ievement and representation of girls in physical science (Johnston, 1984).This viewed in the light of the fact that it has been shown that the school plays a major role in the performance and attitudes of girls to science (Johnston, 1984) must prompt all teachers to examine what they may be doing to contribute to this problem and what they may be able to do to encourage girls to become involved in science, particularly the physical sciences. But before one can begin to make positive changes in this direction it must be understood what is causing this gender gap in science.Over the years there have been many studies carried out to try and explain the reasons why girls are not choosing to do science, and they have come up with a plethora of possible reasons and some very interesting ideas. Some of these explanations may not be able to be altered by the school and the teacher but many of them can be. This paper will give a brief overview of the former and then explore the later in a little more detail.One of the most fascinating studies on this issue was one carried out by Andre, Whigham, Hendrickson & Chambers (1999) it was done on elementary children and their parents and explored the perceptions and attitudes toward science of both the students and the parents. This study found that the parents perceived that boys were more competent in science than girls and that it was more important for boys. Parents expected boys to have higher performance in science and saw jobs related to math and science as more male dominated. This finding is important as the parents’ perception of the importance of science may directly affect the amount of encouragement and the number of opportunities in science-like activities parents provide (Andre et al., 1999)Obviously there is little teachers or schools can do about the perception of parents towards science, besides trying to promote a positive image of girls in science. However there are many other ...
