When one explanation fails, they look for another. So says Carl Berger, professor of education and associate dean for research in the School of Education. For the past 15 years he has watched how children use science skills. Lately Berger has been impressed by the remarkable abilities children develop in video arcades. He believes that often a child's real skills simply don't show up in school.
Gender research is a case in point .
When children go out into the real world to solve a problem, they don't solve it as if it were a math problem on a piece of paper, although they may use math concepts. We want to look at how boys and girls actually do solve problems. Heretofore, most other researchers have argued that boys and girls in primary school perform with few or no differences, but that boys outperform girls beginning in junior high school. He says that people may prefer to notice research which confirms popular stereotypes and policies about females. It is easier to believe that females are innately inferior than to decide that something is seriously wrong with the system.