Exploring accuracy of self-evaluation about introductory astronomy topics: gneder and cross-age differences

Accuracy of self-evaluation – namely students' assessment of their own ability - is at the basis of important cognitive processes, such as decision making, and is positively correlated with academic achievement in science, persistence in science tasks, and motivation towards science. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated how gender differences in accuracy of self-evaluation vary across school grades, from primary to secondary school. We chose introductory astronomy as the subject area because astronomy is taught at all school levels and is often considered a "gateway science", as students may be inspired to choose a scientific career after being exposed to astronomy content in different contexts. Moreover, astronomy is a scientific area where the gender gap is less pronounced, as girls are usually interested in astronomy topics as much as boys. A total of N=3,287 students (mean age:14.7,SD=2.4 years, girls=50.4%) participated in the study. The research instrument used was a multiple-choice test developed from previous studies. T-tests and factorial ANOVA were used to analyse the collected data. The results show that, on average, boys are more confident than girls on all questions and that the differences increase with school grade. Overall, our results suggest that astronomy education practice in secondary schools should go beyond teaching astronomy as a collection of facts and aim to better calibrate students' assessment of their performance.