written by Kimberley Kreutzer and Andrew Boudreaux

Gender differences in student learning in the introductory, calculus-based electricity and magnetism course were assessed by administering the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism pre- and postcourse. As expected, male students outgained females in traditionally taught sections as well as sections that incorporated interactive engagement (IE) techniques. In two of the IE course sections, however, the gains of female students were comparable to those of male students. Classroom observations of the course sections involved were made over an extended period. In this paper, we characterize the observed instructor-student interactions using a framework from educational psychology referred to as wise schooling. Results suggest that instructor practices affect differential learning, and that wise schooling techniques may constitute an effective strategy for promoting gender equity in the physics classroom.

• Download PhysRevSTPER.8.010120.pdf - 198kb Adobe PDF Document

Released under a Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The citation is: K. Kreutzer and A. Boudreaux, Preliminary investigation of instructor effects on gender gap in introductory physics, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 8 (1), 010120 (2012), 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.010120.

Published May 4, 2012
Last Modified May 18, 2012

This file is included in the full-text index.