Research+on+Male+and+Female+ability+and+performance+in+Mathematics

__**Research on Performance**__

To help formulate pro-con arguments regarding gender-based math education, it would be useful to know what research tells us about male and female ability and performance in math. Here are some sites which will lead to pertinent research reports:

Closing the Gender Gap in Mathematics" by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who report that girls in the U.S. can match boys in mathematical performance and ability. Article was published in the //Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences//: Full text available at: []
 * Latest Research on Girls and Math**:

Review of source: This link takes you to this article from the latest edition of the //Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences//, one of the premier institutions for the advancement and dissemination of research in the U.S. This fact, together with the publication date (June 1, 2009) and the fact that the co-authors are academicians in a reputable university, assures us that this is a very current, authoritative, credible source of information, and suggests that while the authors may have a certain perspective (link to this article came from the Association for Women in Mathematics website), their research has been peer reviewed and deemed reasonably free from bias.

Additional comments about site: I'd thought that this site might be a good resource for students, providing access to state of the art research on this topic, but several minutes spent searching for other related articles yielded nothing appropriate. Thus, although this site itself is reasonably user friendly and navigable (even has an advanced search option), I think usefulness to our students would be limited to the article provided in the above link.

Students could use this article to provide support for an argument in either direction, depending on how they combine it with other findings, but I think it would lend strongest support to the argument for co-ed math education, since this research dispels the notion that boys have greater math ability and outperform girls.

[] Link to other research reports on the Association for Women in Mathematics site (this site reviewed on "Female Mathematicians" page). These reports, which provide empirical data to debunk stereotypes about girls' mathematical abilities and other topics related to the ability and performance of girls in the field, may be used by students to make the case for equitable, gender-neutral math education.
 * Quick Link to Current Research:**