How Classmates' Gender Stereotypes Affect Students' Math Self-Concepts: A Multilevel Analysis.

Fabian Wolff

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.599199

Abstract

The present research is the first to examine how students’ individual and their classmates’ math-related gender stereotypes, endorsing that math would be a typically male domain, relate to students’ math self-concepts. To this end, data of N = 1,424 secondary school students from Germany were analyzed using multilevel analyses. As expected, strong individual beliefs in the math-related gender stereotype were related to lower math self-concepts for girls, but to higher math self-concepts for boys. Moreover, classmates’ shared beliefs in this stereotype showed a negative relation to girls’ self-concepts, whereas no significant relation between classmates’ shared beliefs and boys’ self-concepts was found. These relations also persisted after controlling for students’ math grades and age. In sum, the results demonstrated that gender stereotypes shared by students’ classmates can have a substantial impact on students’ math self-concepts, beyond their individual gender stereotypes. This finding emphasizes the significance of classmates as important socializing peers in the process of students’ self-concept formation.

Highlights

Gender differences in math performance have largely vanished today, female students still tend to consider themselves as being less competent in math than their male counterparts (e.g., Hyde et al, 2008; Niepel et al, 2020)
Older girls showed slightly stronger beliefs in the stereotype favoring boys in math compared to younger girls (r = 0.13, p < 0.01) and older boys showed slightly lower math self-concepts compared to younger boys (r = −0.15, p < 0.01)
The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of 0.11 found for students’ beliefs in the stereotype favoring boys in math is noteworthy, as it indicated that students of the same class showed a substantial agreement in their belief in this stereotype

Summary

Introduction

Gender differences in math performance have largely vanished today, female students still tend to consider themselves as being less competent in math than their male counterparts (e.g., Hyde et al, 2008; Niepel et al, 2020). These gender differences in students’ math self-concepts remain a cause for concern— because subject-specific self-concepts strongly relate to students’ attitudes and affects toward school subjects (e.g., Goetz et al, 2008; Schurtz et al, 2014), and because students include their self-concepts in their career choices (e.g., Parker et al, 2012, 2014). Enough, these studies found that the gender differences in students’ math self-concepts are larger, the more students believe that

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