The relationships among problem solving performance, gender, confidence, and attributional style in third-grade mathematics

Boys in junior high, high school, and college consistently outperform girls on problem solving tasks. Relatively little research has been done on the problem solving performance of elementary school students. This correlational study investigated the separate and collective effects of gender and two aspects of motivation, attributional style and confidence, on the problem solving performance of third grade students. A sample of 109 culturally diverse students completed three instruments that measured problem solving performance, confidence, and attributional style (success due to ability, success due to effort, success due to help from others, failure due to lack of ability, failure due to lack of effort, failure due to difficulty of the task). A subsample of students was chosen to participate in individual interviews to determine the strategies they used to solve problems. A significant gender difference was found in favor of boys on complex problem solving. A significant gender difference was found on one measure of attributional style; girls attributed their success more to effort than did boys. A series of multiple regression analyses determined that more of the variance in complex problem solving can be explained for boys than girls (59% vs. 41%). Intermediate problem solving is the greatest predictor for girls and boys and explained 18% and 39% of the variance, respectively, in complex problem solving. Four motivation variables are significant predictors of complex problem solving: success to help, failure to ability, failure to difficulty, and confidence. No gender difference was found during the individual strategies than the low students.; The most important finding was that third grade boys performed significantly higher than girls on complex problem solving. Although there were no gender differences in confidence in mathematics, boys reported a pattern of correlations to confidence that may signify that they place an importance on confidence that girls do not. Patterns of attributions girls and boys made for their successes and failures are similar to those of upper grade students and may foreshadow gender differences as students grow older.