Gender Equity and the Boys Debate: what sort of challenge is it?

Recently public and policy discussions about gender equity have become strongly concerned with boys. This article discusses some aspects of the form, the context and the implications of these developments in Australia (and notes some points of similarity and difference with developments in the UK). It focuses on three main areas: the ways examination and other ‘indicators’ have been used in public policy constructions of gender inequality; secondly, the issue of what types of reforms constitute gender equity as a project; and thirdly, the issue of research agendas and the entry of masculinity to gender research.     

Gender Differences in College Mathematics Grades and SAT-M Scores: A Reanalysis of Wainer and Steinberg

Wainer and Steinberg (1992) showed that within broad categories of first-year college mathematics courses (e.g., calculus) men had substantially higher average scores on the mathematics section of the SAT (SAT-M) than women who earned the same letter grade. However, three aspects of their analyses may lead to unwarranted conclusions. First, they focused primarily on differences in SAT-M scores given course grades when the more important question for admissions officers is the difference in course grades given scores on the predictor. Second, they failed to account for differences among calculus courses (e.g., calculus for engineers versus calculus for liberal arts students). Most importantly, Wainer and Steinberg focused on the use of SAT-M as a single predictor. A reanalysis presented here indicated that a more appropriate composite indicator made up of both SAT-M and high school grade point average demonstrated minuscule gender differences for both calculus and precalculus courses.     

A pragmatic approach to courseware development in WIMP environments

Courseware development often involves a great deal of effort. One approach to minimising effort while maintaining flexibility is illustrated, using a tutoring system as an example. The system comprises two parts: a 'shell' which contains facilities useful for many different subjects, and an interpreter which generates questions which are subject specific.     

Categorical color coding by pigeons

Pigeons were trained on two independent tasks. One involved red and yellow hues, the other involved blue and green hues. For half of the birds, the two tasks were the same (i.e., both tasks were either matching-to-sample, or oddity-from-sample). For the remaining birds, the two tasks were different (i.e., one task was matching-to-sample; the other task was oddity-from-sample). Following acquisition, the pigeons were exposed to test trials on which either the correct or the incorrect comparison hue was replaced with one of the hues from the other task. On yellow-sample trials and on green-sample trials, the pigeons performed as if they had a common code for yellow and green. When there was one comparison available that was appropriate to the “yellow/green” code, performance remained high; but when either both comparisons or neither comparison was appropriate to the “yellow/green” code, performance dropped. The pigeons also tended to code red samples as green and to code blue samples as yellow. The results indicate that pigeons can categorically code colors under conditions that rule out a failure to discriminate among the colors.