Introducing and Evaluating the Effective Inclusion of Gender Dimension in STEM Higher Education

Abstract

The need to incorporate the gender dimension in higher education is a central element of gender equality policies within the European Union (EU). When most institutions of higher education have already strengthened and consolidated their curricula, the next challenge is to include and ensure that all people have the same opportunities to progress in education. This study intends to incorporate the gender dimension in teaching through a guide providing recommendations for the introduction of changes that will allow its effective incorporation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas. It will take into account the administration in charge of formulating policies in the field of education, the students, and, mainly, the teaching staff. Its objective is to cover aspects related to the principles of equal opportunities and gender equality in STEM higher education disciplines. For this purpose, 41 volunteer teachers from 8 degrees and master’s degrees from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Spain participated. To achieve the results of this study, aspects related to social and gender relevance of the subjects, inclusive methodology, classroom management and assessment were considered. As a preliminary step to the development of the guide of recommendations, a teacher’s self-assessment tool and a questionnaire for students to analyze the perception of the gender dimension were developed.

Gender Perspective in STEM Disciplines in Spain Universities

“…In the following lines, the main issues and most interesting strategies identified all along a pilot project at the UPC (Peña et al, 2021) are summarized, following the four pillars classification according to Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (2018) (i.e., methodology, learning environment, contents, and assessment).…”

“…However, since several resistances might be found during this cultural change, as identified in a recent article (Linkova & Mergaert, 2021), more proactive actions must be defined. An interesting example is the pioneer pilot project held at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) during the course 2018-2019 (Peña et al, 2021). It was a volunteer project where 35 teachers (40% men, belonging to 8 Bachelor and Master Degrees) reviewed the state of the art on gender in teaching, discussed strategies, experiences, and points of view and defined new activities to be implemented during the project.…”

Through NGO Lens: Gendering the Tourism Curriculum

“…Some previous studies that put the assessment practices in reputable education can be enlarged through improvements in the design of assessment. Feedback, participation, empowerment, and self-regulation are identified as mediating effects of the quality of assessment tasks on learning [11]. Moreover, evaluation in teaching is an integral part of successful and effective teaching [12].…”

“…Previous training that was held by the Organizer: Cooperative Development Foundation of Canada used pre-test and post-test for public sector gender capacity development in Bishoftu to strengthen the participatory approach in evaluating the training program (Cooperative Development Foundation of Canada, 2020). Following that, the research in evaluating the effective inclusion of gender dimensions in STEM Higher Education used a simple pre and post-test to collect data [11].…”

Perception of work in the IT sector among men and women—A comparison between IT students and IT professionals

“…The data from other regions is scarce. For example in a study by Peña et al (2021) focusing on diagnosing the extent to which gender issues were even mentioned within STEM teaching programs, 84% of the teaching staff stated that their proposed activities did not include any gender aspects. It is also worth noting that these scarce interventions that are rarely evaluated usually pertain to STEM as a discipline in general-to our knowledge there are no domain specific analyses that would focus on IT only.…”