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The article explores the size and influence of differences between boys and girls in science learning during late adolescence. The psycho-biological and social-psychological hypothesis have been generated to account for the development of cognitive differences between the sexes. Sex differences should be reflected in proportionate differences in science learning. Several explanations arise for the opening of this achievement gap during the teenage years. At age 13, boys are slightly more motivated than girls. These motivational differences may persist and increase during high school years.

The mathematics achievement scores of 28,274 students in 1443 Australian, Belgian, English, Finish, French, German, Israeli, Japanese, Dutch, Scotch, Swedish, and US. elementary schools were correlated with, and regressed on socioeconomic status, highest math course taken, weekly hours of homework, interest in mathematics, and several other variables with both individuals and schools within each country as units of analysis. The results corroborate recent syntheses of small- scale studies of productive factors in academic learning as well as regression analyses of large-scale surveys. Among directly alterable variables, the amount and the quality or vigour of instruction including homework most strongly influence achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading achievement and attitude scores of a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) sample of 1,459 9-year-old students were multiply regressed on one another on home environment variables such as television watched, presence of newspapers, spare-time reading, dictionary use, kindergarten attendance, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, school characteristics, and other variables. The variances accounted for are moderate and highly significant; correlations and partial correlations of achievement with home environment, quantity of instruction, and leisure-time television watching corroborate quantitative syntheses of productive factors in school learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the dependence of mathematics achievement and attitude on each other and other factors, achievement test scores and ratings of 2,368 13-year- old students who participated in the 1977-78 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were anal) zed. Achievement was significantly associated with attitudes, sex, ethnicity, father’s and mother’s education, verbal opportunities in the home, and frequency of mathematical practices, when the variables were statistical!) controlled for one another. Constructive mathematics attitudes were associated with achievement and the same factors except parent education. About 32% of the achievement variance and 8% of the attitude variance can be accounted for by the factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To test the hypothesized cumulative advantages of educative factors, the science-achievement scores on a 69-item test of science knowledge of 1,284 young adults, ages 26 to 35, surveyed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NA EP) in 1977, were regressed on three composite independent variables: motivation and prior and current educative experiences. The test scores were related significantly to prior experience-embodied variables, such as parental socioeco- nomic status, respondent education, and specific scientific training, as well as to motivation to learn and current amount and intensity of information acquisition, such as news media exposure and reading. Early educative experience predicts current educative activities and motivation; and all three factors contribute significantly and independently to the prediction of achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]