Stereotype Threat and Tracking in High School Math Classes
Abstract
Stereotype threat is the fear of confirming a stereotype experienced by a negatively stereotyped
group when placed in a situation that makes that stereotype salient (Steele & Aronson, 1995).
This topic has been researched extensively over the past 15 years, however never in connection
to the educational concept of tracking, where ability-homogeneous classes are created by
grouping high-ability students together in one class and low-ability students together in another
class (Mulkey, Catsambis, Steelman, & Crain, 2005). Women are negatively stereotyped in the
domain of mathematics relative to men, and this proposed study analyzed whether tracking in
mathematics decreases or increases this threat for female students. Eleventh grade students from
two different high schools, a private all-female school and a public mixed-gender school, were
studied in three different math classes. Both schools used a nearly identical tracking system with
a high-track, low-track, and mixed-ability or untracked class. Results analyzed students' grades,
GPA, and questionnaires designed to measure stereotype threat and academic ability that were
completed four times throughout the school year. Researchers expected low-track females to
have higher stereotype threat scores than high-track females, for females to have higher
stereotype threat scores than male students, and for stereotype threat to be higher in the mixed gender
school than the all-female school.