Gender Gap Thesis

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Topic Paper 1: The Impact of Adolescent Transition on the Gender Gap in Mathematics A few semesters ago, I took a sociology class that focused on education and culminated in a critical summary on a topic of our choosing. I wrote about the influence of society and education on the gender gap in STEM fields. Fortunately, the gap is shrinking but given my new knowledge about the transitional period of adolescence I have more understanding of why the gap existed and why it is shrinking. Statistics regarding educational achievement are obtained through several exams given to a variety of students in all grades, of all genders in several countries across the globe. For decades, the scores demonstrated that females in general were performing consistently worse on the mathematics portion of the exam when compared to their male counterparts. There have been several other more focused studies to identify why such a gap existed. One such study evaluated the influence of stereotype threat when taking a standardized test. The study showed that when females are asked their gender before they take the exam they do worse on average than those who are asked for their gender after the …show more content…

While social and biological changes can impact how well students perform, the most impactful changes are cognitive. As described by both Piaget’s theory and the information processing theory, adolescents develop the ability to think more abstractly as a part of their cognitive development. The information processing theory however, specifically details the development of metacognition which is the process of thinking about one’s own thinking. For most adolescents, this leads to self-consciousness as there is a heightened awareness of how they think that is extrapolated to how others may think. This leads to hyperawareness of one’s own behavior and appearance and can have serious

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