Investigating the role of prior preparation and self-efficacy on female and male students’ introductory physics course achievements

Abstract

Research suggests that self-efficacy is one of the central factors predicting students' engagement, participation and retention in STEM fields. Physics is one of the STEM fields in which women are severely underrepresented. Prior research has found that there is a gender gap in conceptual assessments and sometimes even in the final exam favoring men. Women also report lower self-efficacy than men in physics. The origins of these gender disparities are complex, not well understood, and include systemic societal biases and stereotypes that disadvantage women from a very young age both in and out of classroom. Since self-efficacy can impact performance and vice versa, lower physics self-efficacy than men can disadvantage women in physics classes. We studied female and male students' self-efficacy and its relation to learning outcomes in calculus-based introductory physics courses in which women are severely underrepresented. In particular, we discuss an investigation examining students' self-efficacy scores across gender and investigate the extent to which self-efficacy mediates learning outcomes for male and female students, controlling for students' relevant prior academic preparation such as AP Physics or SAT scores. We found that gender differences in course grade were partially mediated by students' prior knowledge and gender effect became non-significant factor after we include students' pre self-efficacy scores. This study can be helpful in catalyzing design and structuring of the physics classroom environment and curriculum to improve the self-efficacy and learning of all students, particularly those from traditionally disadvantaged groups such as women.

Exploring the contributions of self-efficacy and test anxiety to gender differences in assessments

“…In modelling both the FCI post-test and exam, self-efficacy emerged as a significant predictor. The importance of selfefficacy is consistent with several recent studies [15,16,18]. In Ref.…”

“…In this report, we focus on gender disparities in self-efficacy and test anxiety. Self-efficacy influences the choices someone makes and the effort they put forth in a task [14], and it's been shown to be related to performance in physics in [13,15,16] and to physics identity [17]. Ballen et al [18] showed that selfefficacy mediated learning gains for underrepresented minority students in a biology course, identifying self-efficacy as a possible avenue for supporting equity-seeking groups.…”

For physics majors, gender differences in introductory physics do not inform future physics performance

“…In particular, one mechanism by which this occurs is the feedback loop between course grades and self-efficacy [89][90][91][100][101][102][103]. Other studies at this same university have found significant gender differences favoring men in the physics self-efficacy of students in large introductory physics courses [41,42,55,56,65,67,68], consistent with studies at other universities [104,105]. Although our analysis only includes students who had not only declared a physics major but had also completed the modern physics course in the sophomore year, the gender differences in grades earned in introductory physics courses could have a large, gender differential impact on students' choice to pursue physics and related majors, despite the fact that performance in introductory physics does not predict performance in advanced physics courses.…”

“…There has been much important work done in recent years studying the many and various ways that women are not being adequately supported by their physics departments [8,21,. In particular, inequitable gender differences in introductory physics classes have been documented with a variety of measures including motivational characteristics [40-42, 54-56, 59, 60, 62, 65-74], grades [20,46,47,56,61,[65][66][67][68]73], and performance on conceptual inventories [8,24,25,50,51,57,58]. The overarching theme of these studies' conclusions is in line with broader studies of gender inequity in physics and STEM [26, 34-36, 43-45, 48, 49, 53, 64] which highlight the significant obstacles faced by women in STEM which arise from societal stereotypes and biases.…”

Investigating underrepresented students� choice of a physics major

“…Additional contributions to the lack of women and students of color in physics come from dissimilar pre-college experiences. Previous research has shown that students' success in introductory physics courses can be predicted by certain factors during their high school experiences [10][11]; however, research also indicates that these experiences are not the same for women and students of color as they are for white men and may negatively impact their success in and selection of a physics major post high school [12][13][14].…”