Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom: How sufficient is interactive engagement?

Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2007, Pages

  Pollock, Steven J ^a   Finkelstein, Noah D ^a   Kost, Lauren E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34250216053     PISSN: 15549178     EISSN: 15549178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.3.010107     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. M. Lorenzo, C. Crouch, and E. Mazur, Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom, Am. J. Phys. 74, (2006).
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3. L. Ding, R. Chabay, B. Sherwood, and R. Beichner, Evaluating an electricity and magnetism assessment tool: Brief electricity and magnetism assessment Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 010105 (2006).
4. E. Mazur, Peer Instruction: A Users Manual (Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997).
5. CAPA, http://www.lon-capa.org/; Mastering Physics, http://www.masteringphysics.com/.
6. L. C. McDermott and P. S. Schaffer, Tutorials in Introductory Physics (Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002).
7. N. D. Finkelstein and S. J. Pollock, Replicating and understanding successful innovations: Implementing tutorials in introductory physics, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010101 (2005).
8. Each course included a lead instructor and a backup instructor as described in Ref. 7. While team taught, the duties in the class administration were divided, and each professor took the lead role of the course only one time. An attempt was made to mentor future lead-faculty members by having them assume the backup roles the semester prior to assuming lead instructional roles. This instructional partnering ensured that the IE techniques were enacted seriously and with some consistency; however, variation in instructional practice did occur and is the subject of current investigation.
9. R. R. Hake, Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses, Am. J. Phys. 66, (1998).
10. R. Thornton, D. Kuhl, K. Cummings, and J. Marx (unpublished);
11. K. Cummings, J. Marx, R. Thornton, and D. (unpublished).
12. Combining these (student pre- and post-test range and the instrument used to evaluate student performance), we note that the CU students tend not to saturate the instrument, whereas the Harvard students appear to, which may be a contributing factor in the Harvard results.
13. Note the small (∼ five point), but consistent, difference between the fall and spring pretest scores. These indicate slightly different demographic pools for on- and off-sequence course offerings.
14. Of further note, we observe no consistent trend where the gender gap increases or decreases depending upon overall learning gain for the (see Table II).
15. N. D. Finkelstein, Learning physics in context: A study of student learning about electricity and magnetism, Int. J. Sci. Educ. 27, 1187 (2005).
16. M. S. Sabella, in Proceedings of the 2002 Physics Education Research Conference, edited by S. Franklin, K. Cummings, and J. Marx (PERC Publishing, New York, 2002, p. 79; http://piggy.rit.edu/franklin/ perc2002/Sabella.pdf
17. V. Coletta and J. Phillips, Interpreting FCI scores: Normalized gain, preinstruction scores, and scientific reasoning ability, Am. J. Phys. 73, 1172 (2005).
18. Differences depend on courses, but, for example, in F04 males scored four points higher than females on in-class (statistically significant (p<0.01) but when averaged with homework and participation scores, women's and men's final course scores differed by less than half a point, not a significant difference.