arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Sally Jordan.
Across the United Kingdom, initiatives designed to increase the participation and outcomes for women in physics continue, working with children of various ages as well as with adults. Improvements have been achieved by a combination of these initiatives and an accompanying strengthening of policy, but significant gender imbalances remain.
We address previous hypotheses about possible factors influencing the gender gap in attainment in physics. Specifically, previous studies claim that male advantage may arise from multiple-choice style questions, and that scaffolding may preferentially benefit female students. We claim that female students are not disadvantaged by multiple-choice style questions, and also present some alternative conclusions surrounding the scaffolding hypothesis. By taking both student attainment level and the degree of question scaffolding into account, we identify questions which exhibit real bias in favour of male students. We find that both multi-dimensional context and use of diagrams are common elements of such questions.