A Study on the Gender Difference in Mathematical Literacy from the PISA

학업성취도 국제 비교 연구(PISA)에 나타난 수학적 소양의 성별 차이에 대한 고찰

The PISA(Program for International Student Assessment), an international comparative study supervised by OECD, aims at producing reliable and internationally comparable indicators of students' literacy in reading, mathematics, and science. In mathematical literacy, Korean students ranked the 2nd out of the 32 participating countries in PISA. This result is very encouraging in the sense that the scores in the mathematical literacy are a forecasting indicator for the mathematical level of future citizens who are supposed to lead their countries in every field. However, Korean students showed the largest gender difference in mathematical literacy, indicating that male students achieved significantly higher scores than female counterparts. With the consideration that mathematics plays a key role in determining the overall achievement level and influences on the long-term career opportunities, it is necessary to pay more attention to the gender difference in mathematical literacy, and make an effort to reduce it to enhance the overall intelligence level of Korean human resources.