scholarly journals Gender Differences in Student Participation in an Active-Learning Classroom

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. ar12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stepfanie M. Aguillon ◽  
Gregor-Fausto Siegmund ◽  
Renee H. Petipas ◽  
Abby Grace Drake ◽  
Sehoya Cotner ◽  
...  

Gender gaps were observed in multiple categories of student participation in an active-learning biology course. Despite similar performance on in-class assessments, student surveys suggest that men and women experience the classroom differently. The results suggest that active learning is not a panacea for equitable participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses.

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-461
Author(s):  
Nadya A. Fouad ◽  
Michael B. Kozlowski ◽  
Romila Singh ◽  
Nina G. Linneman ◽  
Samantha S. Schams ◽  
...  

Women’s departure or nonentrance into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professions, particularly engineering, has been a lively source of scholarly inquiry for the past three decades. Much of the literature in this area has been with solely female samples of participants, begging the question as to whether or not men and women either choose to leave the profession or not enter for the same or similar reasons. This present study collected a large sample of men ( n = 1,273) who had either left or never entered the engineering profession and compared their responses to a large sample of women ( n = 1,235) on a set of categorical response variables. Using the perspective of the Theory of Work Adjustment, our results suggest that there are gender differences in reasons for departure, raising the possibility that engineering climates differentially reinforce needs for men and women. Implications of this research are discussed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142110286
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ashlock ◽  
Miodrag Stojnic ◽  
Zeynep Tufekci

Cultural processes can reduce self-selection into math and science fields, but it remains unclear how confidence in computer science develops, where women are currently the least represented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Few studies evaluate both computer skills and self-assessments of skill. In this paper, we evaluate gender differences in efficacy across three STEM fields using a data set of middle schoolers, a particularly consequential period for academic pathways. Even though girls and boys do not significantly differ in terms of math grades and have similar levels of computer skill, the gender gap in computer efficacy is twice as large as the gap for math. We offer support for disaggregation of STEM fields, so the unique meaning making around computing can be addressed.


Author(s):  
Raza Ullah ◽  
Hazir Ullah ◽  
Muhammad Bilal

This article outlines the biological essentialists’ versus feminists’ explanations of girls’ underperformance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Historically, except in the contexts of some developed countries, boys dominated girls in STEM subjects. Biological essentialists associate girls’ underperformance in STEM with the innate differences between men and women, whereas feminists attribute it to social factors. The issue, however, is not so easily solved and there is an ongoing debate between biological essentialists and feminists. This article, thus, engages in a comparative analysis of the two approaches, their underlying principles and the empirical evidences they use to substantiate their stance. The analysis of both approaches enables the authors to better decipher the connection between gender and education performance. This article explains that social rather than biological factors influence girls’ performance in STEM subjects. The article concludes that girls’ underperformance in STEM subjects' results from sociocultural factors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (12) ◽  
pp. 6476-6483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elli J. Theobald ◽  
Mariah J. Hill ◽  
Elisa Tran ◽  
Sweta Agrawal ◽  
E. Nicole Arroyo ◽  
...  

We tested the hypothesis that underrepresented students in active-learning classrooms experience narrower achievement gaps than underrepresented students in traditional lecturing classrooms, averaged across all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and courses. We conducted a comprehensive search for both published and unpublished studies that compared the performance of underrepresented students to their overrepresented classmates in active-learning and traditional-lecturing treatments. This search resulted in data on student examination scores from 15 studies (9,238 total students) and data on student failure rates from 26 studies (44,606 total students). Bayesian regression analyses showed that on average, active learning reduced achievement gaps in examination scores by 33% and narrowed gaps in passing rates by 45%. The reported proportion of time that students spend on in-class activities was important, as only classes that implemented high-intensity active learning narrowed achievement gaps. Sensitivity analyses showed that the conclusions are robust to sampling bias and other issues. To explain the extensive variation in efficacy observed among studies, we propose the heads-and-hearts hypothesis, which holds that meaningful reductions in achievement gaps only occur when course designs combine deliberate practice with inclusive teaching. Our results support calls to replace traditional lecturing with evidence-based, active-learning course designs across the STEM disciplines and suggest that innovations in instructional strategies can increase equity in higher education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (37) ◽  
pp. 22665-22667 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Kelly Lane ◽  
Jacob D. McAlpin ◽  
Brittnee Earl ◽  
Stephanie Feola ◽  
Jennifer E. Lewis ◽  
...  

Programs seeking to transform undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses often strive for participating faculty to share their knowledge of innovative teaching practices with other faculty in their home departments. Here, we provide interview, survey, and social network analyses revealing that faculty who use innovative teaching practices preferentially talk to each other, suggesting that greater steps are needed for information about innovative practices to reach faculty more broadly.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. ar30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin D. Solomon ◽  
Michelle D. Repice ◽  
Jacinta M. Mutambuki ◽  
Denise A. Leonard ◽  
Cheryl A. Cohen ◽  
...  

Active learning with clickers is a common approach in high-enrollment, lecture-based courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In this study, we describe the procedures that faculty at one institution used when implementing clicker-based active learning, and how they situated these activities in their class sessions. Using a mixed-methods approach, we categorized faculty into four implementation styles based on quantitative observation data and conducted qualitative interviews to further understand why faculty used these styles. We found that faculty tended to use similar procedures when implementing a clicker activity, but differed on how they situated the clicker-based active learning into their courses. These variations were attributed to different faculty goals for using clicker-based active learning, with some using it to engage students at specific time points throughout their class sessions and others who selected it as the best way to teach a concept from several possible teaching techniques. Future research should continue to investigate and describe how active-learning strategies from literature may differ from what is being implemented.


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