How it Started.
The beginning
In reality, this project was initiated for the sake of completing a senior capstone class in order to graduate at undergraduate college. In the midst of coming way to close to deadlines, the academic achievement gap topic was chosen almost at random.
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The step after choosing the topic was the writing up of the research paper to find out exactly what the academic achievement gap was.
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First, the gender gap is defined in many ways, but it is typically referred to as the noticeable difference in ability or any aspect that is influenced primarily by the difference in gender. On the other hand, academic achievement can be defined as the extent to which a student showcases proficiency in academia. This is typically showcased in marks, grades, test scores, etc. In short, the academic achievement gap is the defined difference in academic proficiency among male and female students.
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And from that paper came the following.
What was Found
Over the college semester spent researching the topic, this is what was found.
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According to the Nation’s Report Card, the official site for results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, “male-female GPA gaps were found to be statistically significant in all years,” ranging from 1990 to 2009 (NAEP, 2009). Their data indicated that female students kept an average .20 GPA over that of their male peers.
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From the years 2003 to 2005, a sample size of 150 valedictorians was chosen, and from that sample, it was observed that there were more female valedictorians than male. The exact numbers are 87 to 63, meaning that 58% of the valedictorians from this sample size were female (York, 2008).
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In his article, “Two Minds: The cognitive differences between Men and Women,” Bruce Goldman proposed that when looking at the average human being, females outperform males in comprehension and writing ability, fine motor coordination, perceptual speed, and long-term memory retrieval. On the other hand, males’ visuospatial skills are superior, meaning they are better at perceiving the spatial relations of objects (Goldman, 2017).
Considering the form of the typical high school classroom where performance tends to be based on retrieving information for exams and writing ability, it seems like male students are at a disadvantage.
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So What?
Most of the research done for the paper pulled information from sources created over a decade ago. So the question is, is the information still conisistent and accurate today?
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That's where the survey comes in. Through the use of social media platforms and online surveys, anonymous data was collected and interpreted to find out whether or not the academic achievement gap still remains and and should be addressed by educators.
Sources
Goldman, B. (2017, May 22). How men’s and women’s brains are different | Stanford Medicine. Stanford Medicine Magazine.
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NAEP. (2009). NAEP 2009 High School Transcript Study: Gender, Grade Point Average. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/hsts_2009/gender_gpa.aspx
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York, E. A. (2008). Gender Differences in the College and Career Aspirations of High School Valedictorians. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(4), 578–600. https://doi.org/10.4219/jaa-2008-830
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