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Maybe nothing. Or maybe something. Either way, we won't find out if we approach what she's saying without curiosity. Incredulity toward what she's saying serves

Maybe nothing. Or maybe something. Either way, we won't find out if we approach what she's saying without curiosity. Incredulity toward what she's saying serves to preserve the status quo, not effect change. https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/01/female-teachers-math-anxiety-influences-female-students/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/01/female-teachers-math... http://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/436525758/how-teachers-unconscious-bias-play-into-the-hands-ofgender-disparity http://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/436525758/how-teachers-unconsc...

mpweiher 9y ago
So we need to get women out of early childhood education? (Both referenced articles talk about female teachers, who are the vast majority of teachers at that grade level, transmitting their anxiety about or dislike of math to female students)
- crawfordcomeaux 9y ago
  So we need to rethink how we teach and how we think. Like approaching a problem of gender bias by assuming that's the only root issue, which it obviously isn't here, since there's also the problem of bad teachers, in general. Here's one change you may benefit from: exclude solutions that exclude a class of people. Otherwise, we'll need to wait for bad teachers to die out before a solution excluding them can really take hold & that's not a possible outcome because no system is perfect. Edit: more specifically, we need to immediately start training teachers how to handle their anxiety,which means we probably need to qualitatively study their anxieties. Without shaming them or excluding them or threatening their livelihoods.
Eridrus 9y ago
So, that second link was so crazy to me that I started looking things up, and it seems like there is evidence in all directions: Physics is biased against women: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201604/grading.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201604/grading.cfm Elementary school teachers are biased against boys who do not socialize well: http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discriminate-against-boys/ http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discrimi... Indian teachers are biased against lower caste students: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/remahanna/files/discriminationaej201.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/remahanna/files/discriminat... In fact the paper the NPR article talks about actually says "We show that there is large variation within schools in this measure, and that it has a significant effect on the academic achievements of both genders during middle school and high school in math, science and language and also on the choice of the level of math and science study programs in high school" it also has this line "Math teachers' assessment in primary school, on the other hand, is on average gender neutral (0.01). However, these means hide quite a large heterogeneity among teachers." They also say "In terms of effect size, these estimates indicate that increasing the average stereotypical bias against girls from zero to its maximal value of one will reduce girls' outcomes by 0.317 of a standard deviation"; which doesn't sound huge (given that's with the most amount of bias), but I guess it all adds up. The physics one is perhaps the most interesting since it says that male German teachers had no bias, and hypothesized that anti-bias training worked there, which if true is a positive sign. I'm sort of rambling without a point, I guess I was just surprised how directly you could measure this effect. I had always assumed it was much more indirect.

mpweiher 9y ago

So we need to get women out of early childhood education? (Both referenced articles talk about female teachers, who are the vast majority of teachers at that grade level, transmitting their anxiety about or dislike of math to female students)

crawfordcomeaux 9y ago
So we need to rethink how we teach and how we think. Like approaching a problem of gender bias by assuming that's the only root issue, which it obviously isn't here, since there's also the problem of bad teachers, in general. Here's one change you may benefit from: exclude solutions that exclude a class of people. Otherwise, we'll need to wait for bad teachers to die out before a solution excluding them can really take hold & that's not a possible outcome because no system is perfect. Edit: more specifically, we need to immediately start training teachers how to handle their anxiety,which means we probably need to qualitatively study their anxieties. Without shaming them or excluding them or threatening their livelihoods.

Eridrus 9y ago

So, that second link was so crazy to me that I started looking things up, and it seems like there is evidence in all directions: Physics is biased against women: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201604/grading.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201604/grading.cfm Elementary school teachers are biased against boys who do not socialize well: http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discriminate-against-boys/ http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discrimi... Indian teachers are biased against lower caste students: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/remahanna/files/discriminationaej201.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/remahanna/files/discriminat... In fact the paper the NPR article talks about actually says "We show that there is large variation within schools in this measure, and that it has a significant effect on the academic achievements of both genders during middle school and high school in math, science and language and also on the choice of the level of math and science study programs in high school" it also has this line "Math teachers' assessment in primary school, on the other hand, is on average gender neutral (0.01). However, these means hide quite a large heterogeneity among teachers." They also say "In terms of effect size, these estimates indicate that increasing the average stereotypical bias against girls from zero to its maximal value of one will reduce girls' outcomes by 0.317 of a standard deviation"; which doesn't sound huge (given that's with the most amount of bias), but I guess it all adds up. The physics one is perhaps the most interesting since it says that male German teachers had no bias, and hypothesized that anti-bias training worked there, which if true is a positive sign. I'm sort of rambling without a point, I guess I was just surprised how directly you could measure this effect. I had always assumed it was much more indirect.