Examining perspective-taking skills in introductory geoscience students

Abstract

Despite concerted efforts aimed at improving gender diversity in the discipline, the underrepresentation of women continues to persist in the geoscience domain. Research suggests that successful completion of introductory undergraduate STEM coursework is pivotal to the retention of students in STEM major programs and that spatial skills are fundamental to STEM learning at the introductory level. This study examines the relations between a specific type of spatial skill important to geoscience reasoning, perspective-taking skills, and conventional measures of academic achievement (i.e., grade point average and course-based assessment) critical for continuation in STEM major programs. Additionally, this study queries whether or not students’ perspective-taking skills improve after five-weeks of introductory geoscience coursework, and if this skill differs between genders. Students enrolled in an undergraduate Natural Hazards and Disasters geoscience course completed a measure of perspective-taking at the beginning and midway through the course. Results revealed that students’ perspective-taking skills were not related to their performance on conventional measures of academic achievement, and that they did not improve after five weeks of coursework. However, we did find that men outperform women on the measure of perspective-taking both at the beginning and midway through the course. These findings may have broad implications for interventions aimed at improving the retention of women in geoscience by bolstering women’s perspective-taking skills.