STEMMING THE TIDE: Coping with Stereotype Threat In Math & Science Learning

STEMMING THE TIDE: Coping with Stereotype Threat In Math & Science Learning Matthew S. McGlone Department of Communication Studies The University of Texas at Austin matthew_mcglone@mail.utexas.edu

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among the rocks.- Charlotte Bronte (1851)

I told my literary agent I want to help middle-school girls stay interested in math and be good at it, and see it as friendly and accessible and not this scary thing. Everyone else in society tells them it's not for them. It's for nerdy white guys with pocket protectors. This is how 75 percent of all science is depicted on television. The message they're getting instead is: It's really cool to be dumb. Look at Jessica Simpson. She's famous for being dumb. I guess it started with Marilyn Monroe, and she actually wasn't that dumb, but that's how she was perceived -- and that's what got popular. - Danica McKellar (2007)

Underachievement of Black and Latino Students Post-education: overrepresented in US Prison population; clear link to underperformance in school College: approximately 1/2 as likely to go as European American students; about 2x as likely to drop out if they do High School: high drop out rates; no improvement since No Child Left Behind K-12: Lower standardized test scores and grades; gap widens as students move through school

Underachievement of Girls and Women in STEM Education Graduate School: while outperforming men in all other areas of academia, women earn less than 25% of advanced degrees in STEM fields College: women perform worse on standardized tests of mathematics but do well in their courses; far fewer choose STEM majors Middle School: girls earn equally high grades but begin to lose confidence in math abilities; test score gap on standardized tests emerges K-12: girls perform at or above the same level as boys on tests and in school, but show less intrinsic interest in spatial tasks and hypothetico-deductive reasoning

Common Explanations for Ethnic Academic Achievement Gaps

Common Explanations for Ethnic Academic Achievement Gaps 1. Lower innate intelligence of ethnic minorities • Rushton (1984): more offspring / less nurturing  low intelligence • Herrnstein & Murray (1989): The Bell Curve • DNA pioneer James Watson (2008): “Gloomy prospects for Africa”

Common Explanations for Ethnic Academic Achievement Gaps 1. Lower innate intelligence of ethnic minorities • Rushton (1984): more offspring / less nurturing  low intelligence • Herrnstein & Murray (1989): The Bell Curve • DNA pioneer James Watson (2008): “Gloomy prospects for Africa” 2. Poverty  lower skills and preparation

Common Explanations for Ethnic Academic Achievement Gaps 1. Lower innate intelligence of ethnic minorities • Rushton (1984): more offspring / less nurturing  low intelligence • Herrnstein & Murray (1989): The Bell Curve • DNA pioneer James Watson (2008): “Gloomy prospects for Africa” 2. Poverty  lower skills and preparation 3. Cultures that encourage anti-intellectualism, characterize academic success as “acting white”

Common Explanations for Sex-BasedSTEM Achievement Gaps

Common Explanations for Sex-BasedSTEM Achievement Gaps • Biology • Geary (1998): evolutionary pressures yield sexual dimorphism in reasoning and communication abilities • Baron-Cohen (2001): prenatal testosterone levels shape male (systemizing) vs. female (empathizing) brains

Common Explanations for Sex-BasedSTEM Achievement Gaps • Biology • Geary (1998): evolutionary pressures yield sexual dimorphism in reasoning and communication abilities • Baron-Cohen (2001): prenatal testosterone levels shape male (systemizing) vs. female (empathizing) brains 2. Socialization • McGillicuddy-De Lisi (1998): girls receive less encouragement to pursue STEM studies than boys

Common Explanations for Sex-BasedSTEM Achievement Gaps • Biology • Geary (1998): evolutionary pressures yield sexual dimorphism in reasoning and communication abilities • Baron-Cohen (2001): prenatal testosterone levels shape male (systemizing) vs. female (empathizing) brains 2. Socialization • McGillicuddy-De Lisi (1998): girls receive less encouragement to pursue STEM studies than boys 3. Nature-Nurture Interaction • “…by nature implanted, for nurture to enlarge” (Merchant Taylor’s School Headmaster Richard Mulcaster, 1581)

Human intelligence is among the most fragile things in nature. It doesn’t take much to distract it, suppress it, or even annihilate it. – Neil Postman (1990)

Social Factors Influence Intellectual Performance Interpersonal “chemistry” rapport affects intellectual engagement in conversation; the more comfortable we are in another’s presence, the more witty we appear to them and to observers (McGlone & Aronson, 1997)

Social Factors Influence Intellectual Performance Interpersonal “chemistry” rapport affects intellectual engagement in conversation; the more comfortable we are in another’s presence, the more witty we appear to them and to observers (McGlone & Aronson, 1997) Self-presentational concerns evaluation apprehension (Cottrell, 1972)

Social Factors Influence Intellectual Performance Interpersonal “chemistry” rapport affects intellectual engagement in conversation; the more comfortable we are in another’s presence, the more witty we appear to them and to observers (McGlone & Aronson, 1997) Self-presentational concerns evaluation apprehension (Cottrell, 1972) Self-fulfilling prophecies Pygmalion Effect: Students’ academic performance influenced by teachers’ positive or negative expectations (Rosenthal, 1968) Stereotype / Social Identity Threat

resemble stereotype apprehension, distraction intellectual disruption Stereotype/Social IdentityThreat stereotype is salient Psychological discomfort people experience when they are concerned about a) being judged in terms of a negative social or personal stereotype or b) doing something that would inadvertently confirm the stereotype.

black students making class presentation to white students, teacher girls, women taking math tests men pursuing nursing degrees male prof lecturing on sexist communication at Bryn Mawr Stereotype Threat Scenarios

Stereotype Threat Scenarios Dan Quayle, 1992 George W. Bush, 2008 The “Tongue-Tied Technocrat” Stereotype Threat Hypothesis (Fallows, 2004; Aronson & McGlone, 2008)

Bush-Kerry Debates, 2004 Bush-Richards Debate, 1994 Stereotype Threat and Speech Anxiety …in 1994,Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled a word or two, but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking, he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones. (James Fallows, Atlantic Monthly, 2004).

Stereotype Threat and Academic Achievement • ST is a situational phenomenon that can account • for a significant portion of ethnic and gender • gaps in test performance and academic • achievement. • ST elicited by cues operating in the classroom • and/or testing context.

Cues to Stereotype Threat: Test Framing Steele & Aronson (1995) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Johns, Schmader, & Martens (2005) Psychological Science

womanLatina daughter sister aunt Houstonian UT student biology major athlete girlfriend Cues to Stereotype Threat: Identity Salience Ascribed Vs. Achieved Identities Situationally salient identity can boost or impair intellectual performance

Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test (MRT) • produces largest documented gender gap in any • cognitive ability (Halpern, 1992; De Lisi, 2001) • a meta-analysis containing 286 data sets and 100,000 • participants found a highly significant male advantage for • mental rotation (d = .9); this pattern remains stable • across age and has decreased little in recent years.

Identity Salience Influences Women’s Mental Rotation Performance McGlone & Aronson (2006). Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.

Cues to Stereotype Threat: Recent Exposure to Stereotype Info. Effects on Women’s Career Preferences Effects on Women’s Leadership Preference TV Commercials TV Commercials Davies, Spencer, Quinn, & Gerhardstein (2002) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Davies, Spencer, & Steele (2005) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Cues to Stereotype Threat • Framing assessment as a measure of ability • Stigmatized social identities made salient • Recent exposure to stereotype information ST effects shown for: • All educational levels (elementary, middle, high school, college) • ethnic minorities AND majorities targeted by negative intellectual stereotypes • girls, women in STEM learning contexts

Conclusions from ~ 200 Published Studies on Stereotype Threat • Impairment occurs both on tests and in terms of GPA • Impairment on tests results from anxiety, reduced working memory capacity; impaired self-regulation; not typically a function of giving up • fMRI studies show that threat elicits high amygdala activation • Can affect elite or non-elite students • Can arise as a function of simply mixing students • Leads women to express less interest in math and science, and even bifurcate their identities

Strategies for Reducing Stereotype Threat in STEM Learning

Reducing Stereotype ThreatSolution 1: Provide Role Models Marx & Roman (2002) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Reducing Stereotype ThreatSolution 2: Threat Inoculation through Education • Train our educators to be ‘wise mentors’ • discuss, challenge stereotypes among students • set high standards but assure students that they can meet them • Emphasizing skill over ability • highlight that learning is an incremental process • Fostering a sense of belonging • help students reappraise the meaning of adversity

Reducing Stereotype ThreatSolution 2: Threat Inoculation through Education Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht (2003) Applied Developmental Psychology

Reducing Stereotype ThreatSolution 2: Threat Inoculation through Education • Teaching our educators to be ‘wise mentors’ • speak out against the stereotype • set high standards but assure students that they can meet them • Emphasizing skill over ability • highlight that learning is an incremental process • Fostering a sense of belonging • help students reappraise the meaning of adversity • Unveiling the effects of stereotype threat • point out that stereotype threat is an external explanation for anxiety

Teaching about Stereotype Threat Inoculates Students Against Its Effects McGlone & Aronson (2007). Communication Education

Reducing Stereotype ThreatSolution 3: Recognize that Standardized Tests are Two-Way Communication Channels ETS Study: Asking Gender Before AP Calculus Test Hurts Girls, Helps Boys (Stricker, 2004)

Danaher and Crandall (2008)Reanalysis of Stricker’s data “Female students benefited substantially on the calculus test when demographics were asked after testing rather than before. This simple, small, and inexpensive change could increase U.S. girls receiving AP Calculus credit by more than 4,700 every year” (p. 293).

Implications For our Work as Teachers • Understand and teach students that intelligence, performance, motivation are fragile; learn to expect ups and downs • Teach students that their abilities can expand • Expose students to role models who, like them, experience difficulties but overcome • Use cooperative group work; reduce competition • Give feedback in ways that don’t undermine motivation; high standards and support to meet standards

Thanks! Comments and questions are welcome! Please send them to: Matt McGlone Department of Communication Studies The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station A1105 Austin, TX 78712 e-mail: matthew_mcglone@mail.utexas.edu Phone: 512-471-1920

STEMMING THE TIDE: Coping with Stereotype Threat In Math & Science Learning