Gender differences in Korean elementary students: An analysis of TIMSS 2011 and 2015 fourth grade mathematics assessment

This study examined Korean fourth-grade students' performance by gender on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study(TIMSS) 2011 and 2015 mathematics assessment. We first identified items which had significantly higher mean scores by gender to decide which gender did better on a certain domain(domain-level analysis). Then, we examined the content of items(item-level analysis) to understand which items lead to gender differences in mathematics achievement. Our findings showed that about 80% of the items on both assessments did not show statistically significant differences between males and females. However, there were meaningful gender differences in the other 20% items. On both assessments, females had more items with significantly higher mean scores than males on the Shapes domain, and males had more those items on the Numbers and Measurement domains and all cognitive domains(Knowing, Applying, and Reasoning). In particular, females outperformed males on items related to identifying two- and three-dimensional shapes and drawing lines and angles and identifying them. Conversely, males had higher performance than females on items related to the pre-algebraic thinking, fractions and decimals, estimation of number differences, unit of length, and measuring time, height, and volume. The effect sizes for each item ranged from .12 to .33 and the mean effect size of all items across both assessments was .20, which indicated significant gender differences but small.