Department of Physics, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America.
Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jul 14;17(7):e0271184. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271184. eCollection 2022.
There is a substantial body of work in physics education looking at gender disparities in physics. Recent work has linked gender disparities in college physics course performance to disparities in high school physics preparation, but to our knowledge, the origin of the disparity in high school physics preparation is still underexplored. In a select sample, we found that women on average had lower force and motion conceptual evaluation (FMCE) pre-scores (the FMCE is a short conceptual assessment of Newton's laws), and FMCE pre-score entirely mediated the effects of high school preparation and social-psychological factors on exam performance. The gender gap in FMCE pre-scores could not be explained by differences in the number of physics courses taken in high school. Instead, we find that the gender gap in the FMCE is partially explained by female students' higher levels of general test anxiety. We hypothesize that the format of the FMCE, a timed assessment, triggers stereotype threat in female students despite being a low-stakes assessment. Therefore, instructors and researchers should take care in interpreting the results of such concept inventory scores and should re-think the way they assess understanding of physics concepts. Results of this work aligned with previous findings on gender disparity in timed exams call upon investigating gender equitable assessment formats for evaluating physics knowledge to replace timed assessments, either high or low stakes.
物理学教育领域有大量研究关注物理学中的性别差异。最近的研究将大学物理课程表现中的性别差异与高中物理准备中的差异联系起来，但据我们所知，高中物理准备差异的起源仍未得到充分探索。在一个精选的样本中，我们发现女性的平均力和运动概念评估（FMCE）预评分较低（FMCE 是对牛顿定律的简短概念评估），并且 FMCE 预评分完全中介了高中准备和社会心理因素对考试成绩的影响。FMCE 预评分中的性别差距不能用高中所修物理课程数量的差异来解释。相反，我们发现 FMCE 中的性别差距部分归因于女学生更高水平的一般考试焦虑。我们假设，尽管 FMCE 是一种低风险评估，但它的限时评估形式会引发女学生的刻板印象威胁。因此，教师和研究人员在解释此类概念库存分数的结果时应谨慎行事，并重新思考他们评估物理概念理解的方式。这项工作的结果与关于限时考试中性别差异的先前发现一致，呼吁研究用于评估物理知识的公平性别评估格式，以取代限时评估，无论是高风险还是低风险。
