Letting girls speak out about science - Weizmann Institute of ...

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING

VOL. 32, NO. I , PP. 3-27 (1995)

Letting Girls Speak Out about Science

Dale Baker and Rosemary Leary

Division qf Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Arizona State Universiry, Tempe, Arizona 85287-1911

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to try to determine what influences girls to choose science. Forty girls were interviewed in Grades 2 , 5 , 8, 1 1 using a semistructured protocol. The interview focuscd on feelings about science, science careers, peer and parental support, and how science is taught. To determine whether their responses were based on gender, each girl was asked to respond to questions as if she were a boy. The girls were highly self-confident and positive about science. All of the girls took a strong equity position and asserted that women can and should do science. The girls liked learning science in an interactive social context rather than participating in activities that isolated them such as independent reading, writing, or note taking. Thosc who chose science careers were drawn to them because of strong affective experiences with a loved one and a desire to help. The interviews were analyzed through the framework of women's affective and psychological needs.

Over the years many factors have been investigated to understand why so few women choose science careers. These factors are located primarily within the realm of school and society. However, despite the large number of studies conducted, this research tells us very little about which factors influence girls to choose or reject a scientific career.

Another relatively recent line of research addressing the women in science question has focused on women themselves. In particular, it focuses on women's decision-making processes in the context of the psychology of women. This research, embedded in feminist paradigms, employs a different set of assumptions, research designs, and psychological models from those normally found in the science education literature. Ground-breaking studies within this framework suggest that feminist perspectives hold greater proniise for understanding the relationship of girls and women to science than those frameworks employed in the past.

Because we have chosen to investigate this promise rather than place our research in the more familiar context, we will first provide an overview of the methodologic issues involved in the feminist scholarship that influenced this study. Then we will present a brief review of the feminist literature used to interpret our data and contrast it with the lack of explanatory power of the literature within the traditional research paradigm.

Methodological Issues

Feminist researchers interested in the question of women and science have moved away from paper and pencil assessments and quantitative analysis toward a more qualitative and

0 1995 by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

CCC 0022-43081951010003-25

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contextualized understanding. Consequently, we chose to use in-depth interviews for this study. A shift in methods appear to be justified when data collected using the two approaches are compared. For example, gender differences in knowledge of science and technology issues were found using a Likert-scale questionnaire, but were not found in the transcripts of conversations with the same girls and boys (Solomon & Harrison, 1991). The conversations, unlike the questionnaire, revealed that the girls were confident about their technical competence. Furthermore, extensive interviews by Baker (1990) and Baker, Leary, and Trammel1 (1992) indicated that attitudinal differences toward science between school-age girls and boys are small, and that they are more alike in what they would like to learn about in science than they are different.

Holdcn and Edwards's study (1987), in which womeli wanted more situational details than were offered with a forced choice format, and Grant and Harding's (1987) study, in which women chose "not sure" because they said that the answer depends on the situation or on what you mean by scicwct~and f e c h o / o g y also emphasized the importance of context for women.

Interviews provide context for researchers, too. It is the vehicle through which they hear and understand girls' voices. Good interviews tell us not only what girls think, but why. The spoken and written word, the life stories they tell, are imbued with powerful emotions that are as important to understanding girls' lives as less value-laden but thinner data sources (Brown & Gilljgan, 1992).

We have also chosen to use a sample of only girls. Feminist scholars have long advocated the abandonment of male-female comparisons in favor of looking at girls alone for two reasons. First, the approach avoids using a deficit model, or the assumption that male behavior is the norm, and allows the data to be understood in light of women's sociopsychological reality as expressed in educational preferences, needs, and goals (Campbell, 1988). Second, attempts to compare and contrast males and females lead to noncomparable, simplistic either/or categories that do not capture the sense of the data (Brown & Gilligan, 1992).

Our approach to analysis has bcen to place what girls are saying within the framework of women's decision-making processes and a female identity "defined in a context of relationship . . ." (Gilligan, 1982, p. 163)to better understand who chooses science and why. The next section provides the rationale for choosing this framework.

Women's Decision Making

There is a growing body of evidence that women make decisions about their lives differently from men (Almquist, Angrist, & Mickelsen, 1980; Angrist & Almquist, 1975; Arnold, 1992). These decisions arise from their expectations of multiple life roles, self-identity, and ways of interacting with people, objects, and experiences in the world. Nardi (1983) found that women make career plans in terms of personal life scripts that consist of a number of anticipated personal and professional roles. Gilligan ( I 982) found that highly achieving and successful women described themselves in terms of relationships. Their identity resided in their roles as mothers, wives, lovers, and children, and not in their academic or professional success. Similarly, Arnold (1992) found that academically outstanding women tended to judge success in terms of relationships, and made decisions that stressed a balance between work and family life. Younger girls and adolescents also describe their world in terms of relationships (Brown & Gilligan, 1992).

Eccles ( 1986) concluded that women may choose less technical occupations because they are more attractive and are therefore proactive choices. She concludes that these choices are based on both short- and long-term goals, self-identity, and basic psychological needs that are, because of socialization, different from but equal to those of men. One of these needs is the

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inner sense of connection with others that Brown and Gilligan (1992) saw as the central organizing feature of girls' and women's development. Markus and Oyserman ( 1989) argued that women define themselves in relation to others and that their very self-concept is embedded in and arises from interactions and interpersonal experiences.

Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) also spoke of the importance of connections and relationships for women's ways of knowing. In their framework, a woman who takes the epistomologic position of constructed knowledge is the woman who can construct her own knowledge from both objective and subjective experiences. Knowing is based on connections with people, ideas, objects, and the written word. Connections and relationships give rise to a moral component in attitudes, judgments, and behaviors. Thus, decisions take place in context and are evaluated in terms of their effects on others.

Further evidence of the importance of relationships is found in Brown and Gilligan's (1992) sample of school girls. Those girls with strong voices (a strong sense of self- and inner knowledge) who could deal with the need to stand up for who they were and what they believed, in the face of culturally constructed ideals of the feminine, had close confiding relationships with their mothers, who served as alternative role models.

Within science, despite strong socialization to the contrary, we find that women practice their craft in a way that emphasizes relationships and connectedness to the objects of study and the members of their research teams (Sheperd, 1993). This feeling of connectedness to nature has led to breakthroughs in fields such as primatology and genetics, but as many of the women scientists interviewed by Sheperd (1993) reported that it also leads to conflict with male mentors and colleagues, isolation, and slower rates of promotion. In extreme cases, the conflict between doing science in a related and connected way and the norms of science that emphasize hierarchy, distance, and objectivity, lead to dropping out of science.

We will now briefly examine the school and social factors that comprised the body of literature within the traditional research paradigm to support our claim that this research lacks explanatory power.

School Influences

Many studies indicate that schools fail to provide environments conducive to girls' learning. Textbooks lack positive female role models and often include sex-role stereotypes (Sadker, Sadker, & Klein, 1991). Teacher-student interactions are biased in favor of boys a s early as elementary school. In the face of failure, boys are encouraged to try again and girls are allowed to give up (Oakes, 1990; Wilder & Powell, 1989). Pedagogy is often based on male learning styles, especially when competition is emphasized. Under all forms of instruction, girls have less access to science equipment, hands-on activities, and computers than boys (Kahle & Lakes, 1983; Sutton, 199I ) . Cumulatively, these experiences would logically seem to lead to lowered educational and career aspirations, including science, for girls. However, other nontraditional careers such as law (National Science Foundation, 1990) are attracting a large number of women, indicating [hat learning environments alone do not explain career choice.

Mathematics ability and the number of math and science courses taken in high school are related to choosing a scientific or quantitative college major (Ethington & Wolfe, 1989; Ware, Steckler, & Lesscrman, 1985). However, achievement and course-taking behavior do not explain career differences because the gender gap in these areas is not large enough to be practically significant (Oakes, 1990; Wilder & Powell, 1989).

An outstanding academic record does not necessarily translate into choosing science. Female Westinghouse Award winners avoid technical careers when they go to college (Camp-

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bell, 1991), and studies of college women (Arnold, 1992;Oakes, 1990) indicated that those who are talented and academically successful drop out of science majors and change careers at a much greater rate than men, even when they are equally or better prepared.

Social Influences

Social influences are even more difficult to link directly to career choice, in that factors such as attitude or self-concept are constructed from multiple experiences. In the case of attitudes some studies conclude that more girls than boys dislike science and lack interest in science careers (Hueftle, Rakow, & Welch, 1983; Maple & Stage, 1991; Mullis &Jenkins, 1988; Ward, 1979). Other studies, especially of biology and chemistry, have found that girls have better attitudes than boys (Baker, et al., 1992; Steinkamp & Maehr, 1983). When attitude differences do exist, they are, like cognitive differences, too small to account for the differences we see in the number of males and females involved in science careers. In addition, the link between attitude toward science and doing well in science is weak for both girls and boys (Steinkamp & Maehr, 1983). However, even when girls do well and like science they do not necessarily choose science careers (Baker et al., 1992).

The American Association of University Women (AAUW, 1991) concluded that as girls grow up they lose confidence in their academic abilities, expect less from life, and lower their career aspirations. Girls expect to fail at tasks that are unfamiliar, difficult, or perceived to require high ability (Oakes, 1990).When they fail, girls internalize their failure, attributing it to themselves. This poor self-concept leads to taking fewer math and science courses (AAUW, 1991; DeBoer, 1984a, 1984b), but as noted earlier, taking math and science courses does not in and of itself lead to science career choices.

Parents may be the single strongest negative social influence on girls' science career choices when they hold different expectations for daughters than for sons and treat their children in ways that reinforce gender stereotypes (Campbell & Connolly, 1987). Negative influences include expecting math to be difficult, discounting the importance of higher-level math courses and home computers, and providing fewer opportunities for out-of-school science experiences for daughters (Kahle & Lakes, 1983; Oakes, 1990; Sutton, 1991).

Socioeconomic status (family income, parental education, father's occupation, and household possessions) is also an influence on girls. It is related to mathematics achievement, high school grades, SAT scores, and post-secondary plans, especially the choice of a scientific college major (Oakes, 1990). The advantage goes to the affluent, but that advantage is again very small.

To illustrate the relative lack of power of these variables, we next examine the results of two causal models developed by Ethington and Wolf (1989) and Peng and Jaffe (1979). These models were attempts to determine the cluster of factors that would predict a quantitative undergraduate major for girls using longitudinal data from the High School and Beyond Study and the National Longitudinal Study. Both models included variables that we have reviewed (e.g., achievement, attitudes, SES, course-taking behavior, self-concept, and family influences). Ethington and Wolf's model explained 8.9% of the variance in choice of a quantitative undergraduate major, and Peng and Jaffe's model explained 6%. Neither of these models, despite the number of variables involved, provide us with good explanations as to why women are not entering the sciences.

A further refutation of traditional variables comes from studies in the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway, where there is legislation against sex discrimination and for textbooks

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that must pass inspection for gender inclusiveness, a well-off homogeneous population, the same curriculum for all students, and role models in the form of a female prime minister and cabinet members. Yet, the number of women who choose science and engineering is extremely low and declining (Sjoberg & Imsen, 1983).

Method

To determine what influences girls to choose science we used a volunteer sample of 40 girls in grades 2, 5, 8, and 11, who were interviewed using a semistructured protocol. They were asked to share their feelings about science, science careers, peer and parental support, how science is taught, and how they would teach science to girls or boys. To gain further insight, the girls were also asked to respond to the questions pretending to be a boy. The interviews were tape recorded and then transcribed. The transcribed texts of all the interviews were then read for emerging themes by a team of graduate students and the authors. Discussions concerning evidence for the existence of a theme and the type of evidence needed to categorize portions of the interviews within that theme took place over a summer. These discussions led to the identification of 7 themes (likes, dislikes, equity, career preparation, career choices, role models, and peers) that could account for almost all of the students' remarks. The interview transcripts were then reread by the authors, and the 7 categories were used to code the text of each girl's transcript using the Textbase Alpha program (Tesch, Sommerlund, & Kristensen, 1989). Textbase Alpha is a program for the management and coding of qualitative data, especially interviews. Interrater reliability for coding the students' statements into the theme categories was high (likes, 93%; dislikes, 97%; equity, 83%; career preparation, 96%; career choices, 93%; role models, 99%; and peers, 91%).

This 7-theme system proved cumbersome and overly detailed and resulted in a Tower of Babel rather than a way to facilitate young women's voices. Consequently, we looked for threads that were present within themes and provided links across the 7 themes that could provide insights into the relationship of girls to science. The authors again read the students' statements theme by theme and engaged in discussions. Equity, school, and social threads were identified as the central conceptual components that were present to varying degrees within each of the original 7 themes.

Results

As indicated in the Method section, the categories that developed from the data revealed that girls' relationships toward science are associated with what happens in school, the influence of society in general, and the girls' strong feelings of equity that persisted throughout the interviews. The results are therefore presented in terms of school science, societal factors, and equity. At first, these categories sound very much like those used in more traditional research. However, the critical differences lies in examining what the girls say through the lens of relationships and connections.

Although there were some grade-level differences, most views emerging at second grade remained constant across grade levels. Consequently, instead of providing quotations from students at each grade level to support the results, only those quotes that best represent the girls' overall position will be presented. When grade-level differences tell a different story, as well as in the equity section, where the girls' position becomes stronger with age, quotes from the different grades will be Dresented.

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