Reply to Plante et al.: Girls’ math achievement is related to their female teachers’ math anxiety

Abstract

Plante et al. (1) in “Girls’ internalization of their female teacher’s anxiety: A ‘real-world’ stereotype threat effect?” raise an excellent point that, overall, girls’ and boys’ math achievement did not differ at either the beginning or end of the school year in our study. This finding is consistent with recent work revealing a lack of gender differences in math skills in grades 2–11 (2). Nonetheless, our study (3) sheds light on one avenue through which some girls perform at a lower level in math than other girls and boys overall. Specifically, the higher a female teacher’s anxiety about her own math ability, the more likely the girls in her class (but not the boys) are to be lower in math achievement at the end of the school year. We show that this relation between teacher and student can be accounted for by whether girls endorse traditional gender stereotypes (i.e., boys are good at math and girls are good at reading) at school year’s end.