![]() Stereotype threat has been invoked to explain achievement gaps across a wide array of undergraduate STEM courses ( Eddy et al., 2014 McPadden and Brewe, 2015 Matz et al., 2017). Stereotype threat: The cognitive load imposed by having to cope with the fear of confirming a negative stereotype about your demographic or cultural group-for example, that females are bad at math or not as brilliant as males-can reduce performance in evaluative situations ( Steele, 1997). (2014) at the University of Washington (referred to hereafter as UW biology).ġ. We briefly review four of these hypotheses and how they have been used in an effort to reduce or eliminate the persistent gender gap in one of the large-enrollment introductory biology courses studied by Eddy et al. To reduce persistent gender gaps in science, researchers have posed several socio-affective hypotheses-each rooted in a different explanation for why gendered underperformance gaps might occur in STEM courses. Gaps in performance metrics are sometimes mirrored by gaps in latent traits, such as a student’s sense of belonging, science identity, and self-efficacy ( Eddy and Brownell, 2016). Closing gender gaps, increasing retention, and boosting the number of women who complete STEM degrees could be an important way to meet calls for an additional one million STEM graduates per year ( President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2012). Similar work using data on academic preparation and ability has shown the same pattern of gendered underperformance across STEM courses and institutions ( Creech and Sweeder, 2012 Ballen et al., 2017, 2018 Matz et al., 2017). (2014) compared performance between women and men in a three-course introductory biology sequence and found that, controlling for college grade point average (GPA), women performed worse than men on course examinations. In the life sciences, for example, Eddy et al. Gaps that impact low-income and underrepresented minority students have received a great deal of attention (e.g., Malcom, 1996 Haak et al., 2011), and recent work has highlighted the importance of achievement gaps based on gender. These data suggest that 1) a combination of interventions based on expressive writing and reappraising physiological arousal can be a relatively easy manner to boost exam performance in a large-enrollment science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) course and encourage emotion regulation 2) women are more willing than men to declare that they are anxious about exams, but men and women may actually experience the same level of anxiety during the exam itself and 3) women are underperforming in STEM courses for reasons other than gender-based differences in mindset or test anxiety.Īchievement gaps are a prominent issue in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education because of their negative effects on retention ( Cromley et al., 2016 National Science Foundation, 2017). The treatment benefits occurred in both men and women. Although the test anxiety interventions had no impact on the level of self-declared trait anxiety, they did significantly increase student exam performance. Consistent with previous reports in the literature, we found that women in this population declared much higher test anxiety than men and that students who declared higher test anxiety had lower exam scores than students who declared lower test anxiety. This instrument measures an individual’s self-declared or perceived test anxiety-also called trait anxiety-but not the immediate or “state” anxiety experienced during an actual exam. We also used a valid measure to quantify test anxiety at the start and end of the course. We combined evidence-based exercises based on expressive writing and on reappraising physiological arousal. After failing to close a historically documented gender gap in a large introductory biology course using interventions targeted at training a growth mindset, we implemented interventions designed to reduce student test anxiety. Gender gaps in exam scores or final grades are common in introductory college science and engineering classrooms, with women underperforming relative to men with the same admission test scores or college grade point averages.
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