Girls Learn Math Anxiety From Female Teachers

Girls who buy into the stereotype that boys are better at math may be learning the trait from their own female teachers. Female first-and second-grade teachers worried about their math skills transfer that anxiety onto girls in their classrooms, a new study suggests. Those teachers were more likely to believe that boys are intuitively better at math and girls more suited to reading.

Girls who spent a year with math-averse teachers and bought into that line of thinking scored significantly lower than their peers on math tests. No such gap appeared previously among the students and their peers. "Teachers who are anxious about their own math abilities are translating some of that to their kids," the University of Chicago psychologist who led the study tells the Los Angeles Times. (More mathematics stories.)