Gender and Mathematical Modelling Competency: Primary Students’ Performance and their Attitude

The main purpose of this study is investigating gender differences between Iranian students in grade six in mathematical modelling competency and students’ attitude toward mathematical modelling problem. The type of study was quasi experimental design with two different groups. These two groups of students responded to the pre-test, the questionnaire after pre-test, and post-test. Experimental group participated in a set of intervention classes that concentrated on modelling activities and answered to a questionnaire after the intervention. The results of this study show that although girls had better performance than boys in pretest, but after intervention, boys had better performance than girls in post-test at the significance level of 0.05. All students who participated in the current study considered modelling problems out of mathematics domain, but after intervention their attitude toward mathematical modelling problems was changed dramatically so that almost all students in experimental group recognized modelling problems as a mathematics problem and they were interesting to solve modelling problem. Although gender difference in attitude toward mathematical modelling problem was not seen, but there is a little bit different between boys and girls. For instance, boys had better attitude toward mathematical modelling problem.