they lack the necessary mathematics background.
Why do so many women elect not to study mathematics when given the
choice? Numerous studies (Fennema & Sherman, 1977, 1978; Fox, 1976;
Jacobs, 1974; Casserly, Note 3; Fennema, Note 4) have suggested that
sociocultural factors are involved in the achievement in, and the study of,
mathematics by young women; however, few data have been available that
tell us what is happening in the mathematics classroom that might contrib-
ute to the lack of persistence of women in the study of mathematics. Fen-
nema and Sherman (1978) encourage research into the factors within a
school milieu that might have an impact on the attrition rate of females in
mathematics.
Data available at levels below high school (Brophy & Good, 1970; Meyer
& Thompson, 1956; Sikes, 1972) have found that teachers treat male and fe-
male students differently. None of these studies focused on mathematics
teachers only. The study reported here attempted to determine whether dif-
ferential treatment of the sexes occurs in high school mathematics classes,
and, more generally, to identify what, if anything, is occurring in such
classes that may negatively affect the continued study of mathematics by
young women.
Method
The most obvious methodological approach to this issue is to gather fre-
quency counts to compare teacher interactions with males and females in
This paper represents a portion of the author's dissertation research conducted at

the University of Maryland, 1979, under the direction of James T. Fey. Portions of
this research were reported at the 1979 Annual Meeting of the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics.
* Currentlyat BrooklynCollegeof the City Universityof New York.
40
specific categories. The instrument chosen for use in this study, the Brophy-
Good Teacher-Child Dyadic Interaction System (Brophy & Good, Note 5),
provides that kind of data. However, research traditions are changing as
educators conclude that quantitative data alone often do not provide
enough of the right kind of information to answer a general question about
human behavior (see Lester & Kerr, 1979; Lutz & Ramsey, 1974; McDer-
mott, 1977; Wilson, 1977). To examine teacher-student interactions fully,
one needs to consider the subtle aspects of behavior in the classroom in ad-
dition to numerical counts of types of interactions. To capture these critical
nuances of classroom activity, this study used techniques of participant ob-
servation, a qualitative methodology that starts with tentative questions and
develops working hypotheses as data are collected in the field. The aim of
this methodology is to look at the class as a complete sociocultural system
and provide an analytic description of that setting.
Thus, this study collected quantitative and qualitative data to ensure a
more complete description of classroom behavior than might be available
via either approach used alone.
Subjects
Ten high school geometry teachers were observed in the study. The
teachers, seven female and three male, taught in two different school sys-
tems in three high schools. All the teachers agreed to participate in the
study following a general description of the procedures by the author. The
teachers were told that their classes would be observed 10 times, sometimes
by two observers, to determine patterns in teacher-student interactions. The
teachers did not know what instrument was being used nor what specific
question the study was designed to answer. Of course, confidentiality was
promised to the teachers and the schools. The author chose, on the basis of
scheduling, which class of each teacher to include in the study.
Geometry was chosen for this study because that subject represents a crit-
ical choice point for academically oriented students. State and college re-
quirements typically ensure that most college-bound students take two
years of mathematics, usually first-year algebra and geometry. After geome-
try, the attrition of females from mathematics continues to be significant.
Three of the 10 classes in the sample were accelerated ninth-grade geom-
etry classes. The other classes consisted primarily of tenth graders. Al-
though the schools varied in minority representation from 6% to 30%, the
classes observed were nearly all white. The total sample was comprised of
50% male and 50% female students.
The two school systems in the study, called A and B here, represent dif-
ferent types of communities. System A is in an urban-suburban community
with a well-educated and relatively affluent population. In the two high
schools from System A included in the study, about 78% of the students
continue their education after high school. In contrast, System B is in a ru-
ral area, which includes one small city, within 50 miles of a large metropol-
January 1981 41
itan area. Approximately 50%of the students in the high school in System B
continue their education after high school; therefore, the system provides an
extensive vocational-technical program for the non-college-bound students.
The 10 teachers ranged in age from early 30s to the 50s; they had 8 to 20
years of teaching experience. Generation and sex differences notwithstand-
ing, the teachers showed more similarities in teaching style than dis-
similarities. Further discussion on this point is beyond the scope of this pa-
per; suffice it to say that the classes observed fit the patterns in teaching
style discussed by Fey (1979).
Instrument
The Brophy-Good Teacher-Child Dyadic Interaction System was de-
signed to study dyadic interactions between teachers and students in class-
rooms. This instrument does not attempt to code all classroom behavior; in-
stead, it records only interactions involving the teacher and an individual
student. The Brophy-Good System was developed to focus on differences in
teacher-student contact patterns, and it has been used to study sex differ-
ences in particular. Although developed for elementary school classrooms,
the system has been adapted for use in secondary schools (Sikes, 1972); the
adaptation in the Sikes study was used in this study, with minor modifica-
tions for high school mathematics to include chalkboard work.
The instrument records who initiates a contact and whether it is public or
private, academic or nonacademic. For public teacher questions, the level
of question is recorded, then the quality of student response, and finally the
teacher's feedback reaction. In the adaptation used for this study,
chalkboard work was recorded separately. Finally, the instrument records
private contacts, academic and nonacademic, initiated by the teacher or the
student. More details about the instrument are included in Good and
Brophy (1970) or the complete manual (Brophy & Good, Note 5).
Observers
The participant-observer techniques used required that all 100 observa-
tions be done by the author; a second observer was present for 11 observa-
tions to provide a check on observer reliability in the use of the Brophy-
Good instrument. Scott's coefficient (Amidon & Hough, 1967) was used to
assess inter-rater reliability; over all observations, fr = .84.
Procedures
The 10 teachers were observed 10 times each, one week early in the
school year and one week toward the end of the first quarter. The first ob-
servations occurred in the second week of school in September 1978. At
least 4 weeks elapsed between the weeks of observation of an individual
teacher. For each week of observations, visits were made on successive days
except for testing days, days of teacher illness, or holidays.
During each observation, the collection of quantitative and qualitative
42 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education
data was alternated so that each part of the period was sampled for each
type of data collection. The naturalistic data collected included anything
that occurred or appeared in the classroom, such as teacher and student be-
haviors, bulletin board displays, textbooks and testing instruments, and
seating arrangements.
The author talked informally with the teachers and students at any op-
portunity. Visits to the teachers' rooms provided general information about
each school. In addition, at least one administrator and guidance counselor
were interviewed at each of the three schools to solicit information about
the student body and the school community.
After initial data analysis, all teachers were contacted to determine if they
could meet with the author to discuss the results. Three teachers responded
affirmatively. The author met with each teacher individually to discuss the
goal of the study, overall results, and the data from that particular teacher's
class. Information from these interviews provided part of the naturalistic
data in the study. Unfortunately, not all the teachers were interviewed, but
the necessary delay between data collection and the reporting of results may
have resulted in diminished interest and time on the part of the teachers.
A pilot study by the author led to interest in certain specific types of in-
teractions between teachers and students. Combined with results from stud-
ies with younger students, these data provided a basis for six specific hy-
potheses on sex differences that were tested inferentially for certain
categories from the Brophy-Good instrument. Descriptive statistics were
used to summarize the remaining categories.
For all the quantitative data, the numbers of female and male students
present each day were used to form the average number of interactions in
each category on the instrument per female (male) student per observation.
A two-way factorial design with repeated measures on both factors was
used to analyze six categories for sex differences. The two factors were sex
of student (male and female) and week of observation (Week 1 and Week
2). These data were analyzed by analysis of variance with repeated mea-
sures.
The ethnographic data were formed into categories based on emerging
patterns of behavior. As categories were formed and new incidents were en-
tered into them, the properties of each category were clarified. Because this
type of data analysis may be unfamiliar to some readers, they are referred
to Glaser and Strauss (1967), who discuss this in detail.
Results
The quantitative and qualitative data are of sufficiently different nature
to warrant their separate presentation.
Quantitative
For the sample of 10 teachers, the following 6 categories were tested for
sex differences:
January 1981 43
1. Direct questions (the teacher calls on a student by name)
2. Open questions (the teacher asks a question, waits for students to raise
their hands, then calls on a volunteer)
3. Process questions (higher order teacher questions)
4. Product questions (lower order teacher questions)
5. Call-outs (the teacher asks a question, a student calls out an answer,
and the teacher directs his or her attention to that student)
6. Student-initiated interactions (student public questions, individual ac-
ademic contacts, and individual nonacademic contacts combined)
Table 1 presents the results of the six tests for sex differences on these cate-
gories. For the three significant differences, all were in favor of male stu-
dents. In fact, of these six categories, only student-initiated interactions
showed a trend to occur more often with females than with males.
A breakdown of the student-initiated interaction category into the three
mutually exclusive units comprising it is shown in Table 2. There was a ten-
dency for females to initiate all three kinds of contacts more often than
males.
Table 1
Analysisof VarianceResults,Sex Differences
Category Source df ms F
Direct questions Sex 1 .117 1.453
Sex x class 9 .080
Open questions Sex 1 .014 10.106**
Sex x class 9 .001
Process questions Sex 1 .050 9.058**
Sex x class 9 .006
Product questions Sex 1 .209 1.414
Sex x class 9 .148
Call-outs Sex 1 .178 7.527*
Sex x class 9 .024
Student-initiated interactions Sex 1 .340 1.691
Sex x class 9 .201
Note. N - 10.
*p < .05.
**p- .01.
Table 2
Numberand Percentof
Contactsby Sex of Student
Student-Initiated
Category Totalmale Totalfemale
Student
questions 230(41%) 334(59%)
academic
individual
Student-initiated
contacts 141(44%) 176(56%)
individual
Student-initiated nonacademic
contacts 116(43%) 156(57%)
Grandtotal 487(42%) 666(58%)
Note.The 100classesaveraged50%maleand 50%femalein enrollment.
Contrast these data with teacher-afforded response opportunities given
by direct questions, open questions, and call-outs, shown in Table 3; 57%of
the contacts were with male students, even though there was 50%male dis-
tribution in the 100 classes. In addition, teachers initiated 63%of their indi-
vidual academic contacts with males.
Student answers to teacher questions varied only slightly in quality be-
tween females and males. Whereas males correctly answered 70% of the
questions asked of them, females correctly answered 66%of questions asked
of them. Males were asked more questions, as Table 3 shows. An examina-
tion of the percentage of no response to direct teacher questions, however,
showed that females were as likely as males to attempt to respond when
called on.
Although males and females received an equal percentage of praise fol-
lowing correct answers, males were more likely to get feedback from the
teacher that sustained the interaction when they gave a partially correct, in-
correct, or no response answer. Males received 56% of all sustaining feed-
back (430 of 772 instances); also, males received sustenance 64%of the time
(248 of 390 instances) versus 58% for females (191 of 331 instances) after a
noncorrect answer.
Nonacademic contacts between the teacher and student initiated by the
teacher are recorded in Table 4. The frequencies of each type of contact and
the percentages for each sex are provided.
Student work at the chalkboard was infrequent but nearly equally dis-
tributed between males and females.
Table 3
Numberand Percentof
Teacher-Afforded
ResponseOpportunities
Category Total male Total female
Direct questions 906 (55%) 752 (45%)
Open questions 142 (55%) 115 (45%)
Call-outs 329 (67%) 163 (33%)
Grand total 1377 (57%) 1030 (43%)
Table 4
Number and Percent of
Teacher-Initiated
NonacademicContacts
Category Total male Total female
Conversation 53 (74%) 19 (26%)
Joking 38 (72%) 15 (28%)
Praise 20 (61%) 13 (39%)
Discipline 51(54%) 43 (46%)
Criticism 8 (50%) 8 (50%)
Procedure 38 (49%) 40 (51%)
January 1981 45
Qualitative
The categories created from the vast amount of field notes represent a
coalescence of the data into patterns of behavior. These categories are
grouped into two broad themes of classroom activity. The first, called aca-
demic actions and interactions,includes the vast majority of the interaction
related to the roles of teacher and student in teaching and learning geome-
try. The focuses of this theme are how subject matter is learned on a daily
basis, who talks to whom about geometry, and in what ways.
The second theme deals with the learning environmentset up and main-
tained by the teacher and students. This aspect of the classroom includes
formal and informal rewards and punishments, beliefs and values commu-
nicated to the students, and the physical environment itself.
The description of recurring patterns of behavior and atmosphere in
these two themes concentrates here on differential treatment and behavior
of male and female students and manifestations of sex-role stereotyping.
Academic actions and interactions.The major goal of teaching geometry
in these classes seemed to be to teach students to write a deductive proof.
Teachers attempted to reach this goal by doing numerous examples for the
class and then giving students many proofs on which to work individually.
The chalkboard was the mainstay for presentation of material, and the
teacher was the center of all activity. Interaction among students during
class was minimal, with all class discussion flowing from and through the
teacher.
Overall, teachers interacted less with all students in the second week of
observations than in the first, particularly in asking questions publicly. In
general, teachers tended to interact more with males than with females,
with proportionally fewer interactions with females than males in the sec-
ond observation week. Part of the explanation for the overall drop was the
material being taught. As teachers started deductive proofs, interactions
with individual students tended to be longer. Also, it seemed that as teach-
ers became more familiar with the students, they felt less need to ask many
questions to judge class understanding. The rather passive reaction of fe-
males to teachers' fewer interactions with them may have caused teachers'
interactions with females to diminish over time.
The encouragement of students in their academic abilities and pursuits
showed a wide disparity between females and males, with males receiving
70% of all such positive contacts (103 of 147 instances). Although instances
of actual discouragement occurred much less frequently than instances of
encouragement, female students received almost 9 out of 10 nonen-
couraging or discouraging comments from teachers (36 of 43 instances).
The examples that follow illustrate the range of these interactions. Actual
statements, as direct as possible, are placed in single quotation marks. The
speaker is identified as teacher (T) or student (S), male (m) or female (f).
Expecting students to get a problem on their own can be encouraging, as
in these examples. Females infrequently received this type of encourage-
ment, which stimulates students to think on their own until they figure out
the problem.
T(f) to S(m): 'Good reasoning. You have your steps in the right order.'
She put her hand on his shoulder in a gesture of encouragement and
walked away, implying that he could finish the problem himself.
No teachers, male or female, were observed touching female students in this
way. Although touching was infrequent, it occurred by male and female
teachers only with male students.
T(f) to S(m): 'You don't need your dad to do it. You can do it!'
A lack of encouragement in a particular aspect of mathematics in which
one may or may not be weak might discourage the student from even
trying. In the following example, typical stereotypes about the abilities of
females are reinforced. The class was discussing a not-too-difficult problem
using a three-dimensional figure.
T(m) to the class: 'Boys had a chance to do perspective in shop class, so
they are better at this.'
No attempt was made to help females visualize the problem, such as by us-
ing a physical model, or even to let them know that they could learn to do
such problems.
No teachers were heard encouraging students to take more mathematics;
in fact, teachers missed opportunities to do that. Teachers seemed unaware
of the informal role they could take in counseling students in their choice of
future courses. For example, a teacher of an accelerated ninth-grade geome-
try class was involved in the following exchange.
S(f): 'You don't need to take algebra/trig?'
T(f): 'You do if you want to go to college.'
S: 'I don't want to go to college.'
T: 'Then you don't need it.'
These few examples illustrate the range of contacts that were categorized
as encouragement or discouragement. In general, females experienced a
lack of encouragement and were actively discouraged at times. All 10 teach-
ers showed more encouragement of males; even teachers who were fairly
balanced in other interactions with students tended to give males more en-
couragement. Note that these encouragement contacts displayed no dis-
cernible patterns based on teacher gender.
Related to the encouragement of academic abilities and pursuits in
mathematics is the teacher's willingness to persist with a student who has
not answered a question satisfactorily. Usually this persistence was demon-
strated by such teacher responses as repeating the original question, giving
a clue or hint, asking a related question, drawing a sketch at the board, or
even answering the question and then asking another question of the same
January 1981 47
student. In the longest example of this category, the teacher spent more
than 15 minutes of class time with one (male) student, asking him questions
and giving him hints and clues, until he finally got a proof on the board cor-
rectly. The rest of the class acted as an audience.
With enough help from the teacher, most of the students were able to get
the right answer eventually. However, this help was not distributed equit-
ably among females and males. Male students were involved in 70% of the
interactions coded as persistence (88 of 126 instances). Recall that, as Table
3 shows, males were found to be involved in 57%of the public response op-
portunities coded on the Brophy-Good instrument; so this disproportion in
persistence contacts is larger than the disproportion in total contacts.
Teachers seemed more willing to persist with male students.
Teachers frequently used the teaching technique of having students work
on classwork or homework at their seats. This work was almost always done
individually. Teachers made themselves available to help students, either
by walking around the room checking work and answering questions or sit-
ting at their desks waiting for students to ask for help. Although males and
females asked for help in almost equal numbers, teachers were more likely
to approach male students to check their work and to determine if they
needed help. Also, teachers tended to spend more time with the males, with
all contacts of more than 5 minutes' duration occurring with male students.
Teachers clearly had different expectations for the performance of stu-
dents based on ability level. Grouping together the accelerated 9th-grade
students was viewed as a positive feature. These students were considered to
be the most able mathematically; teachers had high expectations for them
that were generally fulfilled. The three teachers of 9th-grade geometry as a
group showed the fewest disproportions in interactions in favor of the
males. In addition, in two of the classes with equal numbers of each sex, fe-
male students were more active than those in the 10th-grade classes; they
asked more questions, called out more often, and were more talkative with
the teacher. Most interesting is that sex differences in teacher and student
behavior were less marked than in the 10th-grade classes.
The female students as a group tended to be quieter and more passive in
class than the males. However, there were indications that such behavior
might have been caused just as much by the situation as by predisposition.
In two classes, the young women were markedly quieter than those in the
other classes. One of these was the class with the greatest disproportion in
enrollment (18 males and 6 females); in this class, the female students, with
one exception, participated only when asked to by the teacher. Another
class was fairly balanced in sex distribution but had the teacher who
showed the greatest tendency to interact with males more frequently. It was
especially striking to see that class during the second observation week.
These female students seemed to have closed up into a shell; they did little
talking before, during, and after class. One could easily have forgotten that
they were in the class if one just listened to those who spoke.
Affective, normative, and physical setting. Generally, teachers interacted
informally with male students much more frequently than with female stu-
dents. These contacts included conversations before and after class, joking,
and similar nonacademic interactions. Teachers initiated nearly three-
fourths of their conversations outside of class with males (17 out of 23 in-
stances). Joking was most often initiated by the teacher; 66% of those con-
tacts (21 of 32 instances) were with males. A small trend appeared for male
teachers to joke with female students (7 out of 10 instances) and female
teachers to joke with male students (18 out of 22 instances). No male stu-
dents joked with male teachers; only one female student initiated a joke,
and that was with a female teacher.
Male students also were observed receiving more positive and negative
affect related to their academic work; males were involved in 65% of the
praise interactions (which totaled 97) and 73% of the critical interactions
(which totaled only 15). Thus, teachers were much more likely to use praise
than criticism but used both more often with males.
Disciplinary contacts, small in number, were equally distributed between
females and males. There was no evidence that male students demanded
more teacher attention because of poor behavior.
The classroom environment described so far was more supportive of
males academically and emotionally. Teacher, community, and school be-
liefs and values compounded the impression that mathematics is not a sub-
ject in which women have an active role.
All the teachers exemplified in their own behavior a strong work ethic.
The teachers worked hard and expected their students to do likewise; how-
ever, the level of expectation seemed to vary by the sex of the student. As
expressed by one teacher, parents seem to expect their sons to continue to
study mathematics because it is essential for their futures; mathematics is
not considered important for their daughters. One school continues to expe-
rience a pattern in which males with lower grades continue in mathematics,
but females with similar grades drop out. In another school, a discussion
with four science teachers illustrated an acceptance of a disinterest of fe-
males in mathematics and science as the natural order. One male teacher
remarked that more males study mathematics and science because they are
better in those subjects.
The behavior of students was also expected to differ on the basis of sex.
Females were considered to be more conscientious, serious, quiet, and self-
motivating. Females of the same ability as males received better grades,
teachers stated, because they handed in all assignments and completed their
work carefully. Males, however, needed more teacher attention and rein-
forcement, both to keep them on task and to stimulate them to achieve up
to capability. One teacher remarked that it is easy to ignore quiet females
who do their work without extra attention.
The physical setting of the classrooms reinforced the traditional view of
mathematics as a male domain. The five geometry textbooks being used
January 1981 49
predominantly showed men in the historic and career essays. Although
teachers may have no choice in textbooks, none were observed using other
materials to counteract this sex bias. Bulletin board displays, for example,
also sex-typed mathematics as male. A typical display was a large poster
about measurement that included 13 pictures, all of which showed only
men doing measuring tasks. The role of women in mathematics and society
at large was virtually ignored in classroom materials.
Teacher behavior and language also reinforced traditional stereotypes.
One teacher always referred to the people who work in mathematics as
men.
T(m): 'The algebra man uses the term reflexive;the old-time geometry
man uses identity.'
Another teacher gave the following description of mathematicians.
T(f): 'Mathematicians are a weird group. What happens is somebody
proves it, and everybody else tries to shoot him down.'
Several female teachers denigrated their own abilities in spatial relations,
in dealing with anything mechanical, even in their knowledge of geometry.
Male students were consulted, for example, in a problem that involved saw-
ing a board into two pieces.
General stereotyping in the schools themselves also was evident, with
only one instance observed of an attempt to point out nontraditional roles.
This general stereotyping was reinforced by the typical ratio of twice as
many men as women teaching mathematics in the three schools.
In summary, the students were learning mathematics in an environment
that sex-typed the subject as male, that provided males more formal and in-
formal reward and support in mathematics, and that provided males more
outlets for classroom academic achievement and recognition. Whereas
males were provided a good cognitive and affective environment in which
to learn mathematics, females, relatively speaking, were treated with benign
neglect.
Conclusions
Combining the qualitative and quantitative data presented here, one
must conclude that there was differential treatment occurring in these ge-
ometry classes. Although the categories of sex differences are interrelated,
the number and variety of differences, in a consistent pattern for more
teacher-initiated contacts with males, certainly point to unequal treatment.
The teachers in the sample treated females and males differently in (a) af-
forded response opportunities, (b) open questioning, (c) cognitive level of
questions, (d) sustenance and persistence, (e) praise and criticism, (f) en-
couragement, (g) individual help, and (h) conversation and joking. The dif-
ferences found generally work in a positive way for males--they received
more teacher attention, reinforcement, and affect. Females, traditionally the
"lesser sex," received less of all three.
Although differences in student behavior were not as marked as one
might expect, there was a tendency for female students to be quieter and
less active in class, particularly later in the study. In contrast, females
tended to ask more public questions; however, this sex difference decreased
over time. Also, females asked for individual help slightly more often.
Males called out answers to teacher questions twice as frequently as fe-
males; although call-outs decreased over time, there was a much larger drop
for females. And males were much more active in initiating informal con-
tacts, such as joking, with the teacher. Some tendency was noted for females
to become quieter and more passive in response to less teacher attention to
them.
The classroom environments on the whole reinforced traditional sex-typ-
ing of mathematics as male. Nothing was discerned, in teacher language
and behavior or the physical environment, that could be considered as
working in a positive way to stimulate young women to continue their study
of mathematics.
In attempting to understand these differences in teacher and student be-
havior, the author was led to the self-fulfilling prophecy hypothesis (Rosen-
thal & Jacobson, 1968), which states that teacher expectations for student
performance can come to determine that performance. Although the Ro-
senthal and Jacobson study has been criticized on methodological grounds,
in a review of the self-fulfilling prophecy in classroom studies, Burstall
(1978) found that those studies that looked at teachers' attitudes and ex-
pectations that were not artificially induced but, rather, built up naturally
over time have produced more positive results in support of the theory.
Cooper (1979) concluded that the existence of expectation effects is well es-
tablished and adopted the conclusion that teacher expectations serve to sus-
tain and maintain differential performance rather than cause it.
The data in this study suggest that sex-biased interaction patterns do oc-
cur in high school geometry classes. A three-step pattern hypothesized by
the author seemed to shape teacher interaction with male and female stu-
dents. First, teachers have different expectations of students based on the
sex of those students. Teachers, as members of our society, come to a new
class with expectations that closely reflect those stereotypical views our so-
ciety holds of the roles of men and women in mathematics. These differen-
tial expectations for each sex include ability in mathematics, social'behav-
ior, and maturity.
Second, teachers then treat students differently on the basis of sex in ways
consistent with these expectations. The differential treatment found in this
study occurred most often in directions that may indirectly benefit male stu-
dents, both in their learning of mathematics and their future course choices.
Although many of the categories of differences discussed here occurred in
relatively infrequent aspects of behavior in the classroom, over an entire
January 1981 51
year female and male students would have substantially different experi-
ences.
The third step in the hypothesis is that students respond differentially in
class in accordance with the expectations of teachers and society of their sex
roles. Males continue or even increase their active role in class; females tend
to react to what they identify as teacher indifference by becoming even
more passive. Thus, students behave differently at least partly as a result of
differential treatment by teachers. And students tend to behave in ways that
complement and reinforce the teachers' expectations.
Obviously the steps in this model interact and affect each other. High
school students already have sex-role socialization well established. Their
behavior may itself be a partial cause of the teachers' differential ex-
pectations and treatment of them; however, teacher behaviors consistent
with their expectations then reinforce societally prescribed sex roles rather
than altering them to a more equitable view. Such alteration is essential to a
change in the low representation of women in mathematics and related en-
deavors.
This study began with a concern about the small number of women in
mathematics and related fields in our society. The data indicate that teach-
ers behave in ways that involve young women less in classroom interactions
and give them less encouragement in mathematics. The parallels in society
at large and the classroom cannot be ignored. It is hoped that this identifi-
cation of differential treatment and sex-role stereotyping will lead to con-
cern and action for change so that educational equity in mathematics will
become a reality.
REFERENCE
NOTES
1. Sells, L. Personal communication, 1978.
2. Sells, L. The mathematicsfilter and the education of women and minorities. Paper presented
at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, 1976.
3. Casserly, P. L. An assessment offactors affectingfemale participation in advanced placement
programs in mathematics, chemistryand physics. Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Serv-
ice, 1975.
4. Fennema, E. Influences of selected cognitive, affective and educational variables on sex-re-
lated differences in mathematics learning and studying. Madison: University of Wisconsin,
1976.
5. Brophy, J. E., & Good, T. L. Teacher-childdyadic interaction:A manual for coding class-
room behavior. Austin, Tex.: The Research and Development Center for Teacher Educa-
tion, 1969.
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[ReceivedJanuary1980;revisedAugust 1980]
Statementof ownership,managementand circulation(Requiredby 39 U.S.C.3685).1. Titleof publication,Journalfor Re-

search in Mathematics Education. 2. Date of filing, 1 October 1980. 3. Frequency of issue, five times per year: January, March,
May,July,November.A. No. of issuespublishedannually,five.B. Annualsubscription price,$12.00.4. Locationof known
officeof publication,1906AssociationDrive,Reston,VA 22091.5. Locationof the headquarters or generalbusinessofficesof
the publishers,sameas #4. 6. Namesand completeaddressesof publisher,editor,and managingeditor.Publisher,National
Councilof Teachersof Mathematics, same as #4. Editor,JamesW. Wilson, 105 AderholdHall, Universityof Georgia,
Athens,GA 30602.ManagingEditor,none.7. Owner,NationalCouncilof Teachersof Mathematics, sameas #4. 8. Known
bondholders,mortgagees, and othersecurityholdersowningor holding1 percentor moreof totalamountof bonds,mort-
gages or other none.
securities, 9. The purpose, function, and status
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eral incometax purposeshave not changedduringpreceding12 months.10.Extentand natureof circulation.Averageno.
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January 1981 53

Diferencial Treatment of Females and Males in Math

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Diferencial Treatment of Females and Males in Math

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Differential Treatment of Females and Males in Mathematics Classes

Author(s): Joanne Rossi Becker

Mathematics courses in high school continue to attract fewer women than

This paper represents a portion of the author's dissertation research conducted at

* Currentlyat BrooklynCollegeof the City Universityof New York.

42 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education

44 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education

46 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education

48 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education

50 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education

52 Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education

Statementof ownership,managementand circulation(Requiredby 39 U.S.C.3685).1. Titleof publication,Journalfor Re-

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