Confidence in math has become a major problem for girls in school

When Ayelet Freedman assigned her Grade 7 students to work on a math problem in groups last year, a 12-year-old girl said she was “too stupid” to work with her classmates.

“She wasn’t looking for attention, she was convinced she was stupid,” says Freedman, a math and language teacher in Ontario’s York Region.

So she pulled the student aside, assured her she wasn’t stupid and asked her to try to work with the other students, many of whom were chatty and confident about math.

“By the end of the year she was more verbal and was participating more and was more confident,” Freedman says.

Confidence in math has become a major problem for girls, research and data show. Experts believe it is one of the reasons women are vastly outnumbered by men in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions later in life.

Differences in math confidence between boys and girls show up as early as Grade 3 in Ontario, despite girls and boys scoring similar marks. That trend continues through to high school. More...