How to Get Girls Excited About STEM
Why girls don't embrace science — and what parents & teachers can do about it.
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As a mom to both a boy and a girl, I often lament the very different ways my kids contemplate their aptitude for math.
My son says he finds math easy, but boring. My daughter, on the other hand — especially as of late — complains that she’s “not good at math.” Even though she is, in fact, doing just fine in math.
What’s happening in my house is just one anecdote, but we see these trends confirmed by the data, too. By the age of 7, kids tend to think of scientists as being men rather than women, and their skewed gender expectations only intensify with age. Other research has found that, as early as age 6, kids assume that “very very smart” people are men rather than women.
Yet at school, girls outperform boys in all subjects, including math and science.
Why are girls so reluctant to engage with STEM when they clearly have the aptitude? New research in child psychology has uncovered a few surprising reasons — as well as some potential solutions. Here are three science-backed suggestions for parents and teachers based on this research.
Be careful about how you talk about science and scientists.
Often, when we talk about science with kids, we communicate that scientists are special kinds of people. Here, for instance, are three quotes from popular children’s TV shows:
“You’re thinking like a real scientist!”
“Scientists think about problems and get ideas to solve them.”
“A great scientist wouldn’t let a problem get the best of him.”
At first, it’s hard to fault these descriptions. But consider that when we talk about scientists as distinct types of people with special abilities, we encourage kids to think of scientists as a category of human being with fixed and special traits — you need to be good at certain things, and you’re either born with those abilities, or you aren’t.
This kind of essentialist framing can ultimately backfire, because if a kid isn’t sure she’s scientist material, she may well convince herself that she’s not and that there’s nothing she can do about it. One study found that the more kindergarteners were exposed to this kind of essentialist, fixed-mindset language about scientists from their teachers, the less interested they were in science. The same has been found among older kids. When we describe scientists as special and unique people, and then we tell kids to “be scientists” or “act like scientists,” they can feel overwhelmed by the prospect of filling such big shoes.
The good news is, however, that shifting our language in subtle ways could help. In a 2020 study, NYU child psychologists Marjorie Rhodes and Amanda Cardarelli and Princeton philosopher Sarah-Jane Leslie asked pre-K teachers to teach their students a lesson on friction. Some teachers weren’t given any language prompts; these teachers tended to use essentialist language conveying that scientists had specific characteristics while also encouraging the students to be scientists. A second group of teachers were prompted to talk about science in more action- and process-oriented ways, encouraging the students instead to “do science” by saying things like, “Today we are going to do science! The first part of doing science is observing with our senses.”
Three days after the lesson, the researchers assessed the students’ interest in science and gave them a science-based task to try. The students who’d been encouraged to “do” science in the earlier experiment, and whose teachers hadn’t described scientists in essentialist ways, persisted longer on the task and expressed more interest in science compared to the other kids.
Research has also found that girls are more drawn to science if it is described as something that “helps people.” I admit, I have mixed feelings about this idea: I hate that girls, far more than boys, are socialized to provide help (especially when helping comes at a personal cost), and I would like to live in a world where there’s less of a gender imbalance in this arena. Still, given that girls are — for better or for worse — often inclined to be altruistic, framing STEM as helpful could make it more appealing to them.
Parent and teacher take-home: Try not to talk about scientists as if they’re exceptional people. Avoid describing them as “smart” or “good at science.” Encourage kids to “do science.” Talk about why and how doing science is helpful.
Communicate that lots of girls and women do science.
Although some girls shy away from STEM because the think they’re not smart or capable enough, recent research suggests that another powerful driver of STEM avoidance is the belief — which many kids have as early as age 6 — that girls and women aren’t typically interested in science.
In a 2021 study, University of Houston developmental psychologist Allison Master and her colleagues Andrew Meltzoff and Sapna Cheryan found that the more strongly girls believed that girls usually aren’t interested in computer science or engineering, the less interested those girls were in those fields themselves. The researchers also found that these gender-interest stereotypes, as they’re called, more powerfully shape girls’ interests (or lack thereof) in STEM than do gender stereotypes related to ability or aptitude.
Here’s evidence that these beliefs directly affect girls’ choices: In a study conducted by Master and her team that hasn’t yet been published, 8th grade boys and girls were told about two computer science classes being offered in high school. The students were told that girls were less interested than boys in one class, and they were told that boys and girls were equally interested in the other class.
They students were then asked which class they might like to take. Only 20 percent of girls said they wanted to take the class that the boys tended to favor. The rest chose the gender-equal class.
In a separate study, rather than just saying girls were “less interested” in one of the classes, the researchers provided an actual numerical breakdown: They told students that 6 girls and 24 boys were enrolled in one class, and that 15 girls and 15 boys were enrolled in the other class. When asked which class they’d like to take, only 31 percent of girls chose the gender-unequal class, with 69 percent choosing the gender-equal class. (Interestingly, boys preferred the gender-equal class over the boy-heavy class, too!)
Parent and teacher take-home: Tell your kids that many women and girls do, in fact, engage in STEM. Show them pictures or videos of scientists that feature equal gender representation.
Encourage girls to engage in imaginary science play.
Even if girls do see plenty of women doing science, they may still feel like they don’t have the special qualities they need to succeed. Research suggests that another way we can help bridge this gap is by encouraging girls to engage in imaginary play and pretend to be scientists.
In a study published earlier this year (which I also discussed in a previous newsletter), Duke psychologist Tamar Kushnir and her colleagues asked 4- to 7-year-olds to play a science game. Some kids were simply asked to play the game. Another group of kids, before playing the game, were told about a scientist who matched their gender — Marie Curie or Isaac Newton. A third group of kids were told about the gender-matched scientist and then were asked to play the game while pretending to be the scientist.
After each round, the kids were given the choice to keep playing or to do something else. They found that although most boys continued playing the game no matter what, the girls’ outcomes differed: The girls who had engaged in imaginary play wanted to play the science game the longest. (It’s worth noting that boys and girls performed equally well on the task, and that their accuracy didn’t vary by which group they were in.)
Researchers speculate that the act of pretending allows girls to separate themselves from the negative gender stereotypes that typically steer them away from STEM activities. Pretending to be famous scientists could help them see that they’re not all that different from actual scientists, leading to what the authors call a “blurring of the boundaries between the role model and the self.”
Parent and teacher take-home: Encourage your kids to engage in imaginary play related to STEM. Tell your daughters about a famous female scientist (try to use more process-based language — e.g. “Marie Curie did lots of experiments” rather than “Marie Curie was really smart”) — and encourage them to pretend to be the scientist while playing or doing experiments at home.
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Now it’s time for this week’s Parenting Advice Hot Take!
Today I’m going to discuss this popular Instagram post by @philbouchermd:
Here are my thoughts.