Gender Issues of Equality and Representation in the K-12 Education System Report

Introduction

Education knows no distinction and students should have equal opportunities and rights irrespective of their sociological or demographic characteristics. However, traditionally it has been observed that some domains of education have remained the preserves of male students; while some other domains are preferred for female students.

This compartmentalized treatment carried across gender distinction has had the effect of polarizing educational and career pursuits in a prefixed manner such as denying the right to know and educate in a specific area of education. Till about two decades ago the entry of women in physical sciences and engineering courses was considered an act of adventurism and even to this day the number of female students that enroll in engineering courses is very limited. This paper examines the gender issues of equality and representation in the K-12 education system and gives out the major findings based on the observed trends from the structured study of literature in the area.

Gender Equity

McElroy(2007) cites Peggy McIntosh who gives an exhaustive definition of gender issues in school education: “The phrase can refer to all aspects of school structure and behavior that reflect the society’s socialization of male and female to be “opposite” sexes. I think the phrase is not inclusive enough to indicate the wider concerns of the women’s movement, which brought it into being. We need to talk about women’s and men’s experiences, not just our problematical “issues.” Still, the phrase “gender issues” is a useful shortcut to the subject of how schools reflect our present systems of sex/gender politics. I think that the phrase induces fear in many women and guilt or impatience in many men.

Women may fear that talking about “gender issues” will either create conflicts or add to a tension between the sexes that they want to deny. Men, naturally enough in light of new perspectives coming out of the women’s movement, often feel guilty at hearing a phrase like “gender issues.” Some feel that if they have done anything wrong to women they don’t know what it is, and they feel unjustly accused. This level of analysis is, of course, far too simple.” Wimpee &Mack(2005) cite an important report compiled by the American Association of University Women(AAUW) as follows, “In 1992, the American Association of University Women released a report called “How Schools Shortchange Girls,” authored by Susan Bailey, director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. The report is a quite thorough distillation of 3,500 national studies conducted between 1983 and 1991. Nearly every aspect of male and female students’ lives was compared, from test scores to the amount of attention received from teachers.

Findings of AAUW Research

• NAEP reading and math scores do not mirror these results: girls outscore boys in English consistently over time and have drawn even in math scores.
• NAEP tests are designed to assess knowledge.
• 1998 SAT results showed boys placing ahead of girls by 7 points in English and 35 points in math.
• SAT scores are supposed to predict success in the first year of college.
• Because of lower SAT scores, girls get fewer college scholarships.
• Girls consistently outperform boys in college GPA.
• Twice as many boys as girls are diagnosed with learning disabilities.
• Three times as many boys are reported to have language disorders.
• Women earn 55% of all Bachelors’s and Masters’s degrees.
• Some studies show that boys call out answers in class eight times more often than girls but this research is hotly disputed.
• Some studies show that boys receive twice as much attention from teachers
• Many claim that that attention is often negative attention”.

In a more recent US department of Education Action report compiled in 2005 Peter & Carroll (2005) report the latest trends in gender equity in school secondary education in the following words, “Over the past two decades, the rates at which women have enrolled in undergraduate education and attained college degrees increased at faster rates than those of men. Part of this increase may be related to an increase in the percentage of traditional students who were women,

although women are still overrepresented among nontraditional students. In addition, in 1999– 2000, women made up a greater percentage of Black students than they did among White, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander students and Black women earned proportionally more associate’s and bachelor’s degrees than Black men. When looking at high school academic preparation among 1982 and 1992 high school graduates who entered postsecondary education within 2 years of high school completion, women closed some existing gender gaps and, in some cases, surpassed men. In the later cohort, even among students who had higher levels of high school academic preparation, women were more likely than men to earn a bachelor’s degree—a difference not found in the earlier cohort”.

Taking further the example of gender equity in the educational areas of engineering and physical sciences; there have been various types of initiatives devoted to improving gender equity. However, underlying these efforts was a clear admission that women were grossly underrepresented in all such courses. The initiative to improve gender participation has taken various forms from one-day career conferences (Conwell & Prichard, 1992) summer science

programs (Baker, Lindsey, & Blair, 1999) to curricular role model projects (Evans, Whigham, & Wang, 1995). It was also observed that gender differences persisted in the quality and the number of interactions that the students had within the classroom. Jones and Wheatley (1990) have documented gender differences in the quality and quantity of teacher-student interactions in science classrooms. For instance, Guzzetti and Williams (1996) observed that students were quite conscious of gender distinctions in science classrooms and that markedly varying language patterns existed between female and male students in such classroom sessions.

Similarly, in a survey covering nearly 56 secondary mathematics and science teachers, Plucker (1996), reported that an avowed awareness of issues of gender equity in science and mathematics; the instructors did not quite know the practical impact of their actions on lessening or heightening the existing inequities. This almost made for no worthwhile and effective interventions from the teachers to promote gender equity.

Literature has on record several other studies which have explained various strategies to promote gender equity by basing such strategies on issues like incorporating gender-inclusive information and strategies into pre-employment science teacher education courses (Richmond, Howes, Kurth, & Hazelwood, 1998; McGinnis & Pearsall, 1998; Sanders, Campbell, & Steinbrueck, 1997; Ambrosio, McDevitt, Gardner, & Heikkinen, 1991; Bullock, 1997; Scantlebury, 1994). Wimpee &Mack(2005) provide an interesting listing of instructional tips to increase gender equity in the following words, ”

• Be sure to ask higher-level cognitive questions of girls as well as boys.
• Have high expectations of all students.
• Encourage girls to take part in hands-on experiences. Girls tend to be passive learners.
• Use cooperative learning strategies regularly.
• Don’t interrupt girls or let other students do so.
• Use the human body as an example to promote understanding for instance in physics, life science, etc. Girls often find the human body fascinating and will identify with concepts linked to their bodies.
• When dealing with experiments, stress the safety precautions instead of the dangers. Girls may be reluctant to engage in lab activities that seem dangerous
• Introduce lessons with an overview. Girls learn more readily from the “big picture.”

While the above instructional tips were intended for use in all curriculums of K-12 schools, Damota (1991) has the following tips for increasing gender participation in science and mathematics:

• “Raise expectations throughout the school community for the science achievement of females, minorities, and students with disabilities
• Address teacher- and student-related factors that influence minority student participation and performance in science (e.g., expectations, previous experiences, assessment practices, language, stereotypes).
• Foster cultural and linguistic diversity throughout science activities, thereby providing a multicultural perspective.
• Address gender inequities in science.
• Increase participation in science education and make science more meaningful for students from underserved groups.
• Reexamine all grouping practices. End traditional tracking, use flexible grouping, and encourage frequent collaboration by students of diverse abilities, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity.
• Make program decisions based on the systemic analysis of student performance data disaggregated by race, gender, and ethnicity when appropriate to the issue under consideration – e.g., equitable access to opportunities to learn.
• Ensure that concerns about equity and excellence are reflected in new standards and assessments.
• Evaluate all assessments – including alternative assessments – based on equity criteria.
• Avoid culturally biased assessment practices.
• Participate in professional development experiences designed to support the reexamination of beliefs, expectations, and cultural sensitivities; develop skill in teaching in diverse classrooms; improve practice in the new curriculum, instruction, and assessment strategies; and redefine roles and responsibilities in support of equity in science”.
• Provide educational leadership to support equity and excellence when developing and assessing an equity plan and when evaluating the equity of your district’s or school’s science programs for pre-K-12 education.
• Involve parents as partners in the science education of their children.

Conclusions

From the above, it can be seen that the literature widely acknowledges that there are substantial gender inequities in the K-12 education system and the individual participants of this system such as the instructors and the students themselves are broadly aware of such inequities. This was particularly the case with the education streams in physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics. However, none of these participants had developed sensitivities good enough to remove these inequities through concrete and well-thought action plans. These participants needed to become more aware of the wide and rich literature available on this issue so as to internalize the action-oriented strategies for implementation.

Particularly teaching community is ideally suited to initiate these strategies as they exercise and determine most student behavior through their own actions and powers. Once implemented the gender equity strategies are likely to result in futuristic schools that are more holistic and realistic in offering educational products. As McElroy(2007) quotes Peggy McIntosh on an ideal scenario, “The ideal school truly empowers students to realize human potential, including the potential of collaborative work — what some feminists call “power with,” as against “power over.” We disempower students, on the other hand, if we leave them ignorant of the existing uses of power in the world and the existing rules for the use of power.

Therefore, I think the ideal school curriculum gives students what Joan Kell-Gadol calls a “doubled vision” — a view of the dominant culture and of its alienation from most people’s needs. We need to give students the tools the world says are the necessary ones — the basic skills, so-called critical ability — and the ability to realize the limits and provinciality of those tools at present and their attachment to partial and distorted systems of thinking and being and wielding power.”

Work Cited

1. McElroy, Blair.(2007). Gender Issues for the Schools An Interview with Peggy McIntosh. Web.
2. Wimpee Monica & Mack Ryan(2005). Addressing Gender Differences in K-12 Schools. Cultural Diversity. 2005.Hamline University.MAT Program.
3. Peter Katharin & Carroll C. Dennis.(2005). Gender Differences in Participation and Completion of Undergraduate Education and How They Have Changed Over Time. Postsecondary EducationDescriptive Analysis Reports. U.S. Department of Education Institute of ducation Sciences NCES 2005–169
4. Conwell, C. R., & Prichard, M. K. (1992). Expanding students’ horizons in mathematics and science. School Science and Mathematics, 92(5), 267-272.
5. Baker, D. R., Lindsey, R., & Blair, C. (1999). Girls summer lab: An intervention. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 5, 79-95.
6. Evans, M. A., Whigham, M., & Wang, M. C. (1995). The effect of a role model project upon the attitudes of ninth-grade science students. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 32,195-204.
7. Jones, M. G., & Wheatley, J. (1990). Gender differences in teacher-student interactions in science classrooms. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27, 861-874.
8. Guzzetti, B. J., & Williams, W. O. (1996). Gender, text, and discussion: Examining intellectual safety in the science classroom. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 33, 5-20.
9. Plucker, J. A. (1996). Secondary science and math teachers and gender equity: Attitudes and attempted interventions. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 33, 737-751.
10. Richmond, G., Howes, E., Kurth, L., & Hazelwood, C. (1998). Connections and critique: Feminist pedagogy and science teacher education. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35, 897-918.
11. McGinnis, J. R., & Pearsall, M. (1998). Teaching elementary science methods to women: A male professor’s experience from two perspectives. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35, 919-949.
12. Sanders, J., Campbell, P. B., & Steinbrueck, K. (1997). One project, many strategies: Making pre-service teacher education more equitable. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 3, 225-43.
13. Ambrosio, A. L., McDevitt, T. M., Gardner, A. I., & Heikkinen, H. (1991). Factors related to equitable teaching: Implications for an equity issues course. Paper presented at the conference of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 342 764).
14. Bullock, L. D. (1997). Efficacy of a gender and ethnic equity in science education curriculum for preservice teachers. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 1019-1038.
15. Scantlebury, K. (1994). Emphasizing gender issues in the undergraduate preparation of science teachers: Practicing what we preach. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 1, 153-164.
16. Damota, Irene.(1991). Principal, Whittier School, Chicago, Illinois, talks about knowing that each child has the potential to be a scientist (audio comment, 187k). Excerpted from the videoseries, Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, Videoconference 3, Children as Explorers (NCREL, 1991).