Examining Gender and Urban/Rural School Differences in Empirically-derived Achievement Profiles

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study used a person-oriented approach to examine gender differences at the level of achievement profiles and examine such differences in the context of urban and rural schools. The achievement test scores in English, math, and science of 2,408 tenth-grade students were used to derive achievement profiles through agglomerative-hierarchical and k- means clustering techniques. Four profiles were derived: 1) Low Achievers, 2) True Average Achievers, 3) High Achievers with weak math and science skills, and 4) High Achievers with strong math and science skills. Significant gender and urban/rural school differences among the profiles were found after performing cross-tabulation analyses with chi-square testing. The so-called “female advantage” in education was more evident among Low Achievers, but not among the High Achievers. When the urban/rural school context was considered, the female advantage tends to disappear and the urban school advantage becomes more definite. Finally, the High Achievers with weak math and science skills were mostly females in urban schools. The findings suggest that it is important to situate gender differences in a certain context. Implications for practice are provided, as well as recommendations for future research. KEYWORDS: Gender differences, urban and rural schools, achievement profiles, cluster analysis, Filipino students