Iowa students and parents completed related attitude and belief questionnaires about school subjects. Grade K-3 students received simpler questionnaires than did Grade 4-6 students or parents. Among Grade 4 -6 children, girls perceived higher competence in reading than did boys, but boys perceived higher competence in physical science. All children perceived physical science competence lower than reading or math competence. Parents perceived boys as more competent in science. Girls like reading more than boys did; boys and girls did not differ in liking of science. Grade 4 -6 children also expected lower grades in and attached lower importance to physical science than to reading. Parents perceived science as more important for boys and expected higher performance of boys. Jobs related to math or science were seen as more male dominated. These results provided a more comprehensive picture of attitudes and beliefs about science in the elementary school than had existed and suggested that attitudinal gender differences related to physical science begin to develop by the earliest elementary school years. Policy implications are that intervention programs designed to promote gender equity should be extended to the early elementary school years and also should address parental attitudes. Additional implications for policy and research are discussed. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 719 -747, 1999 While much research on attitudes toward and beliefs about science has been conducted, relatively little of this research has (a) focused on elementary school students, (b) examined developmental trends, or (c) compared attitudes and beliefs toward science to attitudes and beliefs toward other school subject matters. To improve attitudes toward science, knowledge is needed about the current state of attitudes toward school subjects across grade levels for each gender. Haladyna and Shaughnessy (1982) called for more developmental research on attitudes. In addition, examining the relationship between parent and student attitudes provides a basis for understanding extrascholastic influences on the development of subject matter specific attitudes. This article focuses on the developmental pattern of students' attitudes and beliefs toward school subject matters during the elementary years and the relationship of student attitudes and parental attitudes. We focus on five attitudes and beliefs: (a) positive affect or liking of the subject matter, (b) perceived importance of the subject matter, (c) perceived competence in the subject mat-JOURNAL

This article will describe an in-school intervention project that used female role models to change the attitudes of 964 Iowa girls and boys in 57 ninth-grade science classes toward science, math, and technical curricula and careers. The differences between the students' mean pretest and posttest scores on each of six factors found to be associated with students' attitudes toward science and math and technical careers were analyzed to determine which of five experimental groups responded most positively to the intervention. Higher difference scores indicated that the attitudes of girls and boys who participated in the intervention improved more than the attitudes of girls and boys in the control groups, suggesting that the use of female role models in the science classroom is an effective way to change students' attitudes toward science, math, and related careers.

No abstract

The following study compared academic achievement traits of men and women to determine why women are underrepresented in certain curricula, especially engineering. Math-related attitude and anxiety factors were examined via a questionnaire, and a number of ACT test scores were studied. The results may surprise some readers and should be of interest to all advisors working with science and/or engineering students, especially women students.

No abstract