Actions for Gender equality and the gender achievement gap : a crossnational study using PISA 2015

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Gender equality and the gender achievement gap : a crossnational study using PISA 2015

Author
Chung, Hee
Published
[University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2018.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Byun, Soo-Yong
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Open Access.
Summary
The topic of gender gap in academic achievement is a topic worth investigating because not only is the gender achievement gap closely associated with the gender differences in labor market outcomes but also the gap itself reflects a crucial facet of educational inequality. Despite a body of literature reports the progress of women in many realms of education, it does not imply that the issues related to gender inequality in education are completely resolved. Rather, gender equality should be approached from a new perspective, which investigates the developmental, cognitive, and environmental sources of both genders in relation to their educational outcome.In order to understand how country-level environmental sources, especially the structural and ideological features regarding gender equality across countries, are associated with gender gap in achievement, the current study investigated three research questions: (1) How do the gender gaps in mathematics, science, and reading achievement vary in size and direction by country? (2) How many classes do the countries cluster into in terms of gender-related attitudes and how are the classes different from each other? (3) How do gender achievement gaps in mathematics, science and reading, respectively, associate with the structural and ideological aspect of gender inequality in each country?Utilizing the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the current study revealed substantial cross-national variations in the gender gap across all subject areas as expected. However, the patterns of the variations were different for each subject. For example, for mathematics achievement, a greater number of countries demonstrated a statistically significant female disadvantage. Meanwhile, there was a balance between the number of countries that demonstrated a female advantage and disadvantage in science achievement. Unlike the case of mathematics and science, female students scored ahead of their male counterparts on the reading examination across every single country included in the analyses.In a subsequent latent class analysis four classes of gender ideology were identified: (1) liberal egalitarian, (2) partial traditionalist, (3) familial egalitarian, and (4) egalitarian essentialist. Most of the classes that surfaced from the analyses did not fall along the one-dimensional traditional-egalitarian line. Besides the class labeled as the liberal egalitarian which resembles the characteristics of a typical individual with egalitarian gender role attitudes, partial traditionalist, familial egalitarian, and egalitarian essentialist were demonstrating different combinations of the various dimensions of gender attitudes.Finally, multilevel analyses were conducted in order to examine the relationships between gender achievement gap in mathematics, science and reading, and national gender equality, respectively. In terms of the gender gap, there was a significant female disadvantage in mathematics no gender difference in science, and a significant female advantage in reading after controlling for all other variables. The relationship between achievement and national gender equality was not robust. The statistically significant association appeared once interaction terms with gender were included in the models. The structural gender equality measured by Gender Inequality Index (GII) was the predictor with the greatest effect on students achievement across all subjects however. On the other hand, the national gender ideology, the other important measure of national gender equality, generally did not have a statistically significant influence on students achievement except for a few exceptions. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was also a significant predictor of students academic achievement in mathematics, science, and reading. The current study aimed to contribute to the existing body of literature in four ways. This study intended to incorporate national gender ideology in addition to structural traits regarding gender equality into the analysis. The second aim of this study was to reflect the multidimensionality of egalitarianism instead of using one-dimensional measurement of gender ideology. Third, this study aimed to investigate this topic utilizing a more recent and relevant dataset. Finally, the current study sought to explore the achievement gap in a more comprehensive manner by incorporating students performance on all subject areas available in PISA, namely math, science, and reading.
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Dissertation Note
Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University 2018.
Reproduction Note
Microfilm (positive). 1 reel ; 35 mm. (University Microfilms 10-13803937)
Technical Details
The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
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