Gender in the Classroom: An Identity-Based Motivation Approach

Background and Purpose: In schools composed of primarily low income minority students, a gender gap in academic achievement outcomes currently exists in which girls are outperforming boys. Based on the theory of identity-based motivation, the present research suggests that one potential explanation for this gap it that school is a context in which effort feels more worthwhile for girls and less worthwhile for boys. When encountering difficulty in academic tasks, students will increase their effort only when success in school feels identity-congruent. A domain feels identity-congruent when one perceives that “people like me” engage and achieve in that given domain. This perspective suggests that if boys were cued to think of achievement success as identity congruent, then the gender gap should diminish. The goal of this study is to determine whether cuing adolescents, both male and female subjects, to think of their gender as congruent with academic achievement will affect academic effort and future achievement-related goals.

Methods: To test this hypothesis, the degree to which achievement success felt identity-congruent was experimentally manipulated for male and female adolescents. The sample includes 146 eighth-grade students attending a Detroit-area middle school. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. In the female success condition, students are presented with the high school graduation rates of Michigan men and women, indicating higher female graduation rates. In the male success condition, students are given the median income rates of Michigan men and women, indicating higher earning potential among men. In addition to these treatment conditions, there were two control groups, one presenting non-gendered high school graduation rates, and another illustrating non-gendered information on median income in Michigan. Effects of these identity congruence primes were found on short term academic possible selves, effort on an academic task, and optimism about future success.

Results: Student's responses on the survey showed that being presented with information that connects your gender to achievement success 1) increased student's optimism about their future educational attainment and economic outcomes, 2) caused more school-relevant goals to come to mind when students were asked to think about how they envisioned themselves next year and 3) among boys, increased their effort on an academic math task.

Conclusions and Implications: Overall, we found preliminary evidence that we can frame gender in ways that are more congruent with achievement and bolster effort at school, especially for boys. Although there are stereotypes about various social identities (such as gender), we can change what comes to mind when students think about these group memberships with subtle messages that reframe the meaning of these identities. This is important for how we can help motivate students at school and offers strategies for intervention approaches to engage student's social identities in ways that can be helpful. Believing that achievement is identity-congruent is one important way that adolescents can feel more connected to future academic possible selves.