How do we persuade more senior students to take advanced mathematics?

And what has gender got to do with it?

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

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I was recently asked an interesting question. Girls are well-represented and often form the majority of students in many of the subjects that comprise the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). They also outperform boys in most of these subjects. However, these trends do not extend to maths and physics. Why is this? What is going wrong in maths and physics?

There is an embedded assumption here. We don’t mind that girls outperformed boys in 16 of the 20 most popular VCE subjects last year. That’s as it should be. And we don’t mind that girls outnumber boys in English, psychology, business studies, biology and even chemistry. That’s fine. The problem is the areas bucking this trend. That’s the newsworthy discussion.

Despite this skewed perspective, I understand and share the concern. Mathematics and physics can lead to highly paid careers and by opting out, women will not be able to access these particular careers. However, I do think the growing crisis in men’s academic achievement more generally should draw a little attention, at least occasionally.

I was asked the question about young women studying maths and physics by Adam Carey at The Age. There has been a recent media storm in the U.K. caused by Katharine Birbalsingh, head of Michaela Community School, and her comments on the issue of girls studying physics, so I want to avoid reheating that. Nevertheless, the question remains as to why it is that girls tend to opt out of mathematics and physics at school.

I researched this question as part of my teacher training back in 1998. No doubt, sexist attitudes from teachers have played a part. And drawing on the literature available at the time, I concluded that there were deeply entrenched societal stereotypes about scientists — that scientists are not only male, but a particularly uncool class of frizzy-haired and bearded men with a penchant for sandals, real ale and progressive rock. To overcome this stereotype, young women who opted for physics tended to be particularly robust, independent-minded and not reliant on the approval of peers.

In recent years, I have come to wonder whether girls’ superior academic performance in other fields is another part of the issue. Boys don’t tend to outperform girls in school maths and science and even when they do, it’s not by much. Yet, they hold their own. In comparison to English or languages, boys see their maths and science performance as a bright spot. Boys then disproportionately opt into these subjects, reinforcing the stereotype.

These are all hypotheses and I cannot substantiate them. What I do know is that if we want more girls choosing advanced senior mathematics and physics courses, then this is not an easy problem to solve. These trends are long-term and entrenched.

So let me bait-and-switch. I do not know how to fix this issue, but I have some ideas about a possible solution to the related issue of declining enrolments in advanced maths, regardless of gender.