Engaging young women in physics: An intervention to support young women’s physics identity development

Abstract

This study presents findings on the physics identity development of female students in the German Physics Olympiad who participated in an intervention designed to support their engagement in physics. Enrichment programs such as the Physics Olympiad have been found to positively impact students' engagement and intent to pursue a career in science. However, many enrichment programs, including the Physics Olympiad, suffer from an underrepresentation of young women. The intervention investigated in this study capitalizes on gender-related research in physics education in order to explore ways in which gender equity can be raised in enrichment programs. To this end, we designed an identity-safe learning environment that facilitates participating young women's physics identity development. For example, same-sex groupings and considerately adopted physics contents that particularly acknowledge young women's interests (e.g., relation to medical issues and the human body) were utilized. Overall, 30 Olympians took part in a one-day intervention (13 females, 17 males). Positive effects in two important physics identity constructs, namely, interest and competence, for young women were found, while at the same time no effects were found for young men. Furthermore, the young women were more likely to participate in next year's Physics Olympiad, compared to the overall female Physics Olympiad population. These results indicate that the careful design of an intervention based on gender research and science identity theory can support young women's physics identity development.

First steps toward gender equity in the chemistry Olympiad: Understanding the role of implicitgender‐sciencestereotypes

“…In summary, our findings underline previous work on the expectancy-value model in informal science learning contexts (e.g., Nagengast et al, 2011) and build on this by elaborating on the interaction of students' gender-science stereotype endorsement and expectancy-value constructs. Furthermore, the connection we identified between stereotypical beliefs, values, and participation can be integrated into existing science Olympiad interventions such as the workshop described by Wulff et al (2018). Our contribution to the expanding knowledge on the influence of gender-science stereotypes can be utilized to develop specific programs which aim to diminish harmful gender roles.…”

“…Olympiads are held in other science subjects besides chemistry such as physics and biology. Physics is generally male-dominated (Handelsman et al, 2005;National Science Board, 2018;Petersen & Wulff, 2017;Smith, 2011;Wulff et al, 2018) whereas biology is generally perceived as fairly gender neutral (Handelsman et al, 2005;National Science Board, 2018). Interestingly, Eccles and Wang (2016) stated that a career in biology and life sciences, in contrast to physics, was best predicted by altruistic values (e.g., people-oriented, caring, and helping).…”

“…Nevertheless, several successful measures have been published (e.g., Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003;Johns et al, 2005;Ramsey, Betz, & Sekaquaptewa, 2013). Besides attempting to modify stereotypical convictions, interest could be heightened by using effective interventions as well (Harackiewicz, Canning, Tibbetts, Priniski, & Hyde, 2016;Häussler & Hoffmann, 2002;Hulleman, Godes, Hendricks, & Harackiewicz, 2010;Miyake et al, 2010;Wulff et al, 2018).…”

“…Even though some Olympiads make efforts to attract more girls by offering special workshops and project days with the intent to help girls adapt to their program (Blankenburg, Höffler, Peters, & Parchmann, 2016; Wulff et al, 2018), we are not aware of any publications regarding Olympiads modifying their own structures to create a program that appeals equally to male and female participants. Moreover, we did not find any publications on Olympiads intending to use their program to reconstruct existing gender‐science stereotypes.…”

“…The current article is part of the WinnerS‐project (see also Garrecht, Bruckermann, & Harms, 2018; Garrecht, Eckhardt, Höffler, & Harms, 2020; Steegh et al, 2019; Wulff, 2019; Wulff, Hazari, Petersen, & Neumann, 2018), which aims to examine factors determining success and failure in academic competitions, as well as the impact of success and failure in students' cognitive and affective development and their respective career choices. This project monitored the development of successful and unsuccessful participants in three major senior science competitions: Biology, Chemistry, and Physics Olympiads.…”