– Percent female science faculty does not have an effect on a range of science measures for both male and female students, including the ways in which they understand scientific practice, their science self-concept, and their interest in science related college majors. As qualitative data demonstrate, this could reflect practical constraints at schools where female faculty are concentrated and narrow perceptions of science teachers and ‘‘real” science.
– The qualitative data demonstrate that students respond positively to male and female science teachers who are caring, challenging, engaged, passionate, fair, and/or linked to the ‘‘actual” practice of science in some concrete way.
– Teacher gender was an issue only to the extent that female science teachers may not have had the concrete science experience that students respected and enjoyed. Of course, female science teachers might have been different from their male colleagues in other significant (and positive) ways, but this finding helps to explain why a greater proportion of female teachers might not make a net difference to students’ science (self-) perceptions and interests overall.
– One practical lesson from this finding is the importance of recruiting a greater number of former or soon-to-be female scientists into the teaching profession in order to ‘‘level the field,” and encouraging these teachers to talk about their science histories and expertise.
– Female science teachers in the sample were concentrated at public schools with a greater percentage of Latino/a and Black/African American students. This means that those students were more likely to have science teachers who did not seem like ‘‘real” scientists, and this means that they had fewer role models, or fewer sources of ‘‘credible” information available to them. This is a subtle way in which inequities in the science pipeline may be reproduced.
– More women were teaching in an environment where strong science identities were potentially mitigated by fewer contextual resources and different pedagogical demands. Perhaps these women simply had less time to actively mentor students, and less freedom or latitude to challenge dominant scientific images and assumptions, their science pedagogy as efficient (and traditional) as was that of their male colleagues. Their focus was on the basics.
2006 - Gender Ratios in High School Science Departments: The Effect of Percent Female Faculty on Multiple Dimensions of Students’ Science Identities
Critical feminist and practice theories frame their perspective on both the construct of science identity and the relationship between female science teachers and their students. Critical feminist analyses of science consider how power, resources, and rewards are distributed in dominant science contexts such that some groups are better positioned to pursue scientific careers, or more likely to see themselves as scientists, than are others. Practice theories emphasize that students’ social positions inform their science identities but do not determine them- local context, symbols, actors, and choices are just as relevant. Role model theory also underlies much of the research on teacher gender effects. The traditional definition of a role model is that of a person in an influential position who provides an example for individuals to imitate.
The sample for the quantitative component of this study is comprised of 1,138 10th-grade students at five Southern California high schools in 2003. In addition to in-depth interviews with a stratified subset of 59 survey respondents at two of these five schools. The participating schools were diverse in terms of student race/ethnicity, student socioeconomic background, and, per the variable of central interest to this study, percent female science faculty.
The dependent variables include three views of science, each coded on a four-point scale from ‘‘Disagree strongly’’ to ‘‘Agree strongly’’: ‘‘Scientists spend most of their time working by themselves,’’ ‘‘Scientists’ own opinions do not matter in their work,’’ and ‘‘People who are the same gender as I am have trouble getting jobs in science in this country.’’ These views reflect students’ understanding of science in stereotypical terms and as a gendered domain, arguably grounding students’ sense of belonging and self in science, or sense of compatibility with a stereotypically or nonstereotypically perceived scientific community. To explore students’ science-related aspirations beyond high school, two measures of students’ interest in science and engineering college majors were examined: interest in a Physical Science/ Engineering major, and interest in a Life Science major. One measure of students’ sense of self as a future scientist was tested (‘‘I could be a good scientist one day,’’ coded on a four-point scale from ‘‘Disagree strongly’’ to ‘‘Agree strongly’’), along with one measure of students’ perceptions of their current science class (a five-item factor comprised of items such as ‘‘My teacher thinks I could be a good scientist one day’’), which captures students’ assessments of their science teacher and related views of their own aptitude in and enjoyment of the class.
Independent variables include students’ gender; socioeconomic and racial/ ethnic background; grade point average; and ‘‘Family Science Orientation,’’ a three-item factor that measures the extent to which students’ family members are interested in science and prioritize science education. The school-level independent variable, ‘‘Percent female science faculty,’’ is a continuous variable.
For the qualitative part of this study, they analyzed the transcripts of all 23 students whom they interviewed at the high school with one of the lowest percentages of female science teachers, and all 36 students at the high school whom they interviewed with the highest percentage of female science teachers. Students were asked about their science experiences in past years as well as at present, their science attitudes and views, their role models and social networks, their family context, and their plans for the future, according to a semistructured interview protocol. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 13 students from each high school in their senior year.