Abstract
This paper focuses on the aspirations of 13- and 15-year-olds to continue with mathematics after the age of 16 and the association with perceptions of their mathematics education during the academic year 2008/9. A quantitative analysis was undertaken on the views of 12,176 UK students, obtained through surveys, with qualitative case studies on two of these students lending support to the quantitative findings. This paper also places a focus on a sub-set of 1,476 London students. The analysis indicates that girls and boys with high mathematics aspirations had similar responses towards their mathematics teachers and lessons, and had comparable extrinsic mathematics motivation. However, girls, regardless of mathematics aspirations, were less likely than boys to be encouraged by their families and others within their social circles to study mathematics post-16. Many of the London findings are similar to those we found across the UK, although girls within London schools with high mathematics aspirations perceived their mathematics education to be more equitable. Low aspiring girls across the UK and in London still reported less support and encouragement, and described their mathematics education less favourably than did boys.
Highlights
The UK government is committed to increasing the number of STEM professionals as it perceives this is crucial for the UK to be able to compete in an increasingly competitive global economy; it has expended efforts to review the curriculum for 14- to 16-year-olds in England and Wales (DfE, 2014)
We have included extracts from interviews taken from a boy and a girl to exemplify the quantitative findings.The interviewees were taken from a bank of interviews we conducted with 56 students who had completed surveys.This paper explores in detail issues around gender, perceptions, motivations, and attitudes in relation to intentions to participate in mathematics post-16
In the survey we asked year 10 students whether they were intending to continue with mathematics post-16.Tables 1.1 and 1.2 show that boys had higher post-16 mathematics aspirations than girls (effect size (ES) UK = .215; London = .285).The difference between girls and boys was higher in London schools, the mean results demonstrate that London students reported more favourably about continuing with mathematics post-16 than did students across the UK
Summary
The UK government is committed to increasing the number of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals as it perceives this is crucial for the UK to be able to compete in an increasingly competitive global economy; it has expended efforts to review the curriculum for 14- to 16-year-olds in England and Wales (DfE, 2014). In recent years there has been a shift in students’ attitudes towards mathematics. It is increasingly seen as a useful subject for higher education entry and/or future careers (Taylor, 2014). One of the key reasons why the under-representation of females in post-16 mathematics is important is because of the implications this has for their career development and access to specialist higher education courses. It is our contention that the findings have implications for some other STEM subjects, and we make reference below to physics in particular.The gender gap in attainment in mathematics in the UK at secondary level is fairly small. In 2015, 38.8 per cent of A level mathematics entries were for female candidates compared to 50.9 per cent of GCSE mathematics entries (JCQ, 2016a; JCQ, 2016b)
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