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| Francesca, Borgonovi giving a presentation |
Panel discussions were performed afterwards. The panel included Jarkko Hautamäki from the University of Helsinki, Rautapure from University of Jyväskylä and Houtulainen form University of Helsinki.
I got more confused than ever.
I just copy my notes here because her talk did not make
sense. She things that the gender cap is
due to socio-economical differences and societal inequalities in math. Segregation
by field of study and career and gender caps in academic achievement. In Finland girls are overrepresented and over-performed
but there are inequalities in choosing a career.
Francesca gave her talk. She talked so fast that I could not
follow her. Too many ideas.
She started in talking the differences between PISA and PIAA
studies. PISA is given to 15 year olds. They
take a two-hour test and answer some questionnaires. It can be taken either paper format or with a
computer.
PIAA test has no time limit and it’s given to students in
non-institutions between the ages of 16-65.
It’s usually taken at home. They
also take a test and questionnaires.
Both have reading literacy, math and numeracy tests. Those students who immigrate to country after
age of 10 are eliminated from testing because of the language problems.
Big difference in Finland:
low achieving boys catching up.
Females perform better when they are young but the cap closes when
people reach the age of 40.
There is a big gender cap in other countries, boys outperform
girls. This may be due to computers. Test
are now computerized so many girls for example in Italy don’t have access to
computers.
Gender cap endurance…
decline in boys, more evident.
Studies were also done on endurance.
Girls outperformed boys. Long
test is detrimental to boys. They don’t
have the endurance to do well after certain hours. But that is not the case in Finland.
Mathematics.
Mechanics
—stereotypes
—incentives
There are gender differences in scores if there are inequalities
in the country, boys do better. But is
there are no inequalities like in Finland, girls do better.
That was the end of her talk. Then the Finnish panelists talked.
Comments: Finish
school grades are about 1 and half higher in girls than boys. This reflects in PISA scores. But it
is difficult to proof.
Finland has a problem:
how to solve the underachievement in boys. When students enter the school at age 10
which corresponds to grade 4, there is no difference. But by the time they reach 9th
grade, there is a big difference. Girls
perform so much better. It must be the
school. But what? That is the big
question in Finland right now.
Studies was done:
Best prediction was parents’ skills.
Parents were evaluation their children’s performances. The evaluation effected the performance. If
parents taught the child was doing a great job, the performance went up.
# of books vs. # of cars.
The attitude made a difference.
Poor families in Finland accounts to 14%. About 8000-9000 children enroll in elementary
schools every year. If you come from a
poor family, it hits the boys.
Studies done: School
help … study data set.
Welfare
… performance
One problem in dropping of PISA scores may be a new school reform,
National Curriculum. In 2006, the school reform was few pages long, now
hundreds. More restrictions, more
rules.
Alexander group studies—family backgrounds make a
difference. Summer breaks do not create a difference but school creates a cap. Summer
break narrows the cap.
70 % of girls go to Ressu, and take advanced math. Girls are more resilient.
Social Background, Boys think…. it’s better not to be good,
if you are not the top students. Boys
are happier than girls even they do worse than girls.
New curriculum may have had an impact on lower scores.
Boys attitudes: they
think they have luck, I will do well.
They have high self-esteem. They
don’t study, they do worse that girls but they still think they do well. They are happier than girls. Boys blame others for failures, like
teachers, but girls blame themselves, like I did not study enough. Boys have confident on themselves, but they
do poorly on tests.
In overall, the results from PISA 2015 …
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| Some of the findings |
