Project Title and Abstract

Math Stereotype Concern and the Protective Role of Growth Mindset

In the U.S., women are vastly underrepresented in math-reliant fields, such as physics, engineering, and economics. One crucial factor contributing to women’s disproportionately low participation in these fields may be negative stereotypes about women’s math ability. Prior studies have revealed the disruptive effects of temporally elicited stereotype threat on women’s math performance. A few studies have also examined chronic or dispositional stereotype concern, but these studies primarily focused on college students. Because negative stereotype concern may develop at a younger age, this project will focus on 9th grade female students’ dispositional concern about the negative gender stereotype in mathematics and its relation to math achievement. Furthermore, this project will examine potential mediators and a protective factor for negative gender stereotype concern to provide practical implications on how to alleviate the fallout from negative stereotype concern.

Visit our library to view Eunjin Seo's papers related to learning mindsets.