1. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 Educational experience at school and the choice of study field in the retrospective interpretation of university students Dr Agnieszka Majcher

2. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 Data Respondents: participants of the university e-course „Women, men and the society” 43 persons (42 women, 1 man) Students across fields: Teacher education – 10 Political science –11 Other social sciences – 10 Humanities –10 Other- 2

3. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 Aim Confront students with the research findings on gender aspects of educational processes and school socialization and have them reflect critically on their own educational experience and its impact on their career choices. Research presented: representations of men and women, boys and girls in primary school textbooks negative psychological influence of gender stereotypes on pupils’ performance gender roles’ ideology of teachers gender stereotypes in didactic process

4. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 Question Having read the literature provided (on gender and education) and the statistics on women across study fields, please reflect critically why did you choose your study field? What in your opinion might have had a crucial impact on your decision? What role did the educational experience at school play in this process?

5. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 General results Almost none of our students chose to study maths or science, though some pupils performed well at school in math and science Almost nobody perceived the way in which teachers treated male and female students, didactic methods, or the whole educational process as an important factor before being made aware of it during our course. Female students deeply internalised: - a message that men and women have different brains and this is the reason for the lack of women in maths and science. - a message that one needs to follow one’s interests and ‘natural inclinations’ (including that it must come without an effort).

6. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 Why did I chose my study field? „I followed my interests” „The choice of my study field – Polish philology was a follow-up of my interests I developed in a high school” „I wanted to study what I really liked – learn languages, deal with literary research, translations...”

7. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 „It had to be an „easy to study” subject”  „I study pedagogic. It happened by chance because I did not manage to pass the exams to enter psychology or sociology” „I study English philology – a typical „women’s” subject. I followed my interests or maybe I was just lazy...” „When choosing my study field I only knew it had to be humanities. It was important for me not to have to strive too much for 5 years and take pleasure from my studies”

8. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 Why didn’t I choose maths or science? „I am mediocre in maths and science” „When it comes to science I am simply mediocre. I not exceptionally good or bad (except for spatial imagination of which I am completely deprived)”. „I dreamt to study at the Polytechnic or Warsaw School of Economics but it was impossible since physics and maths were never my ‘strong side’. I knew that even in case I would succeed to enter these schools I would never manage with these subjects, despite the fact I attended maths and science-oriented high school”. „From the early childhood I knew that science was not for me. I am not able to catch intellectually such abstract issues like integrals or probability”.

9. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 „Maths needs too much effort” „Perhaps it is easier to be satisfied with the etiquette of the ‘humanist’, rather than to spend the whole evening over logarithms, as it had been my case.” „I took it for granted that if I need to spend more time to understand maths than to learn ‘foreign vocabulary’ maths is not for me.” „Maths, physics, chemistry were the subjects I had to learn in order to get a clue and it was not a pleasure.”

10. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 „I was good at math but...” „ I was interested in humanities but I had pleasure in learning maths too. In my class there were two of us –me and my colleague taking part in math competitions, we took both math at Matura as the only students in the class. But he always wanted to be the best and our teacher supported him more than me. I was all the time discouraged by our (female) teacher. Contrary to my colleague I did not have the courage to continue with maths...” „I landed up in a humanities-oriented high school class by chance – there was no generally- oriented class. I was thinking to choose maths and science - oriented class at high school but my brother said he could not stand spending with me another four years in the same class...”

11. Barcelona, January, 26th 2007 What about boys?