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Is Anybody Really Listening? Michael Papadimitriou Currently, science education attempts to attract girls to science and then change the girls. The nature of.
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In general, I get the feeling that science was not a major part of their elementary experience. Since these girls were in elementary school in the 's, I find this trend alarming, to say the least. Apparently, despite a great deal of rhetoric, science may still be a neglected part of elementary curricula. In short, liking the teacher meant liking the subject," says Dr. EW: Which seems to have the most influence on girls' attitudes toward science: their families, their teachers, or their friends? Papadimitriou: Without a doubt, the most influential entity on girls' attitudes toward science, depending on how you define attitudes, has to be society in general.

Subtle expectations greatly influence girls' self-perceptions, role expectations, their perceptions of science, and their ability to participate in science.


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However, more specifically, according to the girls, by far, their teachers have been most directly influential on their attitudes toward science. In fact, my interview sessions almost always turned to teacher attributes, qualities, and influence. Also, the girls recognized the role of their teachers in their own decisions to pursue further science participation. In addition, the girls admitted the ability of a teacher to make a student love or hate science. While the girls acknowledged the great influence of their parents on their lives, they all claimed that their parents were supportive of whatever they wanted to pursue in the future.

Likewise, the girls suggested that their friends had very little influence on their science attitudes and participation.

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Interestingly, while they recognized the existence of peer pressure, they all felt somewhat immune to it themselves. Papadimitriou: In my study, the participants reported a sort of epiphany in which the qualitative nature of science emerged. For most, this epiphany seemed to occur in high school chemistry. At this time, science suddenly becomes very quantitative and mathematical. This new nature of science does not match previous experience. I believe that this true, quantitative nature of science is not well communicated to students in early science instruction.

Thus, the science kids may be experiencing in early grades may be fun, enjoyable, and interesting -- it's just not science. Some kids grow to love nature study or collecting or wildlife management while believing these areas to be science. When students finally realize that science is something other than what they assumed it to be, one of four things seems to happen. In my study, some of the girls rejected further science study because of mathematics. Others embraced and enjoyed the newfound quantitative nature of science. Still others tolerated the mathematical nature of science in order to pursue science-related career goals.

Lastly, others realized that some areas of science are less quantitative than others and chose to focus pursuits in these less quantitative areas. Papadimitriou: Because of gender role expectations in our society, boys are much more likely than girls to participate in science-related experiences outside of school. As a result, for girls, in-school experiences are very important for interest development in science. Yet, intuitively, I feel that these experiences are equally important for boys and girls.

I don't recall doing much science in elementary school. And, as a high school student, I found science important to me because I wanted a science career. Yet, I don't think it was that important to most of my peers. And, as a high school teacher, I can say that for most of my 20 years of teaching, science has been a neglected part of the curriculum. By far, math and language arts have been the main foci. In fact, no one was the least bit interested in what I taught until Texas instituted science accountability testing for various grades. I believe that elementary teachers are tremendous people and excellent teachers.

However, I believe that science, if it is not already, should be a significant part of the elementary curriculum. I also hope that elementary science experiences are now more reflective of the true quantitative nature of science. The girls in my study recalled a few discrete nature study activities and pseudo-science fair projects that did not transmit the real nature of science. But they were describing events from a decade ago.


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Hopefully the situation has changed. I think for the most part, elementary science is more structured and scientific than in the past. Yet, elementary teachers must ensure and guard the quality of science instruction for their students by taking time to teach science in a meaningful way.

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This goal is achieved through quality, process-oriented, systematic science instruction. Also, it involves ensuring that science instruction is not sacrificed for other aspects of the curriculum. EW: This may sound silly, but why is it important that more girls enter the sciences? Papadimitriou: We don't have enough scientists! Almost everything in our lives is a result of basic and applied science. Since I began teaching about 20 years ago, I've witnessed a continued decline in the number of students pursuing science-related careers.

In the past, most of my advanced chemistry and physics students were bound for science careers. Now, they are not.

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In short, we need to get more students, male and female, interested in science careers. And, of course, there is the issue of equity. A truly democratic society cannot suffer or tolerate the systematic marginalization of any group of individuals. If a young lady makes a free choice to not pursue science, I can accept and respect her choice. However, I find unacceptable the situation in which a young girl is unknowingly and systematically shaped away from science.

I also find unacceptable the situation in which science participation somehow places females at a disadvantage. We wanted to find out why STEM subjects get a thumbs-down. By Alice Lipscombe-Southwell.

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To make matters worse, women in science-based jobs are leaving, frustrated with sexism, bias and the lack of opportunities for progression. Maths and physics fare particularly poorly: last year 59, boys took A-level maths, compared to 38, girls; and 29, boys took physics, compared to 8, girls. We surveyed around readers of Girl Talk , a magazine with a readership of girls aged 7 to 11, to find out what they think about their science lessons. We also sent out surveys to over 1, to year-olds to find out about their most and least favourite school subjects, their heroes and their career aspirations.

Finally, we sent questionnaires to nearly 2, adults asking them to look back at the careers advice they received at school. The results were revealing. When we asked the to year-olds to pick their favourite three subjects, we found a marked difference between the genders: for the girls, art came out on top, with English and drama joint second. According to Bramley, they could be getting sidelined when it comes doing the fun stuff. But she says there are quick ways to fix this problem.

In group work, teachers can assign the students particular roles, for example one student might be a scribe and another one might be in charge of a particular piece of apparatus. These roles can then be rotated for each lesson, so that everyone has an opportunity to do everything. There is evidence that once that girl has had a hands-on, leadership role a couple of times, she becomes more confident in carrying out the tasks it involves.

And that confidence is a key part of encouraging more girls into the sciences.

Students’ perceptions of STEM learning after participating in a summer informal learning experience

At a time when hormones are raging, tempers are volatile and friendship groups are fickle, it can be hard for youngsters to make tough decisions about which subjects to choose. This makes sense. Perhaps they might fare better if we allowed them to keep their options open for longer, by letting them study a broader range of subjects. This fits in with research from the Campaign for Science and Engineering , which found that parents were keen for their daughters to be teachers, doctors and nurses, but wanted their sons to be engineers, scientists and tradesmen.

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It made no difference if students revised listening to songs they liked or disliked. Both led to a reduction in their test performance. Students who revised in silence rated their environment as less distracting and accurately predicted that this would lead to better performances in subsequent tests. Related research There are some benefits to listening to music while performing certain tasks. What does this mean for the classroom? Topics Teacher Network Lessons from research. Teaching Students Schools Exams Higher education blogposts. Reuse this content.

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