Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

blogs.discovermagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#11

Post by darshan »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #9
darshan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did find it quite interesting that the men seemed to do worse with the values exercise than without it, and strange that the article didn't discuss this aspect. The idea I had was that if the men are subject to the same stereotype (that they are inherently better than women at physics), and then they find themselves in a class where the women are doing just as well as them, that they would lose some confidence. Sin…

Did either of you read the article? The control group picked "their least important values and wrote about why these might matter to other people." The article says nothing about how either men or women perform without a values exercise.

I don't think that exercise, in itself, would make anyone perform worse at physics. While writing about why your values are important to you could very plausibly increase your confidence, I don't see how writing about why other people might care about things you don't value would decrease your confidence or performance.

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#12

Post by Groxx »

Odd results, with the male scores dropping, but I suspect that merely has to do with a small sample size (399 in the whole set).

This makes sense, especially as a number of people I know feel stupid because they have test anxiety. My wife included. "Non-"tests such as these seem like they could help quite a few, as they have the exact same physical location as real tests, but break the trend of habitual anxiety because little to nothing is on the line. Practice tests elsewhere don't share the classroom setting, and there's quite a bit of evidence that location influences memory / emotion, so it would seem they should be about as effective as they are at combating anxiety (ie: not much, and not for many (anecdotally)).

edit: Though, to be potentially inflammatory, this does seem to support the opposite stereotype of men having more control over (non-anger-based) emotions than women. Especially when you look at the original article (linked below by Locke1689: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943596), and see almost no difference in score distribution for men but huge changes for women in the B and C categories (A had almost no change - surprise, surprise, the ones without testing problems showed no gain).

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#13

Post by btmorex »

hugh3 wrote: post #2

I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…

I'm very skeptical too especially when they write this near the end of the paper:

"One virtue of the affirmation is that it can be combined with instructional approaches that show promise in closing the gender gap, such as the interactive engagement approaches used in the present course"

so the course they are teaching isn't a standard physics course. They very well might be on to something, but I think it's a huge stretch to attribute the performance difference to a couple 15 minute writing exercises. (what is "interactive engagement" anyway? not explained in the paper)

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#14

Post by jberryman »

hugh3 wrote: post #2

I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…

Seems like you just skipped to the graphs which showed men in the control group doing slightly better than men in the "affirmation" group.

If you read the article it does not suggest that men did worse because of the affirmation excercise. These were two different groups of men, so presumably the control group happened to be a smarter bunch. Or maybe the other class took place at 8am and everybody was asleep, etc.

Of course it would be interesting to see this done on a larger scale with more details of statistical significance of the numbers.

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#15

Post by hugh3 »

derefr wrote: post #10
hugh3 wrote: post #2

I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…

As i read it, it doesn't change actual understanding, but rather removes (some of) the confounding variable of test-taking anxiety. Female students actually understood the material just as well as male students, but they didn't believe that they did, and they didn't test like they did, so for all empirical purposes, they didn't. The writing task was basically a luminosity exercise: making them aware of their own true…

So does it give additional test-taking anxiety to the male students, who do worse than those in the control group?

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#16

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #10
hugh3 wrote: post #2

I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…

As i read it, it doesn't change actual understanding, but rather removes (some of) the confounding variable of test-taking anxiety. Female students actually understood the material just as well as male students, but they didn't believe that they did, and they didn't test like they did, so for all empirical purposes, they didn't. The writing task was basically a luminosity exercise: making them aware of their own true…

[deleted]

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#17

Post by hugh3 »

jberryman wrote: post #14
hugh3 wrote: post #2

I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…

Seems like you just skipped to the graphs which showed men in the control group doing slightly better than men in the "affirmation" group. If you read the article it does not suggest that men did worse because of the affirmation excercise. These were two different groups of men, so presumably the control group happened to be a smarter bunch. Or maybe the other class took place at 8am and everybody was asleep, etc. Of…

If you read the article it does not suggest that men did worse because of the affirmation excercise. These were two different groups of men, so presumably the control group happened to be a smarter bunch.

In which case we can equally well say that the women in the non-control group just happened to be a smarter bunch. Even more easily, since the sample size of women was even smaller than those of the men. If the results aren't statistically significant I'm not sure why they were even published.

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#18

Post by baldercrash »

>Think about the things that are important to you. Perhaps you care about creativity, family relationships, your career, or having a sense of humour. Pick two or three of these values and write a few sentences about why they are important to you.

What has this got to do with physics and why are universities so interested in students' private lives?

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#19

Post by anthuswilliams »

Groxx wrote: post #12

Odd results, with the male scores dropping , but I suspect that merely has to do with a small sample size (399 in the whole set). This makes sense, especially as a number of people I know feel stupid because they have test anxiety. My wife included. "Non-"tests such as these seem like they could help quite a few, as they have the exact same physical location as real tests, but break the trend of habitual anxiety beca…

I don't think it supports the idea that men have better control over their emotions than women. Rather, I think it illustrates the effects of stereotype anxiety. The article also mentions the same phenomenon wrt black students taking standardized tests.

Although I don't have the source on hand, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece a few months ago reporting a similar effect in the performance of white basketball players relative to that of blacks in American high schools.

Re: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

#20

Post by chesser »

"Aspiring female scientists and mathematicians still have to contend with the inaccurate stereotype that men are innately better at them in their chosen fields."

I wasn't aware that this had been definitively established as a myth.

Last I checked, there was a gender gap. There are a lot of interpretations that wish to ascribe this to a social difference rather than a physical one.

Further, this is an introductory course.

The overwhelming number of top scientists are male. IQ tests (FWIW) also place more males at both the top and bottom ends, with females clustered more around the middle. One interpretation there is that nature can afford to take more chances with males, so there are more extremes.

I can think of at least one factor that is physical, even though it doesn't have to do with mental capacity per se. A major impediment to learning tends to be psychological laziness; anything that gets us to push past this means we are using more of our capacity. Testosterone increases risk-taking behaviors and reduces complacency. This drive to constantly seek out the new and challenge the old might be sufficient by itself, even if there are no relevant neurological differences otherwise.

I also don't understand this push to try to equalize gender distribution. Even if the ONLY differences are social, it doesn't follow that it's better to socialize females in ANY given arbitrary manner just because they're female.

Clearly any field should be open to any individual who wishes to pursue it. Trying to equalize the numbers, given the current disparity, means pushing a lot of females into pursuing subjects they aren't interested in. Even if we posit that these fields have been traditionally male-biased, the majority of males are not interested in them.

This has to be open on an individual level, and whichever way it shakes out with regard to gender, it shakes out.

It's profoundly unfair to cite social differences and then blame colleges who only get people after 18 years of social indoctrination.

Post reply on HN