GENDER DIFFERENCES IN MATHEMATICS AND THE SCIENCES - CAN ATTRIBUTIONAL RETRAINING IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF GIFTED FEMALES

There are probably no subject areas in which the problem of reducing g ender differences is as urgent as in mathematics and the ha;rd science s. In this article, we provide a topical overview of the participation rates of girls and women in schools and. universities, an emphasis on the situation in Germany. We then discuss several attempts to explain these differences and show that until recently not enough attention h as been paid to the girls' and women's self-related cognitions in thes e domains. They underestimate their own talents in mathematics and the sciences and, from a motivational perspective, attribute their succes ses and failures in such a way as to further inhibit motivation. Attri butional retraining techniques could provide a solution to the problem s of lowered motivation and performance. These retraining techniques h ave proved successful in clinical and laboratory settings, but they ha ve not been tried in natural settings like schools and universities. F ollowing an overview of the most important attributional retraining te chniques, we describe two studies carried out with German high school students in mathematics and with female university students in statist ics. Using an attributional retraining technique we developed, both st udies report extremely promising results. Finally, on the basis of the se studies, suggestions for further research are made.