Getting Serious about Girls and STEM: Part 2

In my blog a few weeks ago and in The Minds of Girls I have tried to focus on science-based theory and practice that have proven to close gender gaps. I am arguing that to fully help our daughters, we must push beyond the idea that corporate sexism and “gender stereotypes” are the primary reasons tech and certain STEM fields don’t employ as many women as men. If we do not transcend this myopic vision, we simply will not close the STEM gender gap to the extent that it can close.

As you read this blog, I hope you’ll take part in a community exercise. Ask your daughters and other girls and women about the experiences they are having or have had in math, science, and related classes and fields. As you explore these experiences, ask: “Do you think girls and boys often have different experiences in math and science classes at school?” Most people will say or sense that “Yes” is a good answer, but they may need help in clarifying the feeling.

To help stimulate deeper discussion, ask each person to give specific and concrete examples of different experiences their kids have had—successes, difficulties, good teachers, bad teachers, problems, solutions. Angela, a mother of three, who was an engineer before taking time off to raise her kids, told me about this courageous community conversation.

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We had some very young parents in the group and the rest of us had older kids. We even had a couple college students in the group. It was quite a discussion in the beginning because a couple of the young parents with newborns and the two college students were like, “No way, there aren’t any differences between boys and girls, that’s just old sexist thinking,” while the rest of us who had older kids knew that differences can affect things, especially in school. I said, “Hey, I’m a female chemical engineer, and there aren’t many of us, but even I know there are differences between the brains of girls and boys.” I carried a little bit of weight because of my profession.

At the end of this conversation, one mom said something generational about this, to which some of the younger women took offense. “I think the young people who are saying the differences don’t exist or don’t matter can only say that because they’re young. I don’t think there’s hardly anyone in the world who has raised both boys and girls who would say our minds really work the same way. And if you’ve had kids in the school system for any length of time, you’ve seen a lot of girls struggling in math.”

You can imagine how these comments offended the younger people. They accused the woman of being ageist and disrespectful of their opinion. The woman did apologize for how she said it, but she was right in a way—there was a ‘youth situation’ in the conversation in which only the young people without much experience were saying what they were saying. Those of us who had multiple kids of both sexes all agreed—the brain differences really matter, especially in things like math and science.

I connected with Angela by phone and we talked for more than an hour and I learned a great deal from her. “I personally know I am what you call a bridge brain,” she told me. “My brain is very spatial-mechanical – it thinks a lot more like a guy’s brain when it comes to my work – and this helped me in STEM classes as a kid. But two of my daughters don’t have brains like mine. Those classes are very hard for them. Most of their teachers just didn’t understand how to teach them so that they’ll learn math the way I—and a lot of the guys—learn it instinctively. To me, as an engineer, this is one of the biggest problems in our schools. Math is taught the way that male brains—and some male-type brains like mine—learn it. A lot of boys and even more girls are left out in the cold.”

I believe Angela is spot on. In nearly every school, community, or corporation I visit, individuals at every level—from line workers to executives—feel quite sure boys and girls learn differently. The brain scans my colleagues and I show of different female and male brains confirm a belief many people have already gained empirically by being parents. Angela’s plea that teachers be trained in how the male and female brain learn math and science is a bottom line I support

To help you move the needle for your girls in STEM, I hope you’ll look with the people around you, including schools and corporations, these ideas.

*The word “now” is key. While nearly all contemporary sociological research points to “stereotype threat,” “sexism,” and “gender stereotypes” as the primary (or only) reason girls struggle in certain STEM areas, and while there is no doubt that those things do matter, sexism is not what it was fifty years ago. Now, women and girls are generally, and especially in developed and post-industrial cultures, in a different place than they were years ago when we first began to study the STEM gender gap. Today, there are larger issues at play than sexism.

*Our STEM conversation regarding gender is tacitly grounded on the idea that a 50/50 ratio in each STEM (and other) profession will be our best cultural indicator of gender equality. In part 1 of this blog, I challenged that assumption: I can find no proof that we can or will ever get 50% females in mechanical engineering, just as it is unlikely we will get 50% males teaching kindergarten or elementary school. Our new STEM conversation needs to start from a realistic basis – a point which will allow us to invest in science-based training for girls and boys, and teachers and corporate leaders.

*Pew Research and other polls show that more than 60% of women would like to stop working outside the home or work part-time when they have children. Meanwhile, these polls show that 70% of men expect to work full-time outside the home once children come. There is no indication that these numbers will change much, especially with new research showing that the wealthier a culture becomes, the more its women want to take time off to raise their children. Given this reality (one that a wealthy culture can celebrate) and even despite that the number of stay-at-home dads is increasing, we will never have 50% stay-at-home dads. Male/female brain differences—while not the only factor involved in these percentages—are a key factor in life- and family-development for males, females, and everyone on the gender spectrum. In technology and engineering and child care especially, they much more deeply affect education and career choice than do gender stereotypes.

*Brain differences account for a huge share of the girls/women STEM gap. As we discussed in Part I, our brains are different from conception and in utero development. Not to take this into account ensures that the best STEM education our girls need and deserve (especially in T (technology), E (engineering) and M (math) will not be provided in many of their schools. As we noted in Part 1, and as Angela was pointing out, from birth onward, we must do a better job teaching “spatial intelligence”—the kind of intelligence needed in the T, E, and M fields especially.

*Neurobiological differences also account for a huge share of issues women are experiencing in male-driven workplaces themselves, especially in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, coding, etc. To attract more women for longer periods of time in these fields, and to advance more of those women higher in corporations, our culture and its businesses will need to understand how the female brain experiences these workplaces, and then alter the workplaces accordingly so that they’re attractive to women.

These key ideas ground a great deal of my own and our Gurian Institute’s work in schools and corporations. We began this work by listening to our daughters

Listening to Our Daughters

Perhaps the most prevalent story the Gurian Institute’s team has heard from middle and high school girls in STEM-related classes is: “The teacher didn’t explain it in a way I could understand. I just don’t get it!” This lament was captured in an interaction with one of my daughter’s friends, Alicia, 16, just before we sat down to dinner.

“How’s school going, Alicia?” I asked.

“Fine,” she shrugged.

“What are you taking this year?”

“English, Choir, Social Studies, Math, Physics, and Art.”

“Any of the classes really move you?”

A long response followed regarding her love of literature, art, and music subjects.

“Not so much the Math and Physics, then?” I asked.

“No,” she shook her head immediately.

“Not fun, huh?” I prompted.

She breathed in deeply and responded in detail! “I mean, I was pretty decent in math up through middle school, but now it’s getting a lot harder and I can’t really understand it. Luckily my brother is a year ahead of me and he had the same teacher, so he explains things better to me and helps me and I can do enough extra credit to at least get a B in the class. That’s as good as I’ll ever get.

“But in Physics, it’s the teacher. I mean, Mr. Peters is such an asshole, excuse me, I’m sorry, but he is. He gets mad at me and Theresa when we don’t understand. Like, we’ll stay after class and tell him we don’t understand it at all, and he just keeps saying the same explanation every time, but we don’t understand it. And he just gets mad and yells, ‘I explained that already, weren’t you listening!” like I’m stupid and didn’t listen, but I did listen, and he doesn’t explain it.

“Luckily, Theresa is really strong. She’ll tell him he should explain it better but oh my God he gets mad and he tells her she’s not thinking hard enough. ‘That’s lazy thinking,’ he says. That’s one of his favorites, ‘that’s lazy thinking.’ I try not to say anything, so he doesn’t look at me like I’m stupid, but the problem is I don’t understand the answer he wants, and he won’t explain it so I go home and try to do the homework and I don’t get it right and I do bad on the tests. Luckily, he lets us take all the tests over again for extra credit, and thank God, because if not for extra credit I would get a D or F. But the problem isn’t us. I mean, Theresa is super smart, and she’s got A’s in all her classes, but not in Physics, and she’s not the only one . . .”

Alicia would have continued for another ten minutes, but dinner was ready, so I interrupted her and asked some data questions as we moved to the kitchen table.

“How many kids are in your class?”

“27 or 28, I think.”

“And how many are getting D’s or F’s or low C’s?”

“Maybe 10 or 11.”

“How many kids are getting A’s?”

She pondered this. “I’m not sure, but not a lot. Maybe 5 or 6.”

“So, most kids are getting C’s or worse.”

She nodded.

“And when a lot of you kids get the C’s, it’s because you are doing extra credit?”

She nodded.

“How many girls are getting A’s, and how many boys?

“About the same, maybe 3 or 4 each.”

“And how many of these kids are getting the A’s without doing extra credit?”

She saw the direction of my question and paused before answering. “I think there are a couple boys, maybe three. And there’s this one girl, Ally, who doesn’t have to do any extra credit. It’s mostly the boys, though. Most of us girls are doing the extra credit to get our grades up.”

We got to the table and sat down; this discussion ended but I had heard similar comments from my daughters about their experiences in some math and science classes. Similarly, in many of the schools in which my team and I have worked, a major focus of our observation and feedback sessions revolves around STEM classes. Unfortunately, Alicia’s pathway to a C represents the essence of difficulty for many of our daughters in math/science education.

The Teacher Training Dilemma

Kathy Stevens taught math and music before becoming the director of a non-profit Women’s Resource Agency and then the executive director of the Gurian Institute in 2001. One of her most profound observations about her teaching profession has been confirmed by twenty years of in-school research.

“Teachers of middle and high school,” she said, “generally consider themselves to be content experts. They know math, physics, science, etc., and their job is to instruct students in math or physics through a good curriculum for that subject. What they (we, since I was a teacher for a long time) often don’t get is that, for girls, the social-emotional stuff is just as important as the curriculum. How the teacher relates to the girl matters a lot. How he or she explains things means something.”

In the twenty years that I have been working in the schools and gathering data, I have seen this vision confirmed. The teachers are good people and they love their subject but few or none received teacher training in male/female brain difference. Once they get into the classroom and have been there a while, they often sense there is something negative going on with some of the boys and many of the girls in the math or science classroom, but unless the school undergoes significant systemic self-analysis, the staff doesn’t have to alter teaching methods significantly because “math, physics, chemistry . . . these are just what they are, they’re not subjective like English or social studies.” Meanwhile, in English and social studies, the girls are excelling, on average, far beyond many or most of the boys, so the math/science learning and social-emotional dilemmas can stay hidden.

Mr. Peters is a case in point. I don’t believe he is malicious at all, but he doesn’t realize that he is teaching physics to the “math-smart” and “more spatial” brains (often more boys than girls) in his classroom, leaving a lot of the girls to fail. Meanwhile, because pervasive grade failure is not something any teacher wants, he provides a way for a lot of girls and some boys to close the grade-gap in the class—by giving students extra credit assignments that will offset bad test grads. Girls and boys who would probably get D’s and F’s can thus get C’s, and in some cases, B’s or A’s.

The lingering problems in this system were captured poignantly in Alicia’s frustration. She told me she “hates” math and “will never understand” physics. Like so many other girls, she thought and sometimes made comments like:

“Boys are better than girls at that stuff and everyone knows it.”

“Mr. Peters is a terrible teacher!”

“I can’t wait to get to college and just take the classes I want to take.”

While Alicia may not be destined for an engineering career, and while she made peace with that, still, the educational system she grew up it committed some sins of omission; it let this girl down. After planting her in the middle of a beautiful grassy field that should have given her ample opportunity to explore science and mathematical mystery, it made the field seem barren to her. She couldn’t wait to escape its daily and cruel diminishment of her self-esteem and personal sense of worth.

Teacher Training in the Minds of Girls

Twenty years ago, I and others in the field suggested that systemic professional development for teachers in how boys and girls learn differently could lead to gains for girls in math/science. In 1997, this was theoretical and unproven, but by 2000 it was demonstrated in a two-year pilot study run by Dr. Patricia Henley, myself, and our colleagues in the School of Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In this pilot, the efficacy of gender-science based teacher training was tested via grades, test scores, and discipline referral data. Early in the pilot and continuing throughout, we found:

*grades and test scores went up for both girls and boys;

*discipline referrals to the principal went down;

*student satisfaction went up across the curriculum—in math, science, English, and social studies; and

*surpassing my own and Henley’s hopes for the pilot, the teachers not only embraced the new success, but also personally and communally developed new innovations.

You can read about the six school districts that participated in the pilot in Boys and Girls Learn Differently! You can also read about other schools and school districts that have seen similar gains over the last two decades in our subsequent books and articles and on www.gurianinstitute.com.

Grounded in the success of the Missouri pilot, my GI team has operated out of the belief that every college or university school of education should teach a one semester course on the male/female brain to its future teachers. Most schools of education do not do so because of the academic gender politics, but it can be done. I devised such a course in 1994 at Gonzaga University, and it was well received. A similar course can be taught anywhere. In this course, the professor can show brain scans to begin explorations of nature, nurture, and culture. As the course evolves, the many issues facing girls in STEM professions are revealed and solved, issues like these.

*Lack of complex math comprehension early in life. The necessity of birth-to-five training for parents and preschool/kindergarten teachers in STEM teaching is becoming clear and early childhood training in STEM needs to be improved. Right now, teachers of math in pre-K and elementary grades often misread girls’ signals, thinking girls are learning math well when they’re not fully comprehending the lesson. Female math-frustration ensues and can accumulate into and through secondary school.

*Fear of math. Certain parts of the brain (as we’ve noted in The Minds of Girls and Part 1 of this blog) are especially important for math learning (e.g. the Inferior Parietal Lobule); the female brain uses up some of the space/focus of these spatial centers with word centers whereas the male brain generally does not. Thus, early in life and continuing through childhood, a higher aggregate number of males than females have less fear of math, but math fear can lead to many years of accumulated and debilitating anxiety. Once teachers and others receive training in how Social Emotional Learning (SEL) can enhance test scores, grades, student discipline, and self-esteem, girls’ learning environments become more girl-friendly.; teachers like Mr. Peters alter the way they explain, support, and teach girls so that girls have less fear.

*Accumulating math anxiety compounds with stereotype threat in which the anxious girl feels less smart than the math-smart boy and decides math is a “boy” thing not a “girl” thing. New research has shown that girls do not consider themselves as “brilliant” as boys—their inability to succeed in math is one reason. As we train teachers and others in male/female learning difference (gender-differentiated instruction) we decrease stereotype threat.

*While respectable grade performance (often because of extra credit and extra homework) in middle and high school math classes can keep bad grades at bay, for those girls who are not naturally “math-smart,” these extra-credit-grade-elevations correlate to 1) an avoidance of higher-level math classes, and 2) a continuation of downward spirals in STEM learning such that, by the time these girls are through high school, they are often utterly disinterested in tech or math-related fields.

*Unfortunately, as higher levels of math are avoided by these girls in high school and college, it becomes nearly impossible for these girls to fulfill their potential early goals of entering computer coding and other tech specialties. These fields require not just some coursework in their specialty, but also a love of higher math learning which girls who have been struggling in math from the early years onward generally do not have.

*While our colleges are, happily, pushing for more females in higher math and tech classes, and while this culture-push is working in some cases, by the time many of these young women enter commensurate workforces, the corporations themselves notice many of the women engineers choosing to step away from long-term self-development in the mechanical field–often these women move to an administrative, PR, or HR job at the engineering firm, or they quit to have children.

These choices and decisions among women are complex but the bottom line is this:

*Because of all these experiences and choices along the way, more men end up higher in the corporate or firm ladder throughout the corporate world and especially in tech fields, leaving women to earn lower aggregate wages and experience less leadership positioning in these fields.

*Overall, the negative consequences for women of STEM-learning issues earlier in life are partially responsible for fewer jobs at the top and fewer higher-paying jobs in high-tech and engineering.

If you are a science geek and want to look at original studies that support many of the items on my list, please look at:

Jillian E. Lauer and Stella F. Lourenco of Emory University (2016), “Spatial Processing in Infancy Predicts Both Spatial and Mathematical Aptitude in Childhood.”

Daniel W. Belsky, et.al. (2016), “The Genetics of Success: How Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Associated with Educational Attainment Relate to Life-Course Development.”

Diane Halpern, et.al. (2007), “The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics.”

You will find these and many more in the Notes and References at the end of The Minds of Girls. I strongly recommend showing these studies to your daughters and discussing them with both your girls and boys. They can help you develop citizen science in your home and in your children. And these studies can lead to systemic change in school buildings, as well, because teachers are hungry to learn more about the learning brains of girls and boys.

STEM Techniques for Birth-to-Five Girls

With all this in mind, let’s get even more practical. Here are techniques and strategies that educators and parents can use to help close gender STEM/STEAM and math/science gaps from early on. These have proven effective in our Gurian Institute research and you can see the effectiveness detailed with data points on www.gurianinstitute.com and in The Minds of Girls.

To start affecting brain development very early, try girls only day in the block corner. Only girls (not boys) are allowed in a certain corner of the room for block building. Boys can have their own corner, but for this hour or day, they don’t come into the girl’s corner. This is a separate sex technique that can show big dividends, and here’s why.

If you go to preschool to observe children for a period of seven days, you’ll likely see a biological trend toward certain actions that favor males in spatial/physical play, e.g. the girls will end up watching as the boys build towers with blocks then knock them down and laugh, then do it all over again. While this is natural play for boys, it can affect girls’ development of spatial intelligence. Girls only day in the block corner allows girls to do the spatial building and mechanizing without interruption. This activity may stimulate synapses and functioning in spatial and mechanical centers of the brain.

Increased gross motor play can also help with spatial intelligence development. If you watch young children of both sexes for seven days in their play, work, and interactions, you’ll see a greater tendency among the girls to occupy their time with “fine motor activity” (playing with dolls, drawing carefully, doing weaving and bead work, crafting their penmanship) and a greater tendency among the boys toward gross motor play (whole body play like roughhousing, running, hitting, kicking a ball, etc.). As you notice this pattern, you’ll also see more impulsiveness in the boys, less in the girls; more aggression in the boys, less in the girls; more spatial intelligence development in roughhousing for boys, and more varied sensorial acquisition in the girls.

Like gender-specific block play, differences in gross and fine motor activity are natural. The male brain, driven in part by active spatial centers and a more active cerebellum (the “doing” center of the brain just above the brain stem), is formed with more testosterone at its baseline, and so would naturally tend toward more gross motor activity. Even at 30 or 50, males will (if health allows) tend to fidget more than females, stand up and move more, sit still less (unless their visual-graphic brains in the right hemisphere are substantially occupied by TV or some similar visual entertainment!). But even when watching TV, you will notice males fidgeting on the couch, throwing arms in the air, etc. more than females. The brain differences are robust throughout life.

Knowing this cognitive difference, we can enhance female development of spatial intelligence by prodding them into more gross motor play as early as possible. By getting them to move around more, we help them become an object moving through space, which can stimulate more of their spatial intelligence development, and it is healthy for their bodies too!

With my own daughters, I became the “gross motor” parent in Gail’s and my bi-strategic constellation, which is often typical of spatial-play fathers. I threw my children up and down, ran after them, made them run after me, played soccer with them, played football with them, rode bikes, and generally focused on development of spatial-kinesthetic intelligence. Now in their twenties, both Gabrielle and Davita are adept and unintimidated by spatial tasks (both are accomplished rock climbers). Davita works at a climbing gym and is getting an MBA with the hope of managing and owning climbing gyms. The science worked with these girls.

Can our daughters survive and thrive as women without developing gross motor skills as little girls? Of course, they can. But will they end up successful in Technology, Engineering, and Math fields if we don’t focus on gross motors in the birth-to-5 age group? I don’t believe they will, at least not at the numbers and levels we want. While there will always be an exception to this statement (a girl whose brain is so genetically wired for spatial intelligence that she will become a mechanical engineer no matter what), we would do our girls a disservice if we believed a passive life will lead to the STEM gains we want for them.

Techniques for K – 12 STEM Learning

In making sure our little girls get a lot of uninterrupted spatial play and gross motor activity, we are working to affect the birth-to-five pipeline of brain development, especially in connections that can get made in the right hemisphere and between the parietal lobe and memory, action, math, and critical thinking centers of the brain. We are likely also helping a little girl’s brain construct and connect synapses in specific gray matter areas that may be used later for math and science acquisition (STEM/STEAM).

The reference to “gray matter areas” is crucial to future performance in actions and systems related to science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. These five areas occur in both white matter and gray matter in the brain, with specific emphasis on specialization in gray matter areas. This means that when a brain is doing physics, as was Alicia’s in her physics class and Einstein throughout his career, it processes much of those tasks in a certain gray matter area. As I noted earlier, when Einstein’s brain was cut open after his death, researchers found a thicket of cells in gray matter areas in the left inferior parietal area. It was clear that Einstein’s math/science and spatial genius was somewhat localized there, in that part of the brain.

This did not mean that Einstein used no white matter activity to spread his thinking throughout his brain, but it did give all of us a clue to what is happening in brains that are working on math, physics, and science problems and innovations. To become effective in these fields, a brain needs to develop the gray matter areas that pertain to that specific brain functioning. Male brains already use up to 7 times more gray matter (localized) brain activity than do female brains; female brains use up to 10 times more white matter (diffused) brain activity.

In the biological sciences (biological research, nursing, medical school), where women are now as active or more active than men, a somewhat more equal combination of gray and white matter activity works well. However, in areas like mechanical engineering and coding, more localized gray matter activity is most likely needed. Since the male brain starts out using more gray matter activity, it has a leg up in areas that specifically require thick-building of cells in a localized brain area, generally one that involves abstract-concrete visual-spatial activity (physics, engineering) and/or quantitative reasoning (advanced mathematics).

If we have decided as a family, school, or corporate funder of programming that we want to enhance female STEM performance in workplaces during adulthood, a primary brain-based goal in K – 12, both in school and at home, should be enhancement of gray matter development, especially in the thickets (localized areas) that ground technology, engineering, and mathematics especially. Here are gray matter and spatial enhancers you can use in your homes and schools:

Set a reasonable goal and protect the acquisition of that goal. Teach your child to set the goal on paper, in her computer, or her smart phone. Have her write it down. Daniel Amen, in Memory Rescue, suggests having your daughter share her intention with a supportive friend or parent, and sending a regular progress report to that person. This is great advice for our daughters who can, through both the setting and sharing of the goal, use their social-emotional bonds with their friends as brain enhancers for focusing their brains on certain tasks.

Have her use verbal skills (reading, writing, speaking) to connect specific areas of the brain to the task. Because the female brain already devotes so much of its structure and activity to words, we can use this to our advantage. Use small groups (or parental one-on-one) to have your daughter talk about the task, write the task or numerical sequence down on paper (or type it into a computer), and/or take written notes in margins of books. As the word centers in the brain activate, they can stimulate other white matter activity, which can stimulate the gray matter areas needed for the STEM task.

Have her draw the task on a whiteboard or storyboard. The more space your girls use, the greater the likelihood of stimulating spatial centers in their brains—these are some of the centers that will help the math or science task to be fully realized. The more visual you help your girls to be, the more likely they will stimulate and build gray matter areas for the A (art) part of STEAM, which can help build gray matter activity for each of the other areas, S, T, E, and M.

Along the same lines, use visual cues and drawing/graphics to punctuate mathematics work. As much as a math sequence allows for drawn characters (even stick figures), suggest that your daughter draw and doodle pictures around the task and sequence. If this drawing or graphic activity becomes distracting, then it is counterproductive. But in general, visual cues on computers, small cards, or pieces of paper can help stimulate visuo-spatial brain activity.

Let her use squeeze balls in her non-writing hand and, as needed, let her toss balls in the air while she is working on a study task. These spatial-kinesthetic activities can stimulate spatial centers of the brain, especially gray matter areas on the right side, areas we want that female brain to stimulate for math/science tasking. Gradually, over a period of years, the spatial tasks may even build more blood flow and cell development there.

Have her constantly building things. Help her experiment kinesthetically (by touching and physically creating objects) with a specific focus on building-mechanics (by building things with Legos or other physical objects). Give her a chemistry set and have her play with that for an hour a day. This kind of work activates the spatial and mechanical centers of the brain, which should make math/science learning more complete throughout the lifespan.

Help her create a visual/verbal map for each of her difficult STEM tasks. Most math problems involve sequencing (step 1, step 2, etc.) and science tasks are grounded in formulas. Math/science is, thus, a highly organized sequencing task-set that requires focus on each step in the sequence. Mapping out some of the sequence ahead of time can help the female brain feel less intimidated by the sequence. Words can be used in the mapping, e.g. “After I do ____________, I need to remember to do _____________.”

Help her learn the importance of failure in invention and STEM learning. Math/science are failure-laden task sets. Perfectionism is okay as a part of the skill set of the learner near the end of the sequence, but not in the initial stages. To help girls realize this, ask them to study inventors’ lives. As they do, they’ll discover that these people kept doing something over and over again by taking risks, failing a lot, but persevering through the failures because each failure was “perfect” as a learning opportunity.

Help her cut out distractions, especially phones and screens. While doing the math/science task, help her to turn her phone off so she avoids using words/images for anything other than the math or science task in front of her. Cutting out the distractions helps allow the “math” or “science” brain to flourish for two reasons: it cuts out use of words for other things, and it coerces the brain into working as much as possible in the gray matter areas needed to do best in the math/science task.

Make STEM learning communal and, thus, fun. Girls are communal people, so it can be crucial that girls work with others to solve problems. I worked recently with a girls’ school (grades 7 – 12). One of the reasons they asked me to consult for them was to improve STEM learning for the girls. I asked them to create a mentoring program in which older girls “big sistered” younger girls. Once the new mentoring program went into place, younger girls’ STEM learning was enhanced by older girls’ one-on-one teaching, and along the way, all the girls received social-emotional learning, bonding, and maturation.

We CAN Change the STEM Script for Girls

As I mentioned earlier, the S (science) part of STEM is trending female now with women comprising the majority of higher education students in medical and biology-related fields. However, issues in the technology, engineering, and math fields have been somewhat intransigent. While many colleges and universities are increasing the number of first year students in college STEM related classes, a new Wall Street Journal report quoted federal data, noting that only 20% of graduates in computer science and engineering are female. As you think about the analysis I’ve provided in this chapter, I hope you’ll explore it with others, and look carefully at some educational and pedagogical issues that must, I believe, change, if we are to see TEM improvement. We must do more in pre-K through 12th grade for TEM skill and interest building if we are to see more women in the fields in their twenties.

In our Gurian Institute school-based trainings, we provide analysis and tactics related to spatial learning, female/male brain difference, and STEM classwork. Once teachers receive training in the female brain, they tend to change things around as their own very insightful intuition links new innovations to science. As they shift their teaching methods, they often innovate in ways like these.

*They no longer emphasize disappointment when girls (or boys) don’t understand something abstract and only exemplified once. Instead, they ask the girls something like, “Are you saying that my example was too abstract?” Upon hearing (or sensing) a “yes,” they provide kinesthetic and concrete ways of building explanative examples that fit the sensorial and experiential world surrounding the girl’s life. This can become something like: “Talk in your group about what examples would work best for you. Give those examples. Look in your own daily life for a way to do that kind of numerical calculation.” The group discusses this and comes up with concrete examples.

*They make sure the girl repeats back to them the example, explanation, and concept until the teacher is sure the girl has understood it while also preparing multiple examples for all the minds in the classroom (some minds will immediately intuit the first example while others will need a couple more examples to reach parity of comprehension).

*They call on each girl in class to solve problems as much as possible, rather than allowing a few dominant math-science smart kids to receive most of the class attention.

*They provide each student, as needed, with a math-smart mentor (like the older brother Alicia had, or the vertical mentoring program at the girls’ school) who can work one-on-one with the girl in a brain-friendly way.

*They lobby in the school and home life for diminishment of excessive multi-tasking, like extra homework. Higher levels of math and science are both equation and project-driven, requiring a lot of intricate and independent gray matter focus and less social multi-tasking. The more our girls’ brains do long-term problem-solving projects and the less they do multi-tasking type homework in their various classes, the more their brains may be tuned toward larger projects in math and science.

*This will mean asking teachers throughout the building to cut out most or all homework that is unnecessary for higher level learning. It also means teaching girls to quiet their multi-tasking social brains in pursuit of gray matter development in spatial and math-oriented centers.

New Testing for Spatial Intelligence Development

Meanwhile, if we are serious about closing the STEM gap, we will need to lobby the NEA and other educational organizations, including evaluators and testing-organizations, to test for spatial intelligence early on. Despite that moving objects through space (spatial intelligence) is crucial to a child’s future, we test for reading but not for spatial intelligence. We must change this: we must gather spatial data from birth to five and through elementary school, then let this data help us create new curricula that work with girls.

We will likely never have 50/50 female/male in high tech and engineering, but we can recruit, retain, and advance more females in these professions, and we can increase female longevity in each field.

To do this, we will need to continue to protect against sexism where it exists, but also by ending the knee-jerk “talking about the brain is gender stereotypes,” and actually focusing on the female and male brain as sex-specific learners.

Are we ready to do that?

As a father of two daughters and an advocate for women’s equality, I hope we are.

For References, please see the End Notes in The Minds of Girls for Chapter 6. This blog is adapted and excerpted from The Minds of Girls.

Getting Serious about Girls and STEM: Part 2