Are the male students who are good in history also good in physics? Testing a belief indirectly

Authors

• Jorma Kuusela
• Najat Ouakrim-Soivio

Abstract

For decades history teachers have believed that the male students who are good in history are also good in physics. There is no direct empirical evidence that could support the belief. The belief is theoretically interesting because history and physics are, as fields of knowledge, rather different. Can the belief be tested, and if so, how? The article explores the credibility of the belief indirectly as direct empirical testing cannot be done. A connection between history and physics was found, and it could be reasoned that it concerns male students especially, but when the perspective was changed the picture changed: when the connection in students’ academic performance in language B and physics was explored, the male student’s performance in language B was tightly linked to their performance in physics. The history teachers’ belief is not unfounded but a connection exists also between the male students’ good performance in physics and in other subjects. This raises the question why history teachers in particular have been disposed to express this belief. The base of the article is to test a strategy of exploring quantitatively the credibility of a statement in a case where ideal data is not available.