ence teachers think that science subjects are less important for girls than for boys and that they rate identical work more highly for boys than for girls (Stewart, 1991). This reflects that science teachers have different expectations for boys than they do for girls, this may be reflected in their teaching techniques and may affect girls’ self-perception in science and lead to lowered achievement and participation (Stewart, 1991).The masculine image of science is also attributed to lower achievement and participation in science. Silins & Zarins (1987) suggested that it was not surprising that science was viewed as male dominant while students use textbooks that represent scientists as male and have text that is male-oriented. It has been suggested that this masculine image that science appears to have may be a key contributor to the gender gap in science. It is suggested that boys and girls have different ways of learning and that science tends to cater for the way that boys learn. Stark (1999) found that boys showed superior performance levels in tasks which focussed on knowledge and understanding, the type found in the physical sciences, whereas girls performed better on tasks where the content or context was drawn from the biological sciences and on written tasks assessing science skills. It seems that girls are attracted to topics where the content has an aesthetic element and it set in an everyday context and they can see it’s social relevance (Johnston, 1984 and Stark, 1999). However, in the physical sciences teachers are too caught up with the teaching the concepts and processes, that they do not stress the relevance to everyday life that these concepts have and thus may lose the interest of girls (Stewart, 1991).While all of the above certainly seem to have a hand in generating the gender gap there is another possible reason that has become a great issue of concern and it is that of girls self-confidence and/or sel...
