Curriculum and Assessment: Hitting Girls Twice?

Summary

There are mathematics skills which are far more likely to be valued by employers than a specific ability to solve a cubic equation in two minutes flat. The challenge is to find assessment procedures which fairly test the skills we are trying to measure.

Although further research is needed, there is already a body of international evidence supporting the hypothesis that different assessment procedures in mathematics advantage different groups of students. In particular, female mathematics students perform better on internal assessment than on written examinations, when no time restrictions are removed, on essay questions, and on questions which are gender-neutral or set in their real world context.

In general, it cannot be appropriate to have assessment procedures consistently designed by one minority section of the population (in the case of mathematics, usually by middle-class academic males) applied to the whole population. It must be fairer and more informative to use a variety of methods to assess a student’s attainment, rather than to rely on a single two- or three-hour performance to indicate the outcome of, in some cases, several years of study.

Curriculum and assessment are inter-related. To be effective, changes in one must be accompanied by changes in the other.

The current reality of mathematics for many women is still that of ‘hitting’ a seemingly immovable barrier. It is likely that the participation, achievement, and — perhaps more importantly — enjoyment of females in mathematics (particularly at higher levels) will increase only with increased female “ownership” of mathematics.