Last
week, I gave the students at Cranston East a survey that asked questions about
participation, attitudes toward science, previous experiences with science, and
whether they would choose to take more science classes or pursue a career in
the field. While comparing data for boys
and girls in the class, I have to keep in mind that gender patterns might be
deceiving because boys are over represented compared to the number of girls in
the class. On the day that I gave the
survey, there were fifteen boys and only seven girls in the class.
The
first thing that I noticed in my survey data was that only one girl out of
seven said that she sees herself taking more science classes (other than those
required) in the future. She was also
the only girl out of the seven that said that she sees herself pursuing a
career in science. Looking at the boys,
eight out of fifteen said that they wanted to take more science classes and six
out of fifteen saw themselves having a career in science.
Next,
I noticed that while ten out of the fifteen boys chose that they like science,
girls were pretty much evenly split between liking and disliking science. In terms of participation, it was interesting
to see that the majority of boys claimed to participate (raise their hand,
answer questions, engage in class discussion) three or more times per class
period, while most of the girls said that they participate one to two times per
class period. Finally, looking at
previous experiences in science class, the majority of both boys and girls
chose that they have done well in past science classes. Below is a table of my survey data.
|
|
Girls
|
Boys
|
|
|
Participation:
|
3 or more times per class
|
1
|
7
|
|
1-2 times per class
|
5
|
3
|
|
|
3-4 times per week
|
0
|
1
|
|
|
1-2 times per week
|
0
|
3
|
|
|
Not at all
|
1
|
1
|
|
|
Listener/Talker in class:
|
Listener
|
5
|
6
|
|
Talker
|
2
|
8
|
|
|
Attitude toward science:
|
Really enjoy science
|
1
|
2
|
|
Like science
|
3
|
10
|
|
|
Dislike science
|
3
|
1
|
|
|
Hate science
|
0
|
2
|
|
|
Previous experience:
|
Awesome
|
0
|
2
|
|
Good
|
4
|
9
|
|
|
Fair
|
1
|
2
|
|
|
Poor
|
2
|
2
|
|
|
More science classes?
|
Yes
|
1
|
8
|
|
No
|
6
|
7
|
|
|
Science career?
|
Yes
|
1
|
6
|
|
No
|
6
|
9
|
|
It will be interesting to see if the teacher has the same perception that they do and if you observed that the boys participated more. If there were more girls in the class, would they be more into science? That's for another study, probably!
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