When the school adopted an "honors and pass" grading system in 2008, the gender gap disappeared across all courses, the study revealed. The Stanford Law School grade reform eliminated letter grades and replaced them with four levels of achievement — honors, pass, restricted credit, fail.
The School of Management and Academic Building, Simmons College, Boston
In 2009, the school introduced an even smaller mandatory class, which was "simulation-intensive," involving more student interaction and participation. In these classes, the gender gap was actually reversed.
Kelman said, "Smaller classes eliminated the gender gap that existed in large courses from 2001-08, and the gap disappeared after 2008 when we moved to a less-pressured honors/pass grading system from numerical grades, and actually is reversed in small simulation-based classes."
Ho said, "Our best sense, from collecting information from instructors, syllabi, final exams and course evaluations, is that small classes may facilitate certain forms of pedagogy that re-engage the broader student body."
Small classes, for instance, were more likely to include written feedback on practice exams, which can help address potential gender differences in levels of confidence.
"The smallest, simulation-intensive class led women to outperform men. These results are consistent with evidence from physics courses suggesting that pedagogy via interactive engagement exercises reduces gender differences," said Ho.
Though the results provide fodder for how professional schools can close gender gaps, much more work remains to be done to better understand exactly how class size and pedagogy affect students in different ways, Kelman noted.
"I do think schools should look at these results and experiment with whatever forms of small-group, problem-focused pedagogy that they are able to make available and study whether they get the sorts of effects we have gotten from small sections and simulation-based courses," he said.
Kelman said that the study also refutes a common assumption that performance is predetermined by "fixed" student traits.
"Some naïve reactions are that if women get poorer grades at law school, women must be less capable," he said.
Kelman added, "I think it's surprising to many – and perhaps a confirmation of a more optimistic view that I have – that much of the inequality we observe in the world is mutable, and that the structures that we sometimes take for granted may work to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others."
Editor's Note:
Women and Men in the Classroom: Inequality and Its Remedies by Catherine G. Krupnick
Reprinted from On Teaching and Learning, Volume 1 (1985)
We spent a year reviewing videotapes volunteered by twenty-four instructors at the College: twelve women and twelve men — a group that included Teaching Fellows and faculty members. Their teaching experience ranged from eight weeks to thirty-six years. We concluded that male students talked much longer in the predominant classroom circumstance: i.e., the situation in which the instructor is male and the majority of the students are male. Of the six classes (one quarter of our sample) in which this was the situation, male students spoke two and a half times longer than their female peers (Wilcoxan, P=0.046). This finding is noteworthy, since the male teacher/predominantly male class situation is common not only at Harvard but also at most other coeducational colleges.
On the other hand, the presence of female instructors apparently had an inspiring effect on female students. They spoke almost three times longer under instructors of their own sex than when they were in classes led by male instructors (Kruskal-Wallis, P=0.025). This led us to speculate about the importance of same-sex role models, but the enormous diversity of personalities and behaviors in our sample made it impossible to derive firm conclusions on this question. The data suggest that a teacher's gender can play a role in classroom discussion, in the sense that it appears to influence the extent to which male students dominate classrooms. The advantages of classroom discussion, long considered to be an integral part of education in sections and tutorials, are unequally distributed between the sexes.
Student and Professor Gender Effects in Introductory Business Statistics
M. Ryan Haley, Marianne F. Johnson and Eric W. Kuennen
Journal of Statistics Education Volume 15, Number 3 (2007), www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v15n3/kuennen.html
A number of hypotheses have been advanced to explain how professor-student gender interaction occurs and why it is worthy of study. First, it may be the case that male and female professors have differing preconceived biases affecting how they interact and communicate with male and female students in the classroom (Dee 2007; Sadker and Sadker 1995). Second, some researchers point to a Pygmalion Effect, wherein professors unknowingly communicate different performance expectations to male and female students, which students then fulfill (Buck 1985; Jones and Dindia 2004). A third possibility is the role-model effect, wherein students respond positively to same-gender professors (Buck 1985; Dee 2007; Jensen and Owen 2000; Robb and Robb 1999). A fourth hypothesis is that professors use teaching pedagogies, examples, and stories that are inherently more appealing to same-gender students, which then pre-disposes same-gender students to better course performance (Jensen and Owen 2000; Robb and Robb 1999).
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- National Institutes of Health: Common Misconceptions About Vitamins and Minerals
- Oppenheimer: July 28 UC Berkeley Panel Discussion Focuses On The Man Behind The Movie
- Julia Sneden Wrote: Love Your Library
- Scientific Energy Breakeven: Advancements in National Defense and the Future of Clean Power
- Center for Strategic and International Studies: “The Future Outlook with Dr. Anthony Fauci”
- Kaiser Health News Research Roundup: Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine; Long Covid; Supplemental Vitamin D; Cell Movement
- Indoor and Vertical Farming May Be Part of the Solution to Rising Demands for Food and Limited Natural Resources
- National Severe Storm Laboratory; NSSL Research: Flooding the Number One Hazardous Weather Killer In the US
- On Earth Day Find Your 'Local' Waterkeeper Organization; Biden's National Climate Task Force
- Even Though the Room Is Full, They Are “The Only One in the Room”; Eight Women Across 3 Centuries in Smithsonian Exhibit