Discuss the gender differences in mathematical ability among adolescents.

Answers will vary. For half a century or more, it has been believed that male adolescents generally outperform females in mathematics, and research has tended to support that belief. But a study by Hyde and her colleagues of some 7 million second- through eleventh-graders found no mean gender differences for performance in mathematics on standardized tests, although boys were somewhat more represented at the extremes-extreme high and low scores. The complexity of the test items apparently made no difference. Although girls may be generally as capable as boys in math, most Americans have different expectations for them, and these expectations may still discourage girls from entering "STEM fields" (i.e., fields in science, technology, engineering, and math).