suggestions as to why girls don’t choose to do science that provides opportunity to teachers to alter the trend.It is often suggested that the gender gap in science may be present right from when children first start school and that the structure of the curriculum in these science subjects only facilitates the widening of this gap (Farenga & Joyce, 1999). Studies have shown that boys and girls come to school with very different science-related skills and experiences and that their socialization fosters interest in different science activities (Adamson et al., 1998 and Farenga & Joyce, 1999). Boys tend to be drawn to science activities that involve the manipulation of objects (Farenga & Joyce, 1999) whereas girls are more socially aware than boys and place a greater importance on interpersonal relationships than on inanimate objects (Stewart, 1991). What this means is that girls approach practical work within the science lab with a lot less confidence and often underdeveloped manipulative skills (Johnston, 1984). This illustrates the problem, that the science curriculum and some teachers assume that all students come to class with some technical or mechanical experience and while not all boys will have the case is that most girls won’t have that experience and thus are unfairly disadvantaged (Payget, 1987).Adamson, Foster, Roark & Reed (1998) have also suggested that the way young children segregate their peer group based on gender may also contribute to the gender gap by maintaining the stereotypical masculine image of physical science. Whilst this may be hard to imagine in young children, it has been found that children associate their appropriate gender role by age 3 and by ages 6 or 7 they can identify gender-role definition (Farenga & Joyce, 1999), this combined with the findings of Andre, Whigham, Hendrickson & Chambers (1999) that children in elementary school rate jobs relating to science as more male dominated may sh...
