Stereotype threat and test performance: A primer for school psychologists

Stereotype threat, gender and mathematics attainment: A conceptual replication of Stricker & Ward

Stereotype threat has been proposed as one cause of gender differences in post-compulsory mathematics participation. Danaher and Crandall argued, based on a study conducted by Stricker and Ward, that enquiring about a student’s gender after they had finished a test, rather than before, would reduce stereotype threat and therefore increase the attainment of women students. Making such a change, they argued, could lead to nearly 5000 more women receiving AP Calculus AB credit per year. We conducted a preregistered conceptual replication of Stricker and Ward’s study in the context of the UK Mathematics Trust’s Junior Mathematical Challenge, finding no evidence of this stereotype threat effect. We conclude that the ‘silver bullet’ intervention of relocating demographic questions on test answer sheets is unlikely to provide an effective solution to systemic gender inequalities in mathematics education.

Measuring Preservice Teachers’ Anticipated Teacher–Student Relationship Quality

The current study aimed to develop a measure of anticipated teacher–student relationship quality to be used with preservice teacher populations that is operationally similar to a measure commonly used with inservice teachers (i.e., short-form of the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale). To date, teacher–student relationship quality has been a construct studied solely with inservice teacher populations. Two hundred and thirteen preservice teachers participated in the current study. Results suggest that the developed measure of anticipated teacher–student relationship with preservice teachers demonstrated response trends similar to the measure used with inservice teachers except that preservice teachers anticipate more conflict with future students than inservice teachers report with current students. Additionally, results show the developed measure fits the two factor structure of the original scale and exhibits concurrent validity via associations with teacher self-efficacy beliefs. Implications for measuring anticipated teacher–student relationship quality within teacher education programs and future directions for research are discussed.

The distinct effect of multiple sources of stereotype threat

Stereotype threat (ST) refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group. Distinct forms of ST can be elicited based on both the target and the source of the threat. Here, we focused on how peculiar ST sources distinctly impact performance for individuals who face self-based threats. More particularly, we hypothesized that the decrease in performance would be stronger for individuals who face a self-concept threat (triggered by a private self-evaluation) in comparison with those who face an own-reputation threat (triggered by a public evaluation). In two studies, participants were randomly assigned to one of the following experimental conditions: control, self-concept, or own-reputation threat. Results confirmed the hypothesis by showing that participants in the control condition perform better than those in the own-reputation threat condition, who performed better than those in the self-concept threat condition. The contributions of this work as well as the limitations are discussed.

Construction and Evaluation of an Instrument to Measure Content Knowledge in Biology: The CK-IBI

The teaching process is well described as an interaction between teacher, student, and content. Thus, it seems obvious that teachers must know the content to help students to learn it. Instruments have been developed to measure teachers’ content knowledge (CK) in biology, but few of them have been provided to the scientific community. Furthermore, most of them have a topic-specific approach, so there is a need for a more comprehensive measure. In efforts to meet this need we have developed an instrument called the CK in biology inventory (CK-IBI), which has a broader scope than previously published instruments and covers knowledge of five biological disciplines (i.e., ecology, evolution, genetics and microbiology, morphology, and physiology). More than 700 pre-service biology teachers were enrolled to participate in tests to assess the instrument’s objectivity, reliability, and validity in two cross-sectional evaluations. Item and scale analyses as well as validity checks indicate that the final version of the CK-IBI (37 items; Cronbach’s α = 0.83) can be scored objectively, is unidimensional, reliable, and validly measures pre-service biology teachers’ CK. As the instrument was used in a German context, it has been translated into English to enable its scrutiny and use by international communities.

Does stereotype threat influence performance of girls in stereotyped domains? A meta-analysis

Although the effect of stereotype threat concerning women and mathematics has been subject to various systematic reviews, none of them have been performed on the sub-population of children and adolescents. In this meta-analysis we estimated the effects of stereotype threat on performance of girls on math, science and spatial skills (MSSS) tests. Moreover, we studied publication bias and four moderators: test difficulty, presence of boys, gender equality within countries, and the type of control group that was used in the studies. We selected study samples when the study included girls, samples had a mean age below 18years, the design was (quasi-)experimental, the stereotype threat manipulation was administered between-subjects, and the dependent variable was a MSSS test related to a gender stereotype favoring boys. To analyze the 47 effect sizes, we used random effects and mixed effects models. The estimated mean effect size equaled -0.22 and significantly differed from 0. None of the moderator variables was significant; however, there were several signs for the presence of publication bias. We conclude that publication bias might seriously distort the literature on the effects of stereotype threat among schoolgirls. We propose a large replication study to provide a less biased effect size estimate.