Early Childhood Education Commons^™

Mathematical Identities And Tracking: An Exploration Of Efficacy In Children And Women, Emma Hagan

Education | Master's Theses

This study seeks to understand the impact of elementary school mathematical identities and mathematics tracking on the identities of women and girls. “Tracking” is an institutionalized education method developed in the 1960s and 1970s in which schools sort their students into smaller class-sized groups based on their observed achievement (Domina et al., 2016). Too often, when students test onto the lower track, they are confronted with a sense of futility and a lack of self-efficacy (Domina, Hanselman, Hwang & McEachin, 2016; Houtte & Stevens, 2015). Further, in STEM disciplines, students who identify as female report lower self-efficacy rates than those …