Assignment Task
Introduction
Mathematics anxiety (hereafter, MA) is debilitating emotional reactions to math-related situations (Ma & Xu, 2004). It would interfere with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in a wide variety of academic situations and everyday life (Richard & Suinn, 1972). For example, those who suffer with MA may feel stressed and avoidant when doing math homework or become discomfortable when they need to calculate the bill at a shop. MA can have various manifestations, which include attitudinal forms (e.g., dislike), cognitive forms (e.g., worry), and emotional forms (e.g., fear) (Ashcraft & Ridley, 2005).A large body of literature has reported that MA negatively correlates with mathematics performance (e.g., Ashcraft & Krause, 2007; Carey, Hill, Devine, & Szucs, 2016; Hembree, 1990; Ma & Kishor, 1997), though the direction of this relationship remains unclear. Researchers have provided some reasonable explanations for how MA could affect mathematics performance. Firstly, individuals with higher level of MA are more likely to avoid mathematics-related situations, for instance, learning and practicing mathematics and subsequently have less practice than those who are less anxious about mathematics, resulting in poorer mathematics performance (Ashcraft, 2002). Another mechanism is via MA’s impact on working memory, a part of the memory system to temporarily store small amount of important information that you need to complete the current task (Chai, Abd Hamid, & Abdullah, 2015). Studies have reported the positive association between working memory and arithmetical performance (Caviola, Mammarella, Lucangeli, & Cornoldi, 2012). When performing mathematics tasks, people who have MA tend to worry about their performance and fear failure. These interruptive thoughts could occupy some capacity of theirof their working memory (Ashcraft, Kirk, & Hopko, 1998), which means they could use less of it than those who are not anxious about math. Besides, people with higher level of MA tend to have smaller working memory span, leading to slower speed and more errors on number manipulations (Ashcraft & Kirk, 2001). Given MA’s nature as detrimental emotional reactions and its negative impact on mathematics performance, it is vital to explore the mechanism of its formation, based on which educators could find practical ways to prevent and intervene.
Gender-STEM stereotypes and MA
There has been a large body of literature investigating the linkage between gender and MA. As reviewed by Spelke (2005), studies on males and females across age groups fail to support the claim that males are born to have higher talent on learning mathematics and science when they have equal access to education. When it comes to the attitudes towards mathematics, however, there seems to be a gender difference with girls reporting higher level of MA and lower self-efficacy in mathematics, though such gap is considered small (Devine, Fawcett, Szucs, & Dowker, 2012; Else-Quest, Hyde, & Linn, 2010; Hyde, Fennema, Ryan, Frost, & Hopp, 1990). For example, Devine et al. (2012) found that secondary school girls aged 12 to 15 years were more anxious about mathematics but equally competent in mathematics; moreover, with test anxiety controlled, the negative association between MA and mathematics performance only existed on girls, indicating that girls could potentially outperform boys in mathematics when MA is controlled. Moreover, such gender difference in MA was not found in primary school students (Dowker, Bennett, & Smith, 2012; Harari, Vukovic, & Bailey, 2013), which implies it does not emerge until adolescence.
One possible explanation for such gender gap in MA could be stereotype threat (Dowker et.al., 2016), more specifically, gender-STEM stereotypes, which are defined as generalised views or perceptions about which gender “can be, should be and is usually good at science technology, engineering and mathematics” (hereafter, STEM; McGuire et al., 2020, p.1).
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Get Help Now!In the light of social role theory (Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Wood, 2016), gender roles, which stem from division of labour and social expectations are highly associated with gender stereotypes. It is often the case that in domestic settings, women are usually viewed as caretakers and perform most routine domestics works; in workplace, women are more likely to be employed in interpersonal and service occupations (e.g., nurses, receptionists); while men tend to occupy things-oriented, competitive positions, for instance, bankers and engineers (Hentschel, Heilman, & Peus, 2019). Such discrepant distribution of men and women into social roles, along with its impacts on what men and women are like, prompts and continue to strengthen gender stereotypes (Koenig & Eagly, 2014). Regarding different disciplines or professions, science, technology, engineering and mathematics are recognised to be more ‘things-oriented’ and require reasoning skills rather than interpersonal communication skills, and thus dominated by men (Casad & Bryant, 2016). In other words, in traditional gender-STEM stereotypes, it is believed that men can, should, and do outperform women in STEM fields.A meta-analysis which collected data from Draw-A-Scientist studies over 5 decades (Miller, Nolla, Eagly, & Uttal, 2018) found that children in United States drew significantly more male than female scientists only after ages 7-8, and that such tendency grew with children’s age and reached a peak level at ages 14-15. Their findings indicate that older children and adolescents tend to be more gender-stereotyped by perceiving science as a more male-dominant profession. Similar math-stereotypes favouring males were also found in German adolescents and university students (Steffens & Jelenec, 2011). Given the simultaneity of developmental change in youth’s attitudes towards STEM and the onset of gendered discrepancy in MA, it is reasonable to suspect exposure and awareness of gender-STEM stereotypes could contribute to the increase of adolescent girls’ MA.There has been research empirically supporting the above theoretical assumption. Based on a survey on over 700 German students from grades 9 and 10, it was discovered that girls more strongly recognising math as a male-dominant field reported higher trait MA rather than state MA when controlling self-concept, whereas such effect did not significantly appear on boys (Bieg, Goetz, Wolter, & Hall, 2015). These findings suggest that math-related gender stereotypes play a significant part in the formation of gender discrepancy in MA.
Peer performance pressure and MA
A mathematics classroom can be a competitive environment as students are exposed to pressure from performing mathematics tasks in the presence peers and comparing their mathematics achievement with fellow students, which is referred to as peer performance pressure (Boyung & Hardy, 1994).Such pressure can be explained by Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory. He suggests that it is an innate drive of human beings to evaluate oneself in comparison with others, and such comparison can be categorised into two kinds: upward social comparison and downward social comparison. The former takes place when people compare themselves with others who are more capable attempting to inspire themselves, while the latter takes place when people compare themselves with others who are perceived to be worse off, in order to gain more confidence (Festinger, 1954). However, social comparison does not always have positive effects. On the one hand, upward comparison can also cause pressure when people, especially those with low self-esteem, focus more on the negative side of comparative information and feel inadequate (Taylor, Buunk, & Aspinwall, 1990). On the other hand, downward social comparison might occasionally remind one how worse things could be (Aspinwall, 1997). In a developmental perspective, adolescence can be a crucial period when young people show acute self-consciousness and awareness of peers (Costanzo & Shaw, 1966; Somerville et al., 2013)In a mathematics classroom, students are often required to perform mathematics tasks on the blackboard in the presence of the teacher and fellow students. Considering the high sensitivity to the social comparison between peers’ and students themselves’ mathematic performance, such a competitive learning environment is likely to generate peer performance pressure (Boyung & Hardy, 1994).Boyung and Hardy (1994) firstly studied the linkage between MA and peer performance pressure based on a sample size over 1500 students (761 male and 808 female). They hypothesised that the amount of time which students spent on solving mathematic problems in front of peers was positively associated with MA, but such association was only confirmed on female students. They suggested such effect might not occur on males, or if it did, “not enough of the males in our sample were experiencing pubescence to make the effect statistically reliable” (Boyung & Hardy, 1994, p. 60). Their interpretation of this finding seems not convincing enough as they did not provide further data to demonstrate the stated gendered age gap in pubescence in their sample. Thus, it is important to further investigate into this gender biased effect.
The present research
This study is designed to be conducted in Chinese high schools, where students study for the Chinese University Entrance Examination, also known as Gaokao, a mandatory post-secondary entrance examination for all Chinese students (Liu & Helwig, 2020). There are six subjects in total, comprising three compulsory subjects (Chinese, mathematics and English) and three optional subjects determined by students’ interests. Previously, in most provinces in China, students need to choose either arts trackk (history, politics, geography) or natural science track (physics, chemistry, biology, more STEM-related). Due to the gradual reformation of Gaokao policy, in some provinces, students are required to choose either physics or history as one of their optional subjects and choose any other two from politics, geography, chemistry, and biology.In Chinese high schools, a student is assigned to a classroom according to their chosen combination of optional subjects, which means students who choose the same optional subjects will study with a fixed group of fellow students, and therefore in a classroom with fixed gender composition. In such a coeducational system, however, it is noticeable that gender-composition in some classrooms is not always balanced, though descriptive or explanatory research into Chinese high school students’ subject choice and its linkage to gender stereotypes is yet to be reported.Comparably, there has been a study showing that the gender difference in educational choice has emerged in early adolescence in European students (van der Vleuten, Jaspers, Maas, & van der Lippe, 2016). They argued that student’s subject choices can be affected by gender role stereotypes, especially boys’, as boys are more strongly restricted by social gender expectations, which may reduce their motivation to choose a more feminine track (van der Vleuten et al., 2016). Though cultural difference between China and Europe should be considered, the gender stereotypes about subjects are also detected in Chinese high school students (Song, Zuo, & Yan, 2016). Hence, the study in Europe can still help to explain the formation of imbalanced gender composition in Chinese high school classrooms.Based on social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), it can be inferred that when there are more boys, who are considered more competent in math and math-related natural science subjects, girls in the same classroom may experience more upward social comparison. Considered the negative effect of social comparison on psychological wellbeing (Lee, 2020; Taylor, Buunk, & Aspinwall, 1990), peer performance pressure can be generated. Besides, in line with Bieg and colleagues’ (2015) findings which suggest that belief in girls’ inferiority in math may serve as a contributing factor to girls’ higher level of MA than boys’, it is reasonable to suspect that how much a girl believes in gender-STEM stereotypes could affect the intensity of her perceived peer performance pressure when she compares herself with boy peers.
Therefore, it is hypothesised that:
Hypothesis The proportion of girls (gender composition) in a classroom can negatively predict girls’ perceived peer performance pressure.
Hypothesis The effect of gender composition on peer performance pressure is moderated by girls’ gender-STEM stereotypes belief. Furthermore, the facilitating effect of peer performance pressure on MA found by Boyung and Hardy (1994) will be investigated in this study. Consistent with their research, the present study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis Peer performance pressure has a positive effect on mathematics anxiety of girls.
Hypothesis The relationship between gender composition and MA is mediated by peer performance pressure.
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