Michelle Hortle explores the importance of teaching girls agency and providing them with an opportunity to be creative.
Across the nation, there’s a serious gender gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers, with females making up less than 14.4% of the workforce. Women make up half of all PhD science graduates but only 17% follow on to continue in a long-term career. Why? One misconception is that STEM subjects lack creativity. Give a girl the choice of studying science or the arts and they will predominantly choose the arts. It’s also down to cultural stereotypes and gender biases—mathematicians and scientists are usually men and gendered experiences affect self-worth and confidence. Breaking down this stigma is key to encouraging girls into STEM pathways.
Is adding ‘A’ for arts into STEM a solution?
To engage more young females in STEM, we must first start by improving training for teachers in the fields of mathematics and science. When teachers feel confident in the content they teach, they pass that confidence on to their students. When they don’t, the anxiety they feel is passed on instead. Ultimately, this can hinder the working memory of the students—needed to access the conceptual understandings to solve problems.
Research shows that ‘mathematics anxiety’ can interrupt working memory, leading to more error-making and reducing the capacity to successfully participate in mathematics.
Secondly, we must have and maintain high expectations of our students—at home and at school. One of my favourite messages to a new class at the beginning of a new school year was “I have high expectations of you [all], and I don’t apologise for that…because you should have them too.” A similar message was given at many parent information nights too! However, don’t be confused about high and unrealistic expectations. I would only ever ask a student to give me their hand on heart, honest, best effort. This approach has never failed me. It’s like that saying “The one who feels most appreciated will always do more than is expected of them.”
It’s equally important to teach all students how to justify their thinking. Don’t give them all the answers. Another of my favourite sayings to students when I was teaching in the classroom was ‘Prove it!’ In doing this, I gave them agency, the opportunity to show more than one way of reaching an answer, to explore different ways of thinking, and added true validity and engagement to the work they were doing. In education circles, we call this mathematical reasoning. At home, you might call it the power of persuasion. Either way, it’s important!
Thirdly, as adults, we must also teach and actively practice emotional regulation so our students and children grow into functional adults who can readily and genuinely seek help when they need it. Thinking back to my classroom days, my mantra was ‘It’s ok not to know, it’s not ok not to try’ which encourages children to speak up when they don’t understand something. But it also encourages them not to just give up when something is hard, or boring—and let’s face it; sometimes it just is! One of the most empowering clips I’ve watched, and subsequently shared with many students (I’ve taught mostly upper primary) is James Nottingham’s ‘The Learning Pit’.
The clip shows students how learning really happens, which is useful when teaching fractions or decimals, or the order of operations and can apply to so many situations. I believe it helps them understand why they might experience frustration when learning new or more complex information.
It’s important that we work together towards changing the age-old narrative from ‘I was rubbish at maths and science so she will be too’ or ‘it’s no wonder she is too’, to ‘how might you solve that problem’ or ‘how could you solve that problem’. This encourages a growth mindset—moving from, ‘I can’t do that’ to ‘I’m going to give it a shot’ or ‘Hey! I’m problem solving’—hello empowered girl, hello future possibilities! The language of ‘I can’t do that yet’ compared to ‘I can’t do that’ is extremely empowering! I’ve often said to young people, ‘See, you can do the hard things!’, or ‘Wait…you told me you couldn’t do that?’ It’s hard to believe that we’re in 2021 and these conversations are still happening. Please. I implore you, teach the power of yet!
Michelle Hortle, a guest writer for BEJournal, is an Education Specialist and the General Manager at DreamCity Melbourne—a hightech city built especially with kids of the future in mind. A qualified and experienced teacher, Michelle is responsible for the development of educational content for delivery of DreamCity’s 12 multi-modal and engaging STE[A]M themed, Victorian Curriculum aligned, high-tech, career based pods.
