Beyond achievement gaps: inequalities in affective components of math learning

Abstract Background Comparative educational research has studied inequality in educational outcomes through large-scale assessments like PISA and TIMSS, by identifying achievement gaps within social groups (e.g., gender, parental education, and immigrant gaps) to inform investment in intervention programs and educational policies. However, the focus of these studies has mainly been on achievement, neglecting social and affective adaptation factors (e.g., confidence, enjoyment, and value). This paper argues for the inclusion of affective components in studying educational inequalities and analyzes affective gaps using TIMSS 2019 data. Method We investigate gender, parental education, and immigration status gaps regarding confidence, enjoyment, and attributed value for math learning. For context, achievement gaps are also analyzed and accounted for with the goal of confirming previous research and to assess its role in affective gaps. Regression analysis across 39 countries in TIMSS 2019 (23 in the case of immigration status) were conducted. Complex sample designs were accounted for using the IDB Data Analyzer, sampling weights, and the Jackknife Replication procedure to compute standard errors, with pooled effect sizes calculated using a random effects model. Results Among the key findings, we observe that in the case of gender, a clear general gap benefitting boys was observed in most countries for math confidence, enjoyment, and value. As for parental education, the well-known results concerning achievement are reproduced for the assessed affective components of math learning, that is, students from highly educated parents have a clear tendency to be more confident towards math, and to enjoy and value math learning more. Finally, results are rather mixed in what concerns gaps according to immigration status, as trends vary throughout nations. These results mainly remained when controlling for achievement. At the country level, we found that achievement gaps correlate with confidence gaps but not with enjoyment or value gaps. Conclusions Our findings highlight that affective gaps—differences in students' confidence, enjoyment, and value attributed to math—are distinct from achievement gaps and often follow unique patterns across gender, parental education, and immigration status. While achievement gaps may correlate with confidence gaps, they do not align with enjoyment and value gaps, underscoring that affective dimensions of learning cannot be fully understood through achievement data alone. This study sets out to contribute to a more holistic view on academic adaptation when it concerns equalities in the field.