Wheeler Samuel R, Blanchard Margaret R
Department of Physics, North Carolina School of Science and Math, Durham, NC, United States.
Department of STEM Education, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, United States.
Front Psychol. 2019 Mar 29;10:594. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00594. eCollection 2019.
Throughout the world, female students are less likely than males to take advanced physics courses. This mixed-methods study uses a concurrent, nested design to study an online homework intervention designed to address choice and achievement. A choice of three different contexts (biological, sports, and traditional) were offered to students for each physics problem, intending to stimulate females' interest and enhance achievement. Informed by aspects of Artino's social-cognitive model of academic motivation and emotion, we investigated: Which context of physics problems do males and females select?; What explanations do students give for their choices?; Are there differences in the achievement of males and females?; and Is there a relationship between student achievement and the context selected? Fifty-two high school physics students from five US states participated. Data included pre- and post-Force Concept Inventory scores, homework context choices and achievement, and rationales for choices. Findings indicate that females were most likely to select biology contexts; males, traditional. All students made more attempts on video questions over word questions, although females did not score as well. For all questions, students generally persisted until they answered them correctly, with females taking fewer attempts on problems. Context choice was mostly driven by interest, for males, and perceptions of difficulty level for females; however, rationales were indistinguishable by gender. On their first homework question attempt, females scored significantly better than the males. Initially, males had significantly higher FCI scores; post homework intervention, females increased their mean scores significantly on the FCI, erasing the initial gender gap, with no growth nor decline in males' scores. Females with FCI growth were equally as likely to choose biology contexts as traditional contexts; males were more likely to choose biology contexts. Findings from this study suggest that modest changes to homework problems that provide choice and make the physics problems more contextually interesting-even without changes in classroom instruction-could increase interest and motivation in students and increase achievement for both male and female students. Recommendations will be discussed.
在全球范围内，女生比男生选修高等物理课程的可能性更小。这项混合方法研究采用了并发嵌套设计，以研究旨在解决选择和成绩问题的在线作业干预措施。针对每个物理问题，为学生提供三种不同情境（生物、体育和传统）的选择，旨在激发女生的兴趣并提高成绩。基于阿尔蒂诺的学术动机和情感社会认知模型的相关方面，我们进行了以下调查：男生和女生选择哪种物理问题情境？学生对自己的选择给出了哪些解释？男生和女生的成绩有差异吗？学生成绩与所选情境之间有关系吗？来自美国五个州的52名高中物理学生参与了研究。数据包括前后测的力概念清单分数、作业情境选择与成绩，以及选择的理由。研究结果表明，女生最有可能选择生物情境；男生则选择传统情境。所有学生对视频问题的尝试次数都多于文字问题，尽管女生的得分不如男生。对于所有问题，学生通常会坚持尝试直到答对，女生尝试解决问题的次数较少。情境选择主要由兴趣驱动，对男生来说是这样，对女生来说则是对难度水平的认知；然而，不同性别的选择理由并无明显差异。在首次尝试作业问题时，女生的得分显著高于男生。最初，男生的力概念清单分数显著更高；作业干预后，女生的力概念清单平均分数显著提高，消除了最初的性别差距，而男生的分数没有增长也没有下降。力概念清单分数有提高的女生选择生物情境和传统情境的可能性相同；男生则更有可能选择生物情境。这项研究的结果表明，对作业问题进行适度改变，提供选择并使物理问题在情境上更有趣——即使课堂教学不变——也可以提高学生的兴趣和动力，并提高男女生的成绩。将讨论相关建议。
