LB 336 Questionnaire

What grade do you teach?

10-12
What discipline of science do you teach?
Biology Advanced Placement Biology and Honors Zoology
What is the distribution of male and female students in your class?
More girls than boys about 2:1
How is your class structured - hand-on, discussion, or lecture?
All of the abovelecture with lots of interaction (Socratic/Q & A) and lots of labs
Is the class required or optional?
Both are elective courses
What literature do you incorporate in your classroom? What specific textbooks?
Biology (raven & Johnson) for the AP Bio and Zoology (hickman) for the Honors Zoology
Do you do anything to support inclusion of the genders?
I recruit from my own courses and by visiting other peoples classes with cool stuff to share so
as to draw a broader cross-section of the student body into these higher level (AP & Honors)
classes.
Do you teach examples of both male and female scientists?
Provide examples from life of women and different ethnic groups who have made contributions
in the field.

What is the distribution of grades across male and female students?

I do not have this data but anecdotally I have noticed that attention to detail is an important
predictor of success in my courses and girls often seem to be better at this in this age group
than boys.
Is there a difference in class participation between male and female students?
Somewhat. Boys are often more out there with their answers, sharing what they think they
know with less concern about whether or not it is completely correct. The girls hold back more I
think and are more concerned about getting it right.
Do you feel that male students are more encouraged to pursue STEM careers?
I think we do our best to encourage both genders to take high level classes but in our stem
program there is a clear distinction in the Engineering STEM program it is mostly boys, in the
Biomedical STEM it is more equally distributed. The switch from what we used to call Honors
Physics to AP Physics saw a distinct DROP in the number of young women electing that
course.

LB 336 Questionnaire

Do you discuss gender inclusion with your colleagues?

Yes. We try to encourage our students to continue on in science when we go through the
course selection process for the next year. We have especially discussed getting more young
women to take Physics.
Do you have any opinions on gender inclusion in science classrooms?
I think we need to look at our developmental models of women and men. We are at risk of
creating classrooms that provide advantages to certain genders based on how we teach. Boys
often need more physical interaction with the material for example and heavily lecture based
classes are more difficult from them to manage themselves in. Girls can sometimes benefit
from a longer wait time and opportunities to respond individually in small groups where they feel
safer taking risks.
Do you see students of a certain demographic more engaged in a topic than others? If so, do
you modify your lesson plans to include other students?
Our higher level science classes tend to be made up predominantly of Asian (Pacific Rim, China
and India/Pakistan) and Caucasian students altho we have begun the process of removing the
barriers for under-represented groups taking higher level science classes by removing the prerequisites from our course descriptions. This has had mixed results more diversity in our
classes but students who are qualified and not necessarily competitive in that more
challenging environment and require more attention and encouragement to get the help and
support that they need to be successful.