Abstract
In recent years, research examining results from tests of mathematics performance has generally documented small or reduced gaps between male and female students (e.g., Else-Quest et al. 2010; Hyde et al. 2008; McGraw et al. 2006). However, this is not always the case. For example, research exploring the gender gap among high-achieving high school students, using data from the American Mathematics Competitions, has indicated that the gender gap widens dramatically at very high percentiles and that the highest-achieving girls are concentrated in a very small set of elite schools (Ellison and Swanson 2010). A study by Fryer and Levitt (2010) documented the emergence of a substantial mathematics gender gap in the early years of schooling in the United States, documenting that girls lose more than two-tenths of a standard deviation relative to boys over the first six years of school, across every strata of society.
Formerly Laura Spielman.
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Notes
- 1.
MEPI is supported by the National Science Foundation, award number 0837467. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Jacobsen, L. (2012). Preface to “Equity in Mathematics Education: Unions and Intersections of Feminist and Social Justice Literature”. In: Forgasz, H., Rivera, F. (eds) Towards Equity in Mathematics Education. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27702-3_4
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