Summary of Grade-Level, Gender and Ethnic Differences in Attitudes and Learning Environment in High School Mathematics by Gloria E.

The article presented that in US (1994), only 22% of the Science and Engineering labour force was made up of women where 46% of the labour force in all occupations was made up of females. To understand this scenario, one of the research questions was to investigate if there are differences in the learning environment perceptions and attitudes of high school Mathematics students according to grade level, gender and ethnicity. How students perceive their learning environment would affect the job they would take up later in their lives. However I felt that the perceptions of students were greatly affected by their culture such as the community they are in, their cultural values about males and females which were pass on to them by their parents or grandparents. So these are not solely just students' perceptions in their school.

For example, parents may be telling their daughters not to work in the engineering field where they need to be out in the sun doing field work. They could have inevitable instil the idea that females should work in offices. This is not uncommon.

Perhaps, researchers should research on what affect students' cultural values which they would bring to school and in turn affect their perceptions about learning and later getting jobs related to Science and Engineering areas.