Oh boy.

Little girls may learn to fear math from the women who are their earliest teachers. Despite gains in recent years, women still trail men in some areas of math achievement, and the question of why has provoked controversy. Now, a study of first- and second-graders suggests what may be part of the answer: Female elementary school teachers who are concerned about their own math skills could be passing that along to the little girls they teach.

This is a spin-off from the “stereotype threat” theory popular with education theorists a year or two ago, since shown to be the result of publication bias (e.g. studies that confirmed the theory were sent for publication; those that didn’t were deep-sixed — also known as the “file-drawer effect”). Stereotype threat is a very clear example of what Steve Sailer calls “Occam’s Butterknife” — i.e. when the simplest, most straightforward explanation of some phenomenon is emotionally disturbing to you, try for something more complicated.

Janet S. Hyde, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the study a “great paper, very clever research.”
“It squares with an impression I’ve had for a long time,” said Hyde, who was not part of the research team.
Hyde was lead author of a 2008 study showing women gaining on men in math skills but still lagging significantly in areas such as physics and engineering.

For more on that 2008 study, see the analysis here.