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Encouraging Girls in Physics

Explore strategies to address gender disparity in academia, particularly in physics. Discover interventions to improve high school physics experiences for female students and debunk myths about math-gender abilities.

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Encouraging Girls in Physics

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  1. Encouraging Girls in Physics Information and Action Plans

  2. 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 1970 1994 2011 2126 Gender Disparity in Academia Percentage PhD’s and Assistant Professorships in STEM (not bio) fields What do you predict for your grade 9 students? ?

  3. 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.

  4. PER/Reformed Teaching M F The two universities in the red boxes used traditional pedagogy. Does switching to a reformed pedagogy help female students?

  5. 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.

  6. What Interventions Work?

  7. 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.

  8. Interests

  9. Interests “We found substantial gender differences in the Things-People 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.

  10. 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.

  11. Math Anxiety Girls show much higher math anxiety and the effect is strongest in egalitarian countries. Conversely, boys are over confident.

  12. Math Anxiety 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. This anxiety, or lack of self-efficacy is also very noticeable in physics. Unpacking Gender Differences in Students’ Perceived Experiences in Introductory Physics (2009)

  13. 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

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. What can you do? Lots!!!

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