Anke Heyder

How Gender Differences in Academic Engagement Relate to Students' Gender Identity.

Background: Gender differences in educational outcomes encompass many different areas. For example, in some educational settings, boys lag behind girls on indicators of educational success, such as leaving certificates and type of school attended. In studies testing performance, boys typically show lower competence in reading compared with girls, yet tend to show higher competence in school subjects related to mathematics. While such differences in competence between the genders can be relatively small, they coincide with much greater differences in motivation-related variables emerging during the school years, and thus seem to channel students into lifelong gendered pathways via gendered educational and occupational preferences. Purpose: From a psychological perspective, we propose the Interests as Identity Regulation Model (IIRM) as a useful tool for understanding many of the gender differences in educational outcomes. Specifically, the focus is on two areas of research: girls’ and women’s under-representation in subjects such as maths and science; and boys’ lower engagement at school in general. Sources of evidence: Findings from recent research, mostly from a psychological perspective using quantitative measures and empirical studies testing the IIRM, are reported to illustrate different aspects of the interplay between students’ gender identity and gendered social meanings of academic domains (such as maths), as well as academic engagement in general. Main argument: IIRM suggests that the perceived fit between students’ gender identity and the gendered social meanings associated with different possible behaviours at school (e.g. choosing a subject, investing effort or not) is a relevant heuristic for students’ directing of their learning activities. The male stereotyping of maths and science implies a greater misfit between girls’ gender identity and engagement in these domains. The perception that displaying effort and engagement at school is feminine leads to a misfit between boys’ gender identity and academic engagement in general. Conclusions: Attempts to alleviate gender differences in educational outcomes that channel students into lifelong gendered pathways with regard to qualifications and occupations will benefit from an understanding of how closely these academic choices are related to students’ gender identity. Interventions should aim at enhancing the individually perceived fit between a student’s gender identity and engagement in specific subjects or learning activities. The nature of such interventions will be an important topic of future research.

Teachers’ Knowledge About Intellectual Giftedness: A First Look at Levels and Correlates:

Evidence-based knowledge about intellectual giftedness is important for identifying, counseling, and fostering intellectually gifted students. How much teachers actually know about intellectual giftedness is unclear because previous studies have relied solely on self-reports. This study aimed to: (a) develop a test for the assessment of teachers’ knowledge about intellectual giftedness defined as an intellectual capacity significantly above average, the identification of giftedness, and characteristics of gifted students; and (b) inspect some correlates of teachers’ performance on a knowledge test. The final version of the test comprised 38 items and a true–false–do-not-know response format. Sixty-three German secondary school teachers completed the test. On average, teachers answered 26.8% of the items correctly, 34.7% incorrectly, and 38.1% with “do not know.” The higher teachers’ rate of misconceptions, the more negative was their attitude toward fostering gifted students. Personal contact with the gifted was correlated with subjective knowledge but not with assessed knowledge. The results stress the importance of intellectual giftedness as a psychological topic to be addressed during teacher education.

Assessing the Impact of Educational Programmes: An Evaluation of Research Validity

Quantitative evaluations regarding impact are available for the four programmes Jacobs Summer Camp/DeutschSommer, Semi-Autonomous School, Success for All, and Teach For America. This chapter takes a closer look at the research design of these evaluations to discuss the validity of their findings. The discussion is based on the most important and highest quality evaluations published for each programme. The criteria for research validity employed in this chapter are introduced in the first section outlined below. In the subsequent sections, each programme is presented with a short general introduction, an assessment of up to three of their evaluations and a concluding paragraph. The chapter ends with a short summary.