Student diversity and the persistence of gender effects on conceptual physics learning

At Ryerson University every year, hundreds of science and engineering students enroll into required introductory physics courses. The diverse educational histories and demographic characteristics of these students reflect the diversity of Toronto as an urban metropolis and Canada more generally. In this study, we investigate how students’ demographic and educational diversity affects their conceptual learning in introductory university physics. As expected, we found that the completion of a senior high school physics course is positively related to students’ initial conceptual understanding of physics. The unexpected result was that gender remained a predictor of the students’ initial conceptual understanding, even when the completion of high school physics was accounted for. Other demographic characteristics, such as students’ mother tongue and country of birth, seem not to matter. Students’ initial conceptual understanding was the strongest predictor of students’ course learning outcomes, which makes understanding students’ initial differences particularly important. Since learning outcomes in introductory science courses often impact students’ later success in undergraduate science degree programs, these results suggest that the impact of completing high school physics may extend far beyond the first year. The persistence of initial gender differences in students’ learning outcomes remains an ongoing concern.