Gender differences and achievement in Liberian primary school children

Abstract

A recent educational project in Liberia provided the opportunity to test the claim that programmed teaching and programmed instructional materials could improve student achievement over more conventional approaches and at the same time minimize gender-related achievement differences. The study examined gender differences in English and mathematics achievement in grades 1, 2 and 3 across three instructional approaches used in Liberia. The results of the analyses indicate that (1) on the average across the three grades, students in the programmed teaching approach significantly outperformed students in both comparison groups on both the mathematics and English achiievement tests, (2) boys generally outperformed girls in both mathematics and English, and (3) the greatest gender differences in achievement occurred among students in the programmed teaching approach.