education The of youth is something that many people take an interest in. We see it as not only investing in their future but ours as well. They will someday be making the decisions and choices about our economy, government, and well being. The article "Gender, Self-Perception, and academic Problems in High School" deals with the ideas of what effects students while they are learning and what can hinder their learning capability. After beginning to read this article I realized it was something I wanted to read more about and write a critique on. I found myself able to relate to the information in this article. The section that discusses the effects of "Gender and the Self Constructed Self" brings up many different ideas that I was able to see how I would fit into this study. It brings to point that girls have a stronger will to be a good student because it fits into a girl's role of self concept. I was always able to see myself and my other girlfriends trying and striding for excellence. One of my friends who had two brothers and she was the only girl. She graduated valedictorian of our class while her brothers were not near this success. While spending a lot of my time at their house I can recall many times where her mother would always be asking us about our homework, what we learned today, and when our next test would be. Her brother was asked about how his day went and if he did his homework. It seems that parents expect more of their daughters than their sons. This article also struck my interest because of the research effecting math and science courses. This article fits into the field of sociology because it is looking at a group, which in the case it happens to be students, and how they interact with teachers, family, peers, and positive and negative grades. This study relies heavily on the interactions between the students and others as well as the reaction of the student and the grades received.
The research process for this study began first in 1995 by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AHAA). The AHAA is a national sample representation of grades seven through twelve. 80 high schools were selected, based on a stratified sampling design of urbanization, racial structure, sector and size. 32 middle schools were then chosen based on if they fell into the first 80 high schools that didn't contain seventh and eighth graders and found that that probability of their students contributing to the high school. The students of these schools were given an in-school survey which the results helped begin to generate a future sampling frame for the later research. Within the 132 schools, 90,118 students from the high schools were divided into a subgroup and then some of the students were then questioned in an at-home interview with supplementary data coming from school officials and parents from April to December, which is named Wave I, N=20,745. An all non-senior subdivision of Wave I was attempted from April to September of 1996 called Wave II, N=14,738. Another follow up of all Wave I participants which now included seniors was conducted between August of 2001 and April of 2002, Wave III, N=15,197. Of all those who participated in this research just about 77 percent were again able to participate in the Wave III. AHAA began studying the transcripts of the 91 percent who consented and then went on to collect 13,000 transcripts to further study. Then there were five filters applied to the data collected in Wave I. Filter One was a sample of ninth and tenth graders due to the fact that they can only be sure the end-of-school courses were taken after Wave I. An end-ofschool course is the highest level math and science courses taken by the end of the schooling. Filter Two is only those who participated in both Wave II and III. Filters Three and Four were those who parents were not interviewed in Wave I or did not have
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their transcript submitted into the data collected. The fifth and final filter is composed of those who were debarred from the original sample weight because they represented an unequal probability in the With AHAA. these filters there was an overrepresentation of white girls who received good grades and whose parents completed college. Biases like these were hoped to balance out through each filter of data.
There are courses that are standard throughout the education process. The AHAA created a classification of codes for all of the secondary courses appearing on the transcripts. They have created a number scale of 0 to 10 of categories of courses such as science and math. These are the end-of-school sequences that are seen in the Filter One. The numbers in Table 2 depict where the student is beginning academically at the start of their high school education. Table 2 also is shows the variables with a full sample and then girls and boys individually. There is also data taken from Wave I and II where the students evaluated their own intelligence compared to those their age, which can increase and decrease on the scale due to the ideas of perceived intelligence. This table also shows the separate but relativity between potential academic problems. Wave I was created to index some of the academic failure between the numbers of classes failed in ratio to the number of classes taken, it is also recorded at Wave I, if the child had ever been diagnosed with a disability. Taking into consideration if the child has a disability will make a difference in the way that the academic performance is viewed. The number of failures is also a predominate factor in the index of failures. The context of the family structure can be taken into consideration when looking at the data and is also a measure of the parent's educational achievements. The parents levels of education were recorded from less then high school to graduate education. There is also the data collected
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pertaining to the students behavior such as attendance and trouble they may have caused such as graffiti, stealing, or other illegal activities. The students' school spirit and relationships with fellow students is another piece of data collected. The relation between the student and their parent is an important piece of data that gathered from the student. Lastly in school data is collected based on if the student is an athlete and also is they participate in any extra curricular sports. Four of the Wave I factors tune into the demographics of the data; race, genders, and the structured family life, each of which are given numbers to identify the data. The results of all this data that has been collected can be seen in Table 3. With all of this information laid out in front of you, you're able to make comparisons within the data. You are able to see that boys over girls do better in math and science courses. It can also be noted that the gender of the student did not effect they way they viewed their own intelligence. A concept of sociology that can be found with in this study is the idea of the haves and the have nots, believed by Karl Marx. With these students there are some that will achieve high academic excellence and there are some that may not even graduate high school. These students who do not complete high school would be the have nots for they are not achieving academically what is expected of them. Another sociological idea that can be found with in this article is stratification. Social stratification is begins to form during education. The achievements that the student makes will have an impact on their future and their role in society. I feel that this was a very informational article. I believe as though I have learned something while reading and working with this research. The data collected and
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presented throughout the article was tough to comprehend unless you were able to have an understanding for the article itself. Now being more educated on this subject I believe as though I would be able to have an intelligent conversation with someone and explain to them what I have read and what the research entailed.
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Crosnoe, Robert, Riegle-crumb, Catherine, Muller, Chandra. "Gender, Self-Perception, and Academic Problems in High School." Social Problems 54(2007): 118-138.
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