Do digital games appeal more to boys?

By Winnie Tam, Centre for University and School Partnership, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

As digital games are increasingly used in education, understanding attitudes toward their use is important. A meta-analysis conducted by Liu and colleagues examined gender differences in attitudes towards digital games across 41 eligible studies, yielding 133 effect sizes. Females accounted for 51% of students studied.

Digital games were classified as either serious (designed for education, healthcare, etc., n=31) or entertaining (n=10). Attitudes were categorized by affect (emotional response), belief (perception of value), and self-efficacy (confidence in operating games). Effect size in the analysis referred to the difference in standardised mean scores between male and female. The results revealed that:

•            Males exhibited a significantly more positive attitude than females (ES = +0.21).

•            Attitude aspects significantly moderated outcomes, with males showing stronger affect (ES=+0.34) and self-efficacy (ES=+0.37), but no significant gender differences were detected in belief.

•            Males’ attitudes were consistently more positive in both entertainment games (ES = +0.39) and serious games (ES = +0.14).

While findings reinforced that males generally have a greater affinity for digital games, no gender differences were observed regarding their perceived value and usefulness. More research is needed to explore potential moderators, such as education level and interactions among these factors to better contextualize the results.

Impact of peer gender-math stereotype on math performance

By Winnie Tam, Centre for University and School Partnership, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Gender-math stereotype refers to the belief that boys are innately better at learning math than girls. Wu and colleagues conducted two studies to investigate whether this stereotype could be transmitted among children’s peers, affecting their math ability and psychological outcomes. Only the results of the first study are considered, as the second study did not account for students’ prior math abilities. The first study analyzed data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), a large-scale national survey. The sample included 8,029 grade 7 and grade 9 students from 208 classrooms where students were randomly assigned to each classroom.  The extent of the gender-math stereotype among a student’s peers was measured as the proportion of peers in each classroom who held this belief (range: 13.3% – 91.9%). Accounting for student, classroom, and school effects, the fixed-effect linear model revealed the following results:

•            As the proportion of peers holding the stereotype increased by 1 standard deviation (SD), the gap in math scores between girls and boys widened by 0.894 SD, with girls scoring lower.

•            Higher proportions of peers with the stereotype were associated with higher math scores for boys (ES = +0.44).

•            A higher proportion of peers holding the stereotype increased the likelihood of girls adopting this belief, surpassing boys.

The findings of study 1 underscore the continued existence of potential harm from gender-math stereotyping in children’s peer environments. The authors emphasize the need for greater attention to this matter.

New national superintendent database illuminates trends in recent turnover by gender

By Claire Shin, Johns Hopkins University

Extensive teacher databases exist, yet no such database has recorded national data on school superintendents over multiple, consecutive years until now. A recent study by R. S. White documents how she collected data on superintendents of all public school districts in the U.S. between 2019 and 2023, manually verifying gender.  

White found that 74% of all U.S. superintendents were men in 2019-20 while 72% were men in 2022-23. In addition, 2019-20 saw 14.2% superintendent turnover while 2022-23 saw 17.1% turnover, with 62% of districts experiencing no turnover in these four years. Yet underneath these seemingly minor changes were hidden some significant differences by gender.

Districts with a greater proportion of white students were more likely to have male superintendents. Of all districts led by men, turnover was more likely in those that had a greater proportion of students of color or students receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL).  On the other hand, districts with a greater proportion of FRPL students, students with individualized education plans, students who were learning English, or students of color were more likely to have female superintendents. Of all districts led by women, those more likely to experience turnover were those with greater proportions of white students and fewer FRPL students. Finally, districts with a high proportion of white students looking for a new superintendent were more likely to hire a man regardless of the gender of their prior leader while districts with a high proportion of students of color and FRPL students were more likely to hire a woman superintendent for their empty seat.

More research exploring the relationship between characteristics of school superintendents with student outcomes, school climate, and educator effectiveness could prove valuable for better understanding the impact of the superintendency in this period of Covid recovery, racial justice reckoning, and culture wars.

Do teenage boys have poorer literacy achievement than teenage girls?

By Feifei Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 

Literacy is foundational to academic success and social participation of students. However, many studies have indicated that teenage boys have poorer literacy grades than teenage girls. A recent study by Borgonovi compared two low-stakes international large-scale assessments to identify if similar gender gaps existed between them and what factors were related to these gaps.

The study compared a widely-used low-stakes school-based assessment, Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), with another low-stakes household-based assessment, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). In the two assessments, individual-level data from 15- to 17-year-old teens in the countries that administered both assessments were examined to investigate and compare the literacy gender gap. The study found that the two assessments showed different estimates of literacy gender gaps. In PISA, boys significantly underperformed compared with girls, but in PIAAC, no gender gap was identified. The differences in the gaps were associated with differences in motivation between boys and girls, shaped by participant selection methods, scoring methods, test length, delivery mode (i.e., computer-based or paper-based assessments), text type, and cognitive processes involved in completing assessment tasks. Therefore, before embarking on major policy reforms to ensure that boys develop literacy skills, it would be important to evaluate whether assessments are appropriate and comprehensive enough to capture the dimensions of literacy in which boys may be more proficient, and most importantly, whether assessments provide incentives for boys to display what they know and can do.