Mathematics, Women, and Education in New Zealand

Abstract

reviews the state of equity in education over the past twenty years in Britain. She describes the political and economic situations that led to the rise and fall of importance of the education of females and minorities. Interest in female education in science and mathematics rose sharply when the then Prime Minister in 1976 questioned why so many girls dropped out of science before the end of school. Industry was also pushing for more skilled labour, and the womens movement was also highlighting the imbalance in the educational opportunitites for males and females. Weiner (1994) reviews the early equity projects in Britain over the period 1980 - 1988. All of the factors combined to produce many initiatives aimed at reducing the gender imbalance in mathematics and science. In 1988, the Education Reform Act (ERA) was introduced, and this heralded a completely new phase in British schools, one where "there were active moves to take away the gains girls had made in mathematics" (p. 215). A national curriculum was implemented over the next few years, and also national testing. The testing was for all students at four age levels, 7, 11, 14 and 16 years. Initally the tests consisted of open ended tasks and were fitted into the normal school week. Girls performed better than boys on these open-ended tasks in the pilot tests, a result which sharply constrasted to all the other tests for this age group. Subsequently the tests were short, one-hour paper-and-pencil tests. Teachers boycotted these tests. The contribution of coursework to the final grade was also cut down. since then, there have been continual changes to the national curriculum and it is now quite different to the first drafts which contained an important component of practical applications and communication skills. the changes have eliminated this aspect. She makes a final reflection that is seemed in the 1980's that girls were gaining a voice in the mathematics classroom. However, new government policies seem to have reversed this trend and have allowed middle- and upper-class white men to reassert their dominance once again.