Gender equity in science classrooms: are teachers providing the necessary adjustments to meet the needs of female students?
Boys and girls often exhibit different approaches to learning and have different learning styles. This research project examines high school science teachers' knowledge of these differences and their willingness to incorporate a variety of strategies into their teaching to help ensure the educational success of their female students. A survey was developed and mailed to the state schools for the Deaf across the country and to public schools in the Rochester, New York area. The survey, directed towards science teachers in high schools, asked specific questions regarding the manner in which information was delivered in the classroom, while also asking how willing the teachers were to making changes in their instructional delivery in order to enhance the learning opportunities for their female students. Results of this survey indicated that many of the teachers were aware of strategies that help to facilitate female students participation and learning in the classroom. Most teachers, who were unaware of the strategies and their impact on facilitating participation and learning, could see that the strategies were valuable tools and would incorporate them in to their lessons in the future. These factors considered, one might be encouraged that with increased knowledge of learning style differences and incorporation of new instructional techniques, girls might find greater success and confidence in the science classroom which would carry over to educational and career choices in the science field.
Gender Equity: Still Knocking at the Classroom Door
(2000). Gender Equity: Still Knocking at the Classroom Door. Equity & Excellence in Education: Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 80-83.
The New ‘U’
Today's talk about tenure must be framed within broader discussions about the role of the university. Our university system is now over one hundred years old, the “Old-Time College” is gone, the “cold war” university is no longer viable, and the foundations of the modern “multiversity” are cracking, so it is time to talk about change. But change is not necessarily reform, and resisting change probably will not keep things the way they are, so academics must understand the forces reshaping the university. Whenever I listen to colleagues defend the status quo by saying that the United States has a university system that is the envy of the world, I hear echoes of the Detroit automobile industry's casual dismissal of foreign competitors in the early 1960s. The decision not to change did not preserve the auto industry, and it is unlikely to preserve public universities as we know them. The current debates about tenure began with ideological attacks on “tenured radicals” who used their secure jobs to subvert conservative cultural values. The attack on tenure gathered steam as fiscal hawks in financially-strapped states looked for ways to save money and found huge state university systems with budgets to match. When asked why he robbed banks, the legendary Willie Sutton replied, “Because that's where the money is.” When asked why they are robbing tenure, legislators, regents, and administrators reply, “Because that's where the money is.” Personnel costs are a large share of university budgets and tenure ties the hands of administrators and legislators accustomed to using purse strings to control universities.