Short-Term Course for 600 Mathematics Teachers on Gender Sensitive Pedagogy in Middle School Excellence Classes
Since the lockdowns of schools during the pandemic in 2020, we have witnessed a decline in performance among female students at the highest levels of the PISA assessment in mathematics. This decline correlates with reports of higher levels of stress and anxiety, and a decrease in self-confidence and efficacy among female students. Since the war in Gaza, indicators of emotional distress and fear for the future have been on the rise, particularly among females.
These difficulties are added to an already unbalanced situation in middle school excellence classes, where female students constitute a minority of approximately 30%. This proportion aligns with the rate of excelling female students on the PISA assessment. Studies have shown that this inequality is influenced by a tendency among parents and teachers to favor boys when it comes to excellence in mathematics and science.
To address this trend, the government recently decided to incentivize schools to open excellence classes comprising at least 50% female students. Once this new policy is implemented, schools will be expected to make substantial efforts to enroll more female students in the excellence tracks, monitor their progress, and aim to decrease dropout rates. Teachers will carry the responsibility of adapting their pedagogical approach and providing the mentoring and support that will be required.
In preparation for this new policy, we approached the Maytiv Center for Positive Psychology at Reichman University, a veteran partner of the foundation in training high school mathematics teachers to use growth mindset and motivational tools in the five-unit track in high school. Maytiv is now proposing to develop a short-term course for middle school mathematics teachers. This course will include learning aids and pedagogical tools that provide insights on how to overcome emotional barriers of students and biases of teachers, in order to reduce gender gaps.
The course content will focus on gender-sensitive pedagogy and include techniques for reducing stress and anxiety when facing difficult topics and before tests. An arsenal of 10 lesson plans will be developed, focusing on motivation, life goals, confidence, role models, ethics and sense of belonging. These activities are intended for use by teachers before and after the mathematics lesson.
Participating teachers will be encouraged to embrace general pedagogies that are known to be more effective for female students, such as group and peer learning, active participation in class discourse, and receiving personalized feedback. Special attention will be given to how teachers respond to mistakes made by female students, equipping them with ways to help students to learn from mistakes without losing confidence.
In addition, the teachers will be trained to use a diagnostic tool that measures the emotional readiness of students for the five-unit track in high school. This diagnostic tool, developed by Maytiv in collaboration with the Center for Education Technology with support from the foundation, will now be expanded to include specific measures of gender stereotypes, a sense of belonging to the mathematics sphere, and career expectations of female students.
Maytiv plans to offer the course to 600 middle school mathematics teachers of excellence classes. Participants will be chosen from among those teachers who have already been trained to teach PISA’s applied mathematics tasks. The course will consist of 15 hours of learning. Evaluation will focus on its success in reducing anxiety and dropout rates among female students.
* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 569