Presenter: Alejandra Mizala, Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California-Berkeley, United States. She is currently the Director of the Center for Applied Economics of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Chile and the Academic Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE in Spanish)

Listen to some excerpts from her presentation here:

A new session of NDE Dialogues 2015 was held on August 27, entitled “What is expected of them: gender stereotypes and academic performance in mathematics.” The key speaker was Alejandra Mizala, who presented the results of one of her latest investigations.

Alejandra Mizala has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California-Berkeley, United States. She is currently the Director of the Center for Applied Economics of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Chile and is also the Academic Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE in Spanish).

On this occasion, Mizala inquired into the relationship the exists between the mathematical anxiety of pedagogy students and their performance expectations in girls and boys. Listen to some excerpts from her presentation here.

The research design was based on a survey conducted in October 2012 of pedagogy students from 17 universities without differentiating by socioeconomic level. This is what was measured in the survey:

The analysis of the results presented by Alejandra Mizala was carried out following tree variables: expectation of future performance in mathematics, expectations of future general performance, and variables that relate to the methodologies of support for children who have problems.

The study found that mathematical anxiety negatively affects performance expectations and that lower math performance is expected more of girls than of boys. Both effects are independent since no significant interactions were found between the mathematical anxiety of the pedagogy students and the student’s sex. The results also show that mathematical anxiety could negatively affect how future teachers develop an inclusive education environment in their classrooms.

The second day of Dialogues 2015 ended with questions and debate about the results and issues addressed by the presenter. Miazala said that the only way to overcome stereotypes is to become aware of these, in reference to a question asked by the attendees.