- Title
- Rethinking gendered participation in school mathematics: change the culture, not the girls
- Creator
- Jaremus, Felicia Martine
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The underrepresentation of girls in senior secondary mathematics is a longstanding social justice and economic concern across many Western nations. However, several decades of agendas seeking to increase girls’ engagement with mathematics have largely failed to generate tangible change. Girls continue to opt out of mathematics in greater numbers than boys, beginning from the first moment they are given the real choice to do so. In this thesis-by-publication, I examine why girls’ underrepresentation in senior secondary mathematics is seemingly so intractable in the Australian landscape. The investigation is carried out in the context of the New South Wales (NSW) education system. This is a rich context for such an investigation, given that both declining and gendered high-level mathematics participation have been documented in this state for as long as enrolment statistics have been collected. Framed by a feminist sociopolitical perspective, the thesis conducts both quantitative and qualitative analysis, with data collected as part of a larger two-year (2017–2018) study on gender and mathematics participation. The quantitative data consist of subject enrolment statistics from 1991–2018, which I compiled to examine boys’ and girls’ senior secondary subject selection patterns over time. The qualitative data consist of interviews on subject selection, conducted in 11 different government schools, with students in Years 7–12 (n = 85) and their mathematics teachers (n = 22). These qualitative data illuminate comprehensive reasons why the quantitative trends persist, and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about girls as being ‘the problem’ in mathematics participation. The results are reported in five publications which examine: (1) Year 12 subject selection trends over time; (2) junior secondary grouping practices in relation to students’ preparation for senior secondary mathematics; (3) teachers’ expectations of high-level mathematics students; (4) the reasons girls provide for opting out of high-level mathematics; and, (5) the similarities that exist between boys and girls in ‘doing’ mathematics. Collectively, these publications deliver multiple significant contributions to reconceptualising dominant individualistic understandings of girls’ underrepresentation in mathematics, which have positioned girls who opt out as lacking in either knowledge or certain dispositions. First, girls’ underrepresentation in mathematics is but one symptom of a broader, gendered senior secondary school system. I found that enrolments in almost every senior secondary subject in NSW are profoundly gendered. In line with traditional gender roles, girls still predominantly enrol in arts, humanities, and English courses, rather than traditionally masculine subjects, such as mathematics. These patterns are produced, at least in part, by gendered subject binaries within the education system that serve to confine patterns of subject choice within traditional gender boundaries. The systemic juxtaposition of mathematics and English (or rationality and creativity), producing these subjects as challenging opposites, is especially pertinent to maintaining gendered enrolment patterns. Second, the subject culture of mathematics is exclusionary and masculinised. I found that many students cannot exercise the choice to participate in high-level mathematics by the time they reach Years 11 and 12. A streamed NSW mathematics curriculum and grouping practices locate and label students as low, mid or high ‘ability’ during junior secondary school, resulting in inadequate preparation for high-level mathematics among a sizable proportion of the student population. A further source of exclusion comes from dominant discourses of mathematics which: (a) marginalise girls through the location of mathematics ability within the brains of nerdy male bodies and; (b) represent high-level mathematics as ‘real mathematics’ that is only useful for those wishing to study higher mathematics after school. Together these practices and discourses position the study of high-level mathematics as difficult and irrelevant to a majority of students. Third, the marginalised position of femininity in the high-level mathematics context prevents many girls from undertaking mathematics identity work that is both desirable to them and legitimate to others. My analysis demonstrates that the girls who rejected high-level mathematics have sensible reasons for doing so; indeed, they often choose not to participate on the advice of their teachers. These sensible reasons are bound to the subject culture of mathematics and include: the competitive nature of university entry, advice that high-level mathematics attracts considerable workload, advice that high-level mathematics is not relevant to their future, and recognition that mathematics identities are often positioned as socially undesirable. The choice of girls to opt out therefore reflects the positioning of high-level mathematics as difficult and irrelevant to a majority of students. Taken as a whole, the multifaceted, multi-methodological evidence I provide on student participation in mathematics calls attention to the need for new targeted efforts to open mathematics up to more diverse students. I argue that these efforts need to move beyond simply raising girls’ interest and confidence – a popularly perceived ‘key’ to increasing girls’ participation in the subject – and focus rather on changing the culture of mathematics. This will involve complex work, such as challenging taken-for-granted understandings and disrupting established discourses of mathematics as: (1) the domain of male superiority; (2) as too hard for many; and (3) irrelevant to most. We must also re-examine common practices, such as grouping, which help exclusionary discourses to function as true, and develop new tools for students and teachers to resist and query the gendered status quo. That is, we must keep troubling gender if we are serious about opening up mathematics participation to more diverse students.
- Subject
- mathematics education; STEM education; gender; equity; subject choice; senior secondary; thesis by publication
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1423971
- Identifier
- uon:38004
- Rights
- Copyright 2020 Felicia Martine Jaremus
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
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| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 395 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |