Research indicates differences exist between male and female students regarding preferences for various pedagogical practices, such as collaborative learning. Additionally, we know that students may construe an instructor’s gender as influencing their capacity to be role models, teach effectively, and produce scholarship. Less well known is how male and female instructors view specific classroom strategies, as well as how often they use those strategies. To aid understanding, the newly developed Value, Expectancy, and Cost of Testing Educational Reforms Survey (VECTERS) was applied. VECTERS was based on expectancy theory, implying instructor decisions to integrate, or not integrate, classroom strategies are based on (1) perceived value for both students and self, (2) expectation of success, and (3) perceived implementation costs (e.g., time, materials).
Responses were collected from 286 engineering faculty members (207 male, 79 female) from 19 institutions. Responses indicated frequency of use, perceptions of value, expectation of success, and cost (e.g., use of TA’s, materials) for these classroom strategies:
1. Formative feedback loops
2. Real-world applications
3. Facilitating student-to-student discussions
Controlling for course enrollment and years of experience, several significant differences were found. Gender did not differentiate reported use of the strategies, but there were significant differences (p < .05) related to the expectation of success when integrating formative feedback and real-world applications. Women had significantly higher mean scores related to expectations of success for the implementation of formative feedback and real-world applications; however effect sizes were small (partial eta-squared < .04). Similarly, women indicated that using the strategies of formative feedback and real-world applications had significantly greater value. Also, men were significantly more inclined to view the physical setup of their classroom as hindering implementing formative feedback or initiating student-to-student discussions. There were no differences in perception of costs for any of the strategies between male and female instructors.
Dr. Lydia Ross is a clinical assistant professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. She also serves as the executive director of the Association for Education Finance & Policy. She holds a PhD in Educational Policy and Evaluation from Arizona St
Eugene Judson is an Associate Professor of for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. His past experiences include having been a middle school science teacher, Director of Academic and Instructional Support for the Arizona Department of Education, a research scientist for the Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (CRESMET), and an evaluator for several NSF projects. His first research strand concentrates on the relationship between educational policy and STEM education. His second research strand focuses on studying STEM classroom interactions and subsequent effects on student understanding. He is a co-developer of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and his work has been cited more than 1500 times and his publications have been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals such as Science Education and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Stephen Krause is professor in the Materials Science Program in the Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University. He teaches in the areas of introductory materials engineering, polymers and composites, and capstone design. His research interes
James A. Middleton is Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology at Arizona State University. For the last three years he also held the Elmhurst Energy Chair in STEM education at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Previously, Dr. Middleton was Associate Dean for Research in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University, and Director of the Division of Curriculum and Instruction. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992, where he also served in the National Center for Research on Mathematical Sciences Education as a postdoctoral scholar.
Casey J. Ankeny, PhD is an Associate Professor of Instruction and Director of MS Program at Northwestern University.
Ying-Chih Chen is an assistant professor in the Division of Teacher Preparation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
His research takes two distinct but interrelated paths focused on elementary students’ learning in science and engineering as well as in-service science teachers’ professional development. The first focus involves how language as a learning tool improves students’ conceptual understandings, literacy, and representation competencies in science. His second research focus is on how in-service teachers develop their knowledge for teaching science and engineering in argument-based inquiry classrooms. This research is aimed at developing measures of teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) for adopting the argument-based inquiry approach, as well as developing tools to capture the interactive nature of PCK.
Robert J. Culbertson is an Associate Professor of Physics. Currently, he teaches introductory mechanics and electrodynamics for physics majors and a course in musical acoustics, which was specifically designed for elementary education majors. He is director of the ASU Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) Project, which strives to produce more and better high school physics teachers. He is also director of Master of Natural Science degree program, a graduate program designed for in-service science teachers. He works on improving persistence of students in STEM majors, especially under-prepared students and students from under-represented groups.
Keith D. Hjelmstad is President's Professor of Civil Engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University.
Yong Seok Park is an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at California State University Fullerton. He earned his Master’s degree at George Washington University and his Doctorate at the Virginia Tech. Prior to joining California State Fullerton, Dr. Park was a postdoctoral research associate at Arizona State University. His research interests lie in undergraduate STEM education research and engineering design education.
Bethany Smith is currently a master’s student in materials science and engineering at Arizona State University. She has been involved in STEM education research since 2012 under the direction of Professor Stephen Krause. Her research interests in STEM education include faculty development, best classroom practices, and improving undergraduate engineering student retention through understanding what makes students leave engineering. She will be pursuing her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering starting in 2016 at the University of California Berkeley.
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