LCRG Research Brief | Engaging Girls in STEM: Meaningful Objectives

CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON GIRLS

S.T.E.M. A SERIES OF RESEARCH AND INFORMATIONAL PUBLICATIONS BY LCRG

“Putting the world’s best research to work for girls.”

by Larry Goodman, Ph.D. and Lisa Damour, Ph.D.

ENGAGING GIRLS IN STEM: MEANINGFUL OBJECTIVES

Research indicates that one of the main barriers to women entering STEM majors and careers is the perception among girls that STEM work lacks clear and purposeful ties to everyday life. Girls imagine that STEM work has little to do with the real world—a notion that legions of engineers, scientists and nuclear physicists would loudly proclaim as quite wrong.

Nonetheless, focus groups run by the American Association of University Women, found that “girls discuss information technology-related careers not as too difficult, but as a ‘waste of intelligence’ and, in some cases, materialistic and shortsighted.”1 In a survey of high school students, female students reported a desire to use computing in non-computing fields as the main reason to consider pursuing a computer science degree.2 College students follow suit: female students are more likely than men to value the ability to use their technical skills for helping others and are attracted to a computer science major when they recognize computing as a component of a career aimed at helping others.3

S.T.E.M.: ENGAGING GIRLS IN STEM: MEANINGFUL OBJECTIVES

STEM Fields: Where the Girls Are… and Aren’t

WOMEN IN ENGINEERING, COMPUTING AND SELECTED OTHER OCCUPATIONS, 2013

It is important to note that women are not underrepresented in all STEM fields. As the chart to the right illustrates, women are well-represented in the fields of chemistry, medicine and biology – fields with obvious human applications. However, men continue to make up the vast majority of fields related to computer science and engineering.4 In other words, women are poorly represented in fields where the human applications are not readily apparent. The under-representation of women in the fields of engineering and computer science is especially alarming as information technology is widely recognized as one of the most critical and fastest growing fields of this century. Further, some evidence indicates that women are in fact losing ground in their efforts to join these fields; for example, statistics demonstrate that while more women completed bachelor’s degrees in computing in 2012 than in 1985, the gap between the number of men and women completing computing degrees continues to widen.5

Computer Network Architects 7% Mechanical Engineering 8 % Electrical & Electronic Engineering 8 % Aerospace Engineering 9 % Computer Hardware Engineering 11 % Civil Engineering 11 % Chemical Engineering 14 % Biomedical Engineering 20 % Environmental Engineering 21 % Computer Programmers 24 % Physicians & Surgeons 36 % Chemists & Material Scientists 39 % Web Developers 39 % Biological Scientists 50 % Medical Scientists 56 %

“OUTSIDE-IN” CURRICULUM Educators should build curricular units that identify and pursue an objective that is meaningful to girls and that accomplishes a purpose which girls recognize as worthy of their time and efforts. While the teacher’s main agenda may be that the girls learn abstract STEM concepts and transferable skills, he or she should capitalize on the girls’ predominant interest in realworld applications in order to accomplish that goal. Research conducted by the Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science learned from personal interviews that “forty-four percent of the women students (as compared to nine percent of the male students) contextualize their interest in computers in other arenas such as medicine, space, or the arts.”6 Further, women who are proficient in mathematics prefer careers in medicine and law to careers in technical fields, because of the perception that the work will be more socially relevant and interactive.7 To combat girls’ misconception on this point, we need to design STEM curricula that revolve around meaningful, purposeful and concrete objectives. In the words of Jo Sanders, an expert on women and technology, “First and most frequent, make curriculum relevant to real-world concerns.”8 Instructors should draw girls into the core content knowledge (the “inside”) by relying on the strong interest the girls will have in pursuing meaningful objectives (the “outside”). In many ways this is the flipside of tinkering: while tinkering aims to overcome a natural inhibition in girls to proceed without a clear sense of what comes next, “outside-in” curricula aim to exploit a natural tendency in girls to privilege work that has real-world applications.

If tinkering enables one to develop an “inside-out” understanding of the content being tinkered with, focusing on the purpose rather than the content enables an “outside-in” understanding that is no less important.

Service Learning: A Working Example of “Outside-In” Curricular Design Teachers in Laurel’s Primary School use the “outside-in” approach to great effect. Using a STEAM enrichment program called Level Up Village, fourth-graders learn basic engineering skills in an immersive, eight-week science lesson. They are paired with students from a developing country to innovate a solution to the global problem of electricity availability. Girls use Tinkercad software to create solutions and refine their designs through collaboration with their peers abroad. And they strengthen their already high level of engagement with the project through their connection to a new friend in another part of the world.

Even very young students benefit from this “outside-in” approach to learning STEM concepts.

Kindergarteners at Laurel School use scientific inquiry to engineer an animal habitat. Over several days, girls plan, construct and refine their designs.

The end result is a sun shelter that protects their reptiles (made of UV-sensitive color-changing beads) from the harsh desert climate.

FORMS OF “OUTSIDE-IN” CURRICULAR DESIGN Though the research literature may indicate that girls are most likely to be motivated by curricula that emphasize the human, animal or social aspects of STEM fields, teachers at Laurel School have found that girls are also motivated by objectives that are not strictly humanitarian.

Indeed, Laurel’s STEM teachers have found that providing girls with a clear application for their efforts (socially relevant or not) can go a long way toward helping them engage with STEM content. For example, one Laurel Upper School physics teacher found that girls were readily engaged in modeling pendulums (and the equations that dictate their motion) when each girl was required to develop a pendulum that would serve as a metronome for her favorite song. Needless to say, all students learn best when they can see the day-to-day relevance of what they are learning; we highlight this point here to counterbalance the somewhat gender-stereotyped view that girls are only motivated by goals that involve helping others.

In addition to teaching STEM content in the context of its real-world applications, school personnel can provide girls with opportunities to apply STEM principles throughout their lives as students. For example, school drama productions often require the support of people with significant electrical and engineering skills; students should be given every opportunity to learn how to work light and sound boards (and the electrical principles behind them) and to help with the design and construction of sets and props. Similarly, the technology departments of some schools train and deputize students to be “technology assistants” to any student, staff or faculty member in need of technology help.

ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF “OUTSIDE-IN” CURRICULAR UNITS

CHALLENGE: The approach is time-consuming. Schools can be hesitant to spend the “start-up” time that is typically necessary in units like these.

SOLUTION: Use these units as keystone moments—moments that are meant to bring together related concepts of material from the course.

While this doesn’t eliminate the fact that precious time will need to be invested in contextual material (explaining the background of the objective, etc.), the fact that the class will only do this a few times each year helps minimize the time loss and makes the sacrifice well worth what is gained in terms of student focus and engagement.

SOLUTION: Actively integrate STEM content into the school’s service learning initiatives. Many schools already require students to devote a certain amount of time to service learning; integrating STEM content into the service learning requirement cultivates girls’ interest in STEM fields through a focus on being of help to others.

CHALLENGE: For some projects there are real-life consequences attached to success and failure which the teacher cannot necessarily control and which can have a profound impact (both positive and negative) on the students.

SOLUTION: Avoid selecting “all-or-nothing” tasks; seek out projects that include components with guaranteed success. For example, students might be graded on a detailed model of an engineering design and not necessarily on the actual construction of the project. It is important that students have ways to feel a sense of pride and mastery about their efforts lest “real life” barriers prevent students from implementing the project to its fullest.

There are, of course, challenges to designing one’s curriculum outside-in.” Two of the most prominent are noted below, followed by suggestions for how a teacher might manage them.

ENGAGING GIRLS IN STEM: MEANINGFUL OBJECTIVES

[endnotes]

AAUW. (2000). Tech-Savvy: Educating girls in the new computer age. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women, 8.

1

Carter, L. (2006). Why students with an apparent aptitude for computer science don’t choose to major in computer science. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 28-31.

2

Tillber, H., & Cohoon, J.M. (2005). Attacting women to the CS major. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 26 (1), 126-140.

3

National Center for Women in Technology. (2014). NCWIT scorecard: A report on the status of women in information technology. National Center for Women in

4

Technology. Retrieved from ncwit.org/scorecard.

NCWIT. (2014), 4.

5

Margolis, J., Fisher, A., & Miller, F. (2011, July 10). The anatomy of interest: Women in undergraduate computer science. Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer

6

Science. Retrieved from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/anatomyWSQ99.html, 5.

Lightbody, P., Siann, G., Tait, L., & Walsh, D. (1997). A fulfilling career? Factors which influence women’s choice of profoession. Educational Studies, 23, 25-37.

7

Sanders, J. (2009, January 11). Gender and technology in education: A research review. Jo Sanders Online. Retrieved from josanders.com, 19.

8

Fisher, A., & Margolis, J. (2011, July 10). Women in computer sciences: Closing the gender gap in higher education. Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science.

9

Retrieved from cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/index.html.

Thimmesh, C., & Sweet, M. (2000). Girls Think of Everything: Stories of ingenious inventions by women. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

10

Casey, S. (2005). Kids Inventing! A handbook for young inventors. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.

11

S.T.E.M.: ENGAGING GIRLS IN STEM: TINKERING

RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS AND PARENTS Online Resources SOLVING THE EQUATION: THE VARIABLES FOR WOMEN’S SUCCESS IN ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING This American Association of University Women research report tackles the important question of why there are still so few women entering the fields of computing and engineering and was awarded the Groundbreaking Research Award by Million Women Mentors.

Its findings have been used by major corporations and in high school classrooms and presented to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. www.aauw.org/research/solving-the-equation/

CARNEGIE MELLON PROJECT ON GENDER AND COMPUTER SCIENCE This website includes a variety of publications and working papers based on Carnegie Mellon’s efforts to recruit and keep women in its computer science program. Carnegie Mellon has enjoyed unusual success in this area, with their female undergraduate enrollment rising from 8% in 1995 to 42% in 2000.9 Several of the publications featured on this website address the importance of meaningful objectives to engage women computer science. www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/index.html

CRG POLYHEDRAS Download LCRG Polyhedras (three-dimensional geometric solids) to help your students sharpen their tinkering and spatial skills. http://www.laurelschool.org/about/CRGResourceCenter.cfm

Books GIRLS THINK OF EVERYTHING: STORIES OF INGENIOUS INVENTIONS Written for girls aged 9-12, this engaging book tells the story of female inventors and inventors and their innovations that changed the world.10

KIDS INVENTING! A HANDBOOK FOR YOUNG INVENTORS Though not directed specifically at girls, this handbook begins with the instruction most likely to engage budding female scientists: “Look for a problem to problem to solve.”

Written for girls aged 9-12.11

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