Smaller Classes Promote Equitable Student Participation in STEM

Abstract

As science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms in higher education transition from lecturing to active learning, the frequency of student interactions in class increases. Previous research documents a gender bias in participation, with women participating less than would be expected on the basis of their numeric proportions. In the present study, we asked which attributes of the learning environment contribute to decreased female participation: the abundance of in-class interactions, the diversity of interactions, the proportion of women in class, the instructor's gender, the class size, and whether the course targeted lower division (first and second year) or upper division (third or fourth year) students. We calculated likelihood ratios of female participation from over 5300 student–instructor interactions observed across multiple institutions. We falsified several alternative hypotheses and demonstrate that increasing class size has the largest negative effect. We also found that when the instructors used a diverse range of teaching strategies, the women were more likely to participate after small-group discussions.

Female In-Class Participation and Performance Increase with More Female Peers and/or a Female Instructor in Life Sciences Courses

“…This complements the findings of a study that saw female participation go down after transitioning from an all-girls school to mixed-sex education (Canada and Pringle, 1995), but to our knowledge, this is the first time this effect has been shown in biology courses specifically. Perhaps we saw this when other studies did not simply because we had more variance in our attendance ratios than past studies (Eddy et al, 2014;Ballen et al, 2017Ballen et al, , 2019. It is also possible that having female peers is more important for female students in more conservative populations.…”

“…Course level, class size, and instructor gender were not significant predictors of participation gaps in our population. Eddy et al (2014) and Ballen et al (2019) similarly found no effect of instructor gender on participation gender gaps. Interestingly, we did see significantly more participation overall in female-instructed classrooms (unpublished data), but this had no impact on the participation gender gap, because male and female students were both more likely to participate with a female instructor.…”

“…However, both of these studies focused solely on introductory courses. Ballen et al (2019) investigated the effect of a variety of classroom characteristics on gender disparities in participation and found that class size had the largest impact. Although not in a classroom, Carter et al (2018) found that female scientists were less likely to ask questions during academic biology seminars.…”

“…Interestingly, we did see significantly more participation overall in female-instructed classrooms (unpublished data), but this had no impact on the participation gender gap, because male and female students were both more likely to participate with a female instructor. Ballen et al (2019) reported that class size had the largest impact on participation gender disparities (with females participating less in large classrooms). They had greater variability in class size in their sample than we did, so FIGURE 7.…”

Untitled

“…Eddy et al [47] observed substantially lower classroom participation in-person among women compared to men. Subsequent studies in the context of in-person courses have documented gender differences in student comfort participating in front of the whole class [76], lower likelihood of women participating in larger classes [77], student perception of their own intelligence when comparing it to others [78], and preference for working with a friend in small group work [76]. Such differences not only represent missed learning opportunities for women to participate but can also perpetuate stereotypes about men being smarter or more capable in science.…”