Gender Equity Right From the Start

Jo Sanders, Janice Koch, Josephine Urso

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135455217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

What makes girls avoid math, science, and technology in school? And what can teacher educators do to help new teachers keep this from happening so that all of our children's talents can find expression? These two volumes provide teaching materials and background information on gender equity for teacher educators in mathematics, science, and technology education and their students. A practical guide, Gender Equity Right from the Start is usable by professors of education for preservice teachers and by staff developers for in-service teachers. By adapting the material for other subjects, it can also be used by teacher educators in content areas other than math, science, and technology. It consists of two volumes: Instructional Activities for Teacher Educators in Mathematics, Science, and Technology contains some 200 teaching activities on the major issues in gender equity, emphasizing solutions and not just problems. Activities take place in out-of-class assignments and field experiences whenever possible to minimize demands on class time. Sources and Resources for Education Students in Mathematics, Science, and Technology contains student materials needed for the activities as well as extensive print, electronic, organizational, and other resources for further information.

Part 1

Introduction

What We Know

Decades of research support the fact that classroom environments are experienced differently by males and females. As early as nursery school, boys and girls sitting in the same classroom, with the same teacher, using the same materials, have different learning experiences. These differences persist through their pre-college education and beyond. Frequently, these experiences marginalize the girls in the areas of mathematics, science, and technology.

What we know, to generalize broadly, is that in the early elementary years girls and boys do equally well in tests and grades in mathematics, science, and technology (MST). As females progress through school and into college and graduate school, despite their frequently higher course grades, they score lower on standardized tests than males and take fewer advanced courses, which means they drop out of mathematics, science, and/or technology earlier than males.

As a consequence, large numbers of women are not qualified to enter careers in science, mathematics, technology, and related fields. The underrepresentation is easily seen in the tables in the pages later in this section. It matters because on average, technical occupations yield considerably higher salaries for the same amount of educational preparation. Now that a single salary can rarely support an entire family, and now that single-parent households are common, decent salaries are more important than ever. Technical occupations have relatively good career ladders. They are unusually varied: from technician to professional, and in academic, corporate, government, and non-profit settings, as well as indoors and outdoors. And they are projected to grow well over the next decade: computer engineers and scientists, for example, are expected to increase 112%.¹

Education and employment trends concerning girls and women have been extensively studied and documented since the early 1970s. Considerable effort has been expended in reaching K-12 teachers since then with an awareness of the problem and knowledge of strategies that have been proven effective in increasing girls’ participation in MST. In fact there has been measurable progress, although we are still far from equality. But gender equity progress has not for the most part reached teacher education. New teachers thus enter classrooms every year unaware that there is a problem with girls and mathematics, science, and technology, let alone how to address it. An exclusive emphasis on reaching inservice teachers makes no sense.

The reason it’s important to reach preservice teachers is that gender bias in the classroom is nearly always inadvertent and, more often than you would think, below the level of consciousness. Research has shown, for example, that teachers call on boys more than girls in math, science and technology classes. Because teachers don’t even realize they’re doing it, they can’t correct it. And although it really doesn’t matter if boys are called on a little more than girls in one class period, the cumulative effect over years of schooling is to signal to children that boys’ thoughts and answers are more valuable than those of girls. Indeed, it is the accumulation of subtle and unintended gender biases such as this that result in the severely lopsided occupational figures presented later in this section. It is not good for us as a society that women account for only 32% of chemists and 8% of engineers. When girls and women fail to persist in mathematics, science and technology to the extent they otherwise could, this is not a women’s problem. It is a human problem.

In this book we cover gender issues in six areas:

• Mathematics, Science, and Technology as Male Domains

• Peers’, Teachers’, Parents’, and Society’s Cultural Expecations

• Biased and Inappropriate Curriculum Materials

• Classroom Interaction and Atmosphere

• Anti-Intellectualism and Attributional Style

• Testing and Assessment

We hope this book will help you acquaint your elementary and secondary preservice teachers with the gender biases to watch out for in these six areas, and how to compensate for them. It recognizes the special circumstances of courses for preservice teachers — the limited class time available, the extensive syllabus, and the field experience component. With nearly 200 activities to choose from, we are confident that you can help your students become effective teachers for girls as well as boys in all the years of their careers.

The Teacher Education Equity Project

Gender Equity Right From the Start was developed in the Teacher Education Equity Project, funded from 1993 to 1996 for $1,028,000 by the National Science Foundation, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and AT&T. The project worked with 61 teacher educators in 40 colleges and universities in 27 states who teach methods courses in mathematics, science and technology. Its goal was to help them teach their preservice students about gender equity. A third were men, and a sixth were people of color. They taught gender equity activities to their students, shared what they learned in the project with their colleagues, and carried out a mini-grant project. The 61 teacher educators tested most and wrote some of the activities in Gender Equity Right From the Start.

The project clearly accomplished what it set out to do. It had a stunning multiplier effect. In only one year, the 61 teacher educators taught a total of 5,000 preservice education students about gender equity in mathematics, science, and technology. If we estimate that each new teacher will teach for 25 years and have 25 students in her/his class, these 5,000 alone will encourage 1,562,500 girls to persist in mathematics, science, and technology. Participants also taught a total of 5,000 colleagues, inservice teachers, parents, and others. And this is only one year’s impact. The percentage of participants whose syllabi mentioned gender equity doubled (from 23% to 48%) while those whose syllabi specifically targeted gender equity increased sevenfold (4% to 27%). By a measure devised to assess pre/post teaching of gender equity, 85% of the participants changed in a more equitable direction, many quite substantially. In another pre/post measure, the percentage of participants who spontaneously mentioned the impact of gender equity issues on their lives increased from zero to 2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Summary Contents
• Comprehensive Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Teaching Activities
• Part 3: Assessing Your Students’ Gender Equity Learning
• Part 4: Action Research Projects