Following the instructions!: Effects of gender beliefs in mental rotation

Research has widely demonstrated male superiority in the Mental Rotation Test (MRT). Various explanations have been put forward to account for these differences. We considered gender beliefs and argued that women may fare less well than men partly because they are considered unable to perform this kind of task. Beliefs about spatial ability were experimentally manipulated in samples of 107 female and of 90 male high-school students, divided into three groups, following the instructions: men are better, women are better, general (with no gender reference). Our data show that women who expect to be more able than men and men who expect to be more able than women outperformed their counterparts. MRT performance fell for those expecting to be less able. The effects of induced beliefs on cognitive performance are stressed, particularly in the educational context.     

工科专业本科生学习性投入的性别差异分析

本研究使用华中地区一所理工科院校的调查数据,分析工科专业本科生在学习性投入和学业收获中存在的性别差异,检验工科专业本科生学习性投入对其学业收获的影响是否因性别而存在不同。研究发现：工科专业女生在学习努力程度、课外拓展学习、学习意义感、学习动力及感知到的学术环境和人际关系等因素上均显著高于男生,但在生师交流互动、专业兴趣上显著低于男生;工科专业女生在校期间学习性投入程度更高,学习成绩更好,但对自我学习收获的评价相对较低;学习性投入各因素对工科专业男女生学业收获的正向促进作用也有所不同。对此,本文提出工程教育改革应重视工科专业女生的专业自信心和归属感的建立,以消除单一的男性主导的工科学习环境对女生学习及发展的潜在影响。     

Gender and the 2003 Quality Reform in higher education in Norway

The Bologna Process in Europe aims to develop a coherent and compatible European higher educational system. In Norway, the Quality Reform in 2003 was the first step on implementing the Bologna Process. Internal quality assurance systems have produced several publications on internal indicators, such as student progress and teaching staff work loads, of the Quality Reform. To our knowledge, possible gender differences of these changes have yet to be evaluated. We therefore analyzed data on grades from the University of Oslo before and after the Quality Reform with regard to gender differences. Data on examinations from 1990 to spring 2007 (495,334 examinations) were analyzed using relative percentage graphs. The results show that female students have benefited more than males from the change of system: for several disciplines, male average grades were better than female average grades before the change, and female average grade were better than male average grades after the change. Male students show greater intrasex variability both before and after the introduction of the Quality Reform.     

Gender and doctoral studies: the perceptions of Ph.D. students in an American university

Twenty students enrolled in Ph.D. programmes were interviewed to examine the role of gender in their academic experiences. Gender was examined in three ways: gender of the student, gender of the student’s faculty supervisor and gender make‐up of the faculty within the student’s department or academic unit. All students reported the importance of supportive faculty mentors and that financial worries, time pressure and the uncertainty of future employment were sources of stress. Family formation and striving toward personal as well as professional goals were particularly of concern for women, as were perceptions of differential treatment. Women students valued women faculty mentors, although female faculty were perceived as less supportive than male faculty of family concerns when these women had themselves sacrificed family formation for the sake of their careers. Both men and women experienced less stress and reported greater career commitment when faculty in their departments exhibited less traditional values regarding the balancing of personal and professional goals. The implications of these findings for reducing doctoral student attrition rates and for creating a more supportive environment for Ph.D. students are discussed.     

Gender,self‐efficacy and achievement among South African Technology teacher trainees

This article considers the relationship between gender and self‐efficacy in teacher trainees engaged in an electricity‐related design and construction task. Quantitative data (examination scores, task assessment, and questionnaire) and qualitative data (interviews and written student reflections) were collected. There is a gender bias in student teachers entering the University with more male than female students having done Science to grade 12 level. In addition, the continuing differential in standards of education in South African schools necessitated distinguishing those who had attended educationally advantaged from those who had attended educationally disadvantaged schools. In the examination, a test of theoretical knowledge, male students in each group outperformed female students. This we explain in terms of school background, gender responses from family members who regarded Science as a male domain, and the resulting lower self‐efficacy of female students. However, female students achieved as well as male students in the design and construction task. We argue that although males had better self‐efficacy levels than females at the outset, the hands‐on, individual nature of a task in a domain usually constructed as male led to female students developing increased levels of self‐efficacy, which ensured task performance matching that of the more knowledgeable male students.     

Calibration Between Undergraduate Students' Prediction of and Actual Performance: The Role of Gender and Performance Attributions

This study investigated changes in male and female students' prediction and postdiction calibration accuracy and bias scores, and the predictive effects of explanatory styles on these variables beyond gender. Seventy undergraduate students rated their confidence in performance before and after a 40-item exam. There was an improvement in students' bias between prediction and postdiction judgments, although male students' decrease in bias was greater than female students. Female students' accuracy remained stable from prediction to postdiction, and male students exhibited greater accuracy then females. Additionally, the task centered and student centered testing styles positively predicted students' accuracy while the social centered style was a negative predictor, beyond the effect of gender. In addition, no attribution was a significant predictor of bias.     

PEER AND STUDENT-FACULTY RELATIONS IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

This study investigated differences in peer and student?faculty relationships of male and female community college students. Men reported more frequent participation in college activities, whereas women reported more frequent involvement in less formal activities such as studying with other students. Women had less difficulty than men meeting and making friends. For both men and women, little student?faculty interaction outside the classroom was reported.     

Choice of majors: are women really different from men?

The gender wage gap persists in the workplace in part because women major in fields that lead them into lower-paid occupations than fields associated with majors men choose. An open question is why women are more likely than men to switch towards majors that lead to lower-paying careers. Drawing on research suggesting that women are affected more by negative feedback than men, we use unique administrative data from a large private university on the East Coast from 2008 to 2016 to test whether women are more likely than men to switch majors in response to low grades in major-related classes. We also test whether the prevalence of men in a major or a major’s reputation for being stereotypically male-oriented induces women to switch out of that major more readily than men. We control for other factors that may affect a student’s final major, including high school performance, gender composition of faculty and peers, and economic returns of majors. The results show that overall women and men are equally likely to change their majors in response to poor grades in major-related courses. We also find no evidence that women in male-dominated majors are more likely than men to switch out, but we find that men with very low grades in female-dominated majors are more likely to switch out of these majors than women. In addition, we find that women are more likely to switch out of majors that are both male-dominated and STEM in response to poor performance compared to men. Thus, our results suggest that only when women students experience multiple signals suggesting their lack of fit in a field (i.e., low grades combined with gender peer composition, and external stereotyping signals) they tend to switch out of the major more often than male students. We find that men exhibit this tendency in response to even fewer overlapping signals about misfit than women.     

Gender issues related to graduate student attrition in two science departments

This study explored the gender issues that contributed to the differential attrition rate of men and women graduate students in two science departments (biology and chemistry) at a large research university. Departmental records were used to compute the student attrition rate while surveys from 170 students, and interviews with 32 of them, were used to explore students' perspectives on the reasons affecting the attrition of men and women graduate students in each department. Analysis of the data indicated a significantly larger student attrition rate in chemistry than in biology. In each department the attrition rate for women was also significantly larger than the attrition rate for men. The study uncovered different gender issues, in each department, related to the significantly larger attrition rate for women students.     

师范生普通话水平性别比较实证研究

本文以师范生的普通话水平性别差异为考察对象,采用分层随机取样法和T检验统计法,对上饶师范学院767名在校大学生的普通话考试成绩进行取样统计分析,并辅之以纸质调查问卷的形式,调查了北京师范大学、华东师范大学等十所师范院校的2084名大学生。得出了"师范生普通话水平存在性别差异,女生好于男生"这一结论。通过对性别差异的具体表现以及男女师范生的共性特点的分析,结合心理语言学等相关理论,对其影响因素进行分析,提出应对策略。     

Paradox of student gender: a case study of economic education from China

In many Chinese universities and colleges, female students outperform male students in social science subjects. This paper presents a case study, which examines gender difference in economic education in a Chinese university. We look at a sample of students from the Chinese university and find that holding constant observed student characteristics, female students on average appear to earn higher scores than male students and the gender difference is primarily driven by low achieving students. We further find that the gender difference in exam scores is not because of female students' ability, family background and other unobservable student characteristics. Instead, it is simply a result of female students exerting more effort than male students. We finally explore a wide range of possible explanations for the gender difference in diligence, but find little support for any of the explanations.     

师生性别因素与英语教学效果的关系研究

我国高校英语专业学生对于同性教师和异性教师教学风格和效果的评价存在差异,师生性别的异同与学生学习成绩具有相关性。问卷调查和课堂观察的结果表明：在英语学习中,高比例的女教师授课应当是女学生英语成绩明显高于男学生的重要原因之一;成绩优秀的学生更能有效地减少教师性别因素对其学习造成的负面影响;性别不同的教师所擅长讲授的科目和内容有所不同。     

The Gender Stereotyping of Computer Use Among Female Undergraduate Students in Israel and the Relationship with Computer‐related Attitudes

The Computer Attitude Scale was completed by 298 female undergraduate students in Israel, together with an index of the gender stereotyping of computer use. The data demonstrate that female undergraduate students in Israel are much more likely to regard men as better at using computers than women than was found to be the case in a comparable study in the UK. Nevertheless there is little evidence from these data to support the suggestion that the gender stereotyping of computer use as masculine is itself detrimental to female students' attitudes toward computer use.     

A gender comparison of contextualised study behaviour in higher education

The present study examines the manifestation of structural differences in the manner in which men and women students perceive and engage the content and context of learning. These differences are explored, and shown to be consistent, within a hierarchy of progressively more complex conceptual models of student learning. Conclusions are that structural gender variation differences emerge in terms of deep/strategic rather than surface, forms of learning behaviour: men students distinctively manifest and qualify deep/strategic learning behaviour in terms of operation and comprehension learning styles, while women students integrate these styles in a manifestation of style versatility that is clearly organised and not achievement motivated. An apparently separate female trait is distinguishable in terms of comprehension learning style and achievement motivation. It is argued that gender differences constitute a potentially important and neglected source of variation in student learning which, when detected in context, can and should be explicitly managed by academic practitioners.     

The influence of gender composition in a field of study on students' drop‐out of higher education

Combining Tinto's classical model of student drop‐out with Kanter's assessment of minorities, this article examines the influence of gender composition in a field of study on drop‐out from higher education. Our empirical analysis is based on a sample of students who left German higher education in 2014. Our results confirm previous findings that women in gender‐atypical subjects show a higher drop‐out risk than their male fellow students. We assess several mechanisms which could contribute to explain this effect. Contrary to our expectations, social integration, in the sense of contact with lecturers, seems to be a protective factor for women and men in gender‐atypical subjects. For women in gender‐atypical fields of study, contact with peers is an additional protective factor against drop‐out. The most important mechanism to explain higher education drop‐out is women's more negative self‐assessment of their suitability for male‐dominated subjects.     

College students' views of male and female college teachers: Part II—Evidence from students' evaluations of their classroom teachers

Although a majority of studies have found that male and female college teachers do not differ in the global ratings they receive from their students, when statistically significant differences are found, more of them favor women than men. Across studies, the average association between gender and overall evaluation, while favoring women (averager=+.02), is so small as to be insignificant in practical terms. Considering specific instructional dimensions of evaluations, female teachers receive very slightly higher ratings on their sensitivity to and concern with class level and progress than do men (averager=+.12). On other specific dimensions, men and women either do not differ or the differences are trivial in size (or, for two dimensions, while nontrivial, based on too few studies to be generalizable with any degree of certainty). Students tend to rate same-gendered teachers a little higher than opposite-gendered teachers. Although interaction effects on evaluations have also been found between gender of teacher and other factors (academic rank of the teacher, academic area, class level of the course, difficulty of the teacher or course, and the teacher's pedagogical orientation or personality characteristics), they are inconsistent across studies. Moreover, ratings of teachers are sometimes enhanced by gender-typical, and sometimes by gender-atypical, attributes, behaviors, and positions. The findings are discussed in terms of the expectations or demands of students and whether or not student ratings are biased by the gender of the teacher.     

高职“女性学”课程建设研究

女性学课程设置是一种素质教育和女性人才培养策略。高职院校女性学课程的建设和发展应以女生教育为基点,以社会性别意识培养为平台,循序渐进,注入女性主义教育理论的基本理念与原则,提升教学方法,通过课程学习使女生们学会用性别视角观察、发表意见和采取行动。女性学课程建设对女生发展、社会性别观念、高职教育改革、男女和谐发展均有促进和改变之效。     

Gender differences in teacher-student interactions in science classrooms

Thirty physical science and 30 chemistry classes, which contained a total of 1332 students, were observed using the Brophy-Good Teacher-Child Dyadic Interaction System. Classroom interactions were examined for gender differences that may contribute to the underrepresentation of women in physics and engineering courses and subsequent careers. The Brophy-Good coding process allows for examination of patterns of interactions for individuals and groups of pupils. An analysis of variance of the data yielded a significant main effect for teacher praise, call outs, procedural questions, and behavioral warnings based on the sex of the student and a significant teacher-sex main effect for direct questions. Significant two-way interactions were found for the behavioral warning variable for teacher sex and subject by student sex. Female teachers warned male students significantly more than female students. Male teachers warned both genders with similar frequency. Male students also received significantly more behavioral warnings in physical science classes than female students. In chemistry classes, both male and female students received approximately the same number of behavioral warnings.     

Gender in STEM Education: an Exploratory Study of Student Perceptions of Math and Science Instructors in the United Arab Emirates

The current study addresses student perceptions of math and science professors in the Middle East. Gender disparity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education continues to exist in higher education, with male professors holding a normative position. This disparity can also be seen in the United Arab Emirates. As female participation in STEM education lags behind men, it is possible that gender stereotypes may influence students’ first impressions of male and female instructors. The United Arab Emirates provides a unique context to study this phenomenon as it is a traditional patriarchal society that is highly dependent on the engineering discipline, especially within the oil and gas sectors. A total of 176 undergraduate students from 2 universities in the United Arab Emirates completed a survey about teaching effectiveness based on their perceptions of photographs of hypothetical male and female instructors. A factor analysis of survey items revealed 2 main subcategories of teacher effectiveness: namely teacher warmth and professionalism. A 2-way between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of teacher gender and student gender on perceptions of overall teaching effectiveness, as well as their perceptions of teacher warmth and professionalism. Findings revealed that there was a significant cross-gender effect on student perceptions of math and science instructors in the United Arab Emirates.