Do college science laboratory courses inherit the gender gap from lecture courses?

Abstract

Gender achievement gap has been reported in college math and science courses. One countermeasure is to introduce interactive activities that promote in-class collaboration. A survey of the General Chemistry Laboratory (Gen Chem Lab) courses at a large public university indicates that the likelihood of female students to select the chemistry laboratory courses is higher than that of male students even though female students are still less likely to major in chemistry. And both female and male students have been found to perform better on the parts of the Gen Chem Lab courses that allow in-lab discussion than they do on the closed-book quizzes and exams. Overall, no gender achievement difference is observed in the Gen Chem Lab courses.