Workshop Overview:

This workshop focuses on the role of gender-based attributional styles that interfere with girls’ motivation and performance in challenging fields such as mathematics.  Research demonstrates that girls are more likely than boys to attribute academic failure to lack of ability (a fixed mindset), especially in mathematics (Lloyd, Walsh, & Yailagh, 2005).  Despite performing as well as boys in math courses, girls doubt their ability to develop their math skills when faced with difficult material.  This fixed mindset in female math students appears to contribute to the substantial gender gap in math scores that emerges during and after Middle School (Dweck, 2006).   Dweck and others have shown that teaching middle school students about the incredible plasticity of the human brain enables them to develop a “growth mindset” by focusing on the incredible plasticity of the brain. CRG's growth mindset curriculum exposes middle school students to grade-level appropriate neuroscience lessons about how the brain creates new neuronal connections when learning challenging material. By likening the brain to a muscle (e.g., “brains and muscles develop when challenged by difficult tasks”; “both muscles and brains require sustained effort in order to develop”) middle school girls are taught that tackling difficult material makes their brains stronger and smarter.