Download Encouraging Girls in Physics

Encouraging Girls in Physics
Information and Action Plans
Gender Disparity in Academia
Percentage PhD’s and Assistant Professorships in STEM (not bio) fields
50%
40%
30%
?
20%
10%
1970
1994
2011
2126
What do you predict for your grade 9 students?
Gender Disparity in Academia
“We conclude by suggesting that although in the past, gender
discrimination was an important cause of women’s
underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim
has ... ceased being a valid cause of women’s
underrepresentation ... Consequently, current barriers to
women’s full participation ... are rooted in pre-college factors.”
Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape (2014)
Action Plan: We have an important job! We should let our
students know that times have changed. What can we do to
improve their high school physics experience.
PER/Reformed Teaching
M
F
The two universities in the red boxes used traditional pedagogy.
Does switching to a reformed pedagogy help female students?
PER/Reformed Teaching
“interactive engagement methods improve student learning ...
for students of both genders... We also encourage instructors to
supplement these methods with techniques explicitly designed
to address the gender gap, but to exercise a healthy skepticism
towards such methods.’’
The gender gap on concept inventories in physics: what
is consistent, what is inconsistent, and what factors
influence the gap? (2013)
Action Plan: Stop lecturing and get your students actively
involved in their learning.
What Interventions Work?
Gender Disparity in Academia
Single sex classes and female role models do not have a
significant effect. A mentor of either sex does.
“... explicit personal discussions regarding issues that women
face in pursuing the physical sciences may help female students
realize that feelings of inadequacy or discomfort they might
have stem from external norms and pressures rather than from
their capabilities, interests, or values.”
Factors that affect the physical science career interest of
female students (2013)
Action Plan: Teachers of both sexes can have a huge effect by
encouraging and supporting female students.
Interests
Interests
“We found substantial gender differences in the ThingsPeople dimension (d = 0.93), with men preferring working with
things and women preferring working with people. These results
indicate the existence of other factors that escalated the gender
disparities in these STEM careers.”
All STEM fields are not created equal: People and things
interests explain gender disparities across STEM fields. (2015)
Action Plan: Incorporate more context and especially more
biological context in your course. Send students to Girls and
Engineering days to learn how people-centered the work can be.
Math Ability
“The average U.S. girl has now reached parity with the average
boy, even in high school, and even for measures requiring
complex problem solving. (p. 8802)”
There appears to be some difference in the top 0.1%. “In their
analysis of international mathematical competition ... females
constituted 1 in 3 to 8 of all potentially capable candidates...
whereas females comprised only roughly 1 in 30 participants in
the competitions.”
Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape (2014)
Action Plan: Dispel the math-gender myth, which is not true
for 99.9% of your students. Watch for girls with exceptional
ability and encourage them to go further.
Math Anxiety
Girls show much higher math anxiety and the effect is strongest
in egalitarian countries. Conversely, boys are over confident.
Math Anxiety
This anxiety, or lack of self-efficacy is also very noticeable in
physics. Unpacking Gender Differences in Students’
Perceived Experiences in Introductory Physics (2009)
Action Plan: This is a tough one! Let female students know
that anxiety - not ability - may be holding them back. Explore
ways to reduce anxiety. Provide more time on tests. Provide
more weight to homework in marking scheme. Suggest that
they play music. It is a great way to relax and seems to increase
math abilities.
Hidden Biases and Stereotype Threat
“female students who were asked to mark their gender before
taking the AP calculus test performed significantly lower than
those who were not ... females not only underestimate their
math ability but also overestimate how much math ability is
necessary to succeed at higher levels of math (Correll, 2004).”
The gender gap on concept inventories in physics: what
is consistent, what is inconsistent, and what factors
influence the gap? (2013)
Action Plan: Examine your own biases and have your students do
the same. Consider height. Tall people earn more money and have
more power. Tall students are more assertive in groups. Why?
Test yourself at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/education.html
Mindset: A Solution to Anxiety?
Many students believe that intelligence is a fixed quantity that
you are born with and there is nothing that you can do about it.
Teaching grade seven students for two hours about brain
research, changed this attitude and resulted in higher math
grades that year and the following year.
Implicit Theories of Intelligence (2007)
Action Plan: Teach your students about the malleability of the
brain. It is very much like a muscle. Tenacity is a better
predictor for success than IQ.
Group Work
Participating In The Physics Lab: Does Gender Matter?
Action Plan: Observe your groups. Do the boys tend to
dominate? Provide structure and self-reflection.
Group Intelligence
“...we find converging evidence of a general collective
intelligence factor that explains a group’s performance on a
wide variety of tasks. This “c factor” is not strongly correlated
with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group
members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of
group members, the equality in distribution of conversational
turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.”
Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the
Performance of Human Groups (2010)
Action Plan: Collaboration is one of the most important 21st C
Skills. Explicitly train your students in group work behaviour.
Have them reflect regularly on how they are doing.
What can you do?
Lots!!!