Correspondence Heuristic and Filter-Empowerment Heuristic: Investigating the Reversed Gender Achievement Gap in a Sample of Secondary School Students in Saudi Arabia within the Framework of Educational and Learning Capital

Abstract

The reversed gender achievement gap in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in favor of girls developed in a societal environment that still predominantly favors men. The finding illustrates how equity gaps at higher systemic levels may not translate seamlessly to lower systemic levels. We propose that this lack of correspondence between systemic levels regarding equity gaps can be explained by the fact that more exogenous learning resources (educational capital) selectively reach girls’ actiotopes, enabling them to build more effective endogenous learning resources (learning capital) and, in particular, effective action repertoires. To investigate this assumption, we introduce a filter-empowerment heuristic and contrast it with a simpler correspondence heuristic. We employ the filter-empowerment heuristic and the education and learning capital approach to investigate the reversed gender achievement gap in a sample of secondary school students in the KSA. We test four hypotheses: (a) Girls have higher academic achievement than boys. (b) Girls have more educational capital and (c) more learning capital than boys. (d) Educational and learning capital mediate the relationship between gender and academic achievement. The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 2541 ninth-grade students from 55 KSA schools. The four hypotheses were confirmed and support a filter-empowerment heuristic rather than a correspondence heuristic.