Abstract
Gender differences in conceptual test performance and course grades for introductory physics students are mainly associated with students' self-efficacy.
Highlights
In the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), there has been some effort to enhance the participation and advancement of women, yet the historical pattern of overall unequal gender representation remains in many STEM disciplines
Investigating the correlations among the predictors, we find that there were mediumlevel correlations around 0.40, showing that the predictors are not so correlated as to be impossible to separate in the regression analyses, and sufficiently intercorrelated that simple Pearson correlations with outcomes can be artificially higher than the true direct relationships
Physics 1 grade was moderately correlated with scores for mathematical and verbal ability (SAT) math test scores, suggesting that prior experience with math is quite important for college level introductory physics courses [43]
Summary
In the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), there has been some effort to enhance the participation and advancement of women, yet the historical pattern of overall unequal gender representation remains in many STEM disciplines. Other STEM fields, like physics, have seen little progress in increasing representation of women and people of color in the discipline. In learning science and educational research, selfefficacy is a commonly used construct that was first proposed by Bandura [20] and it is one of the central factors pertaining to students’ beliefs about their capability to perform well in a particular domain [20]. The higher the students’ self-efficacy in a particular learning activity, the more perseverance and resilience they are likely to show when faced with adversity [21]
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