Factors that affect the physical science career interest of female students: Testing five common hypotheses

Abstract

There are many hypotheses regarding factors that may encourage female students to pursue careers in the physical sciences. Using multivariate matching methods on national data drawn from the Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE) project (n ¼ 7505), we test the following five commonly held beliefs regarding what factors might impact females' physical science career interest: (i) having a single-sex physics class, (ii) having a female physics teacher, (iii) having female scientist guest speakers in physics class, (iv) discussing the work of female scientists in physics class, and (v) discussing the underrepresentation of women in physics class. The effect of these experiences on physical science career interest is compared for female students who are matched on several factors, including prior science interests, prior mathematics interests, grades in science, grades in mathematics, and years of enrollment in high school physics. No significant effects are found for single-sex classes, female teachers, female scientist guest speakers, and discussing the work of female scientists. However, discussions about women's underrepresentation have a significant positive effect.

Sciencey Girls: Discourses Supporting Working-Class Girls to Identify with Science

“…The findings of this study, however, implicate that it could be beneficial to acknowledge and explicitly address the inequalities in science participation [100,112], such as through programmes focused on showcasing women in science. Research has found that discussing female underrepresentation in science can have a positive impact on girls' identification with the subject and their career aspirations [83,113]. Such approach could better prepare girls for challenges they may face upon embarking on a scientific career [108].…”

“…Programmes aiming to showcase successful women in science, however, tend to paint a rather uncritical picture of science, in that there is often little or no reference to structural difficulties permeating the field of science in such programmes. As Hazari and her colleagues [83] have argued, simply discussing the work of female scientists may not have a significant impact on how interested the girls were in engaging with the subject in the future, without also explicitly addressing female underrepresentation (see Conclusions for a further elaboration on this). Knowing about women in science might therefore have limited potential to help girls from working-class backgrounds identify with science, especially as it is often the reality and not just a stereotype that science environments continue to be dominated by men, and could hence be "tough" for girls to fit in, as Larisa pointed out.…”

Evaluation of a Summer Bridge Program Using Multivariate Matching

“…Using multivariate matching techniques [7], we were able to create a control group that matches the chosen covariates of program participants. By using the matching procedure described by Hazari et al [12], we matched students in the treatment group and the control groups on a set of covariates so that after matching both groups have statistically equivalent pre-college preparation (high school GPA and SAT Math score), gender, ethnicity and engineering discipline, and then we examined the effect of participating in the program on their cumulative GPA in their first or third year. This approach allows us to control for preexisting differences between the compared groups to obtain approximately unbiased estimate of the effect of the program.…”

Analyzing discourse and identity in physics education: Methodological considerations

“…Some PER studies on identity have focused on mapping out students' "physics identity" through large survey-based investigations [4,17,18]. In this body of work, "physics identity" is modeled as self-reported concepts of recognition, performance, comptence and interest.…”