The Impact of Active Learning on Different Genders

Today's Guest Blogger is Christian Wright, an instructional professional in the School of Life Sciences as ASU. He has a Master’s in Education and a Ph.D. in Biology where he studied the interaction between physiological condition, environment, and foraging behavior of Gila monsters in Dr. Dale DeNardo’s lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. Additionally, he was a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownell’s lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. His current research is a continuation and extension of research he worked on with Dr. Brownell in her lab and focuses specifically on 1) generating a validated general biology programmatic assessment, 2) exploring potential biases in undergraduate biology classrooms as well as examining mechanisms and interventions that may explain and alleviate said biases, 3) evaluating assessments used by undergraduate biology instructors and by biology education researchers to determine if these measurement tools are indeed measuring what they intend to measure, and 4) exploring how and why instructional strategies differentially impact cohorts of students in undergraduate biology classrooms. Additionally, Christian co-teaches the two introductory courses for biology majors as well as a freshman success seminar.

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For this Teach Tech Blog, I chose to highlight a recent study that illustrates how students with different gender identities are impacted by instructional practices that may become increasingly common in undergraduate biology classrooms. A recent meta-analysis by Freeman et al., (2014) showed that active learning improves academic performance compared to traditional lecture. As we incorporate active learning into our classrooms, it’s important to remember that the students in our classrooms are not homogeneous. Rather, students enter our classrooms with a diverse array of backgrounds and social identities, which may impact their experiences in our classes. As such, it is crucial to understand how students from different backgrounds and with different identities may be impacted by our teaching practices.

I chose to focus on gender for this blog because recent work has shown that, despite controlling for metrics of prior academic ability, female students in large-enrollment introductory biology classrooms that used an array of teaching practices ranging from traditional to much more student-centered teaching consistently underperform on exams compared with males and that females participated much less frequently in class discussions relative to male students (Eddy, Brownell, and Wenderoth, 2014).

Women experience active learning differently than men

Not all students may be reaping the benefits of active learning. Multiple barriers may prevent students from fully engaging in active learning, including anxiety, feeling dominated by other students, and not believing that active learning is useful. In a new study out in the December issue of CBE Life Sciences Education, Eddy, Brownell et al. (2015) explored this potential problem in biology classrooms and found a gender effect.  When asked about their comfort participating in active learning, women were much less comfortable than men in participating in whole class discussions (Eddy, Brownell et al., 2015), which may help explain why female voices are not heard as often as males in these classes (Eddy, Brownell, and Wenderoth 2014).  In contrast, women and men are equally comfortable during small group discussions.  Despite equal comfort, their experiences in these groups were different. Women were more likely to prefer to collaborate with other group members, while men were more likely to take on the role of the leader.  Further, women valued peer discussions much more when they had a friend in the group – which didn’t seem to matter to men.  Taken together, these experiences indicate that active learning is not the same for all students.  It also means that perhaps to allow women and men to have the same opportunities in active learning classrooms, we need to incorporate more small groupwork, structure that small groupwork so students can participate more equally, and perhaps give students the chance to work with friends.

Conclusions

These inequities are indeed troubling, but not unavoidable. By continuing to conduct research into second-generation active learning and by closely scrutinizing how our active learning approaches can differentially impact our students, we as instructors can hopefully help to create environments that are inclusive and equitable to all students.

What experiences have you had with gender roles in active learning classrooms? Please take a minute to share!

 References

Eddy SL, Brownell SE, Thummaphan P, Lan MC, Wenderoth MP (2015).  Caution, student experience may vary: socialidentities impact a student’s experience in peer discussions.  CBE Life Sci Educ .  December 2015.

Eddy SL, Brownell SE, Wenderoth MP (2014). Gender gaps in achievement and participation in multiple introductorybiology classrooms. CBE Life Sci Educ 13, 478–492.

Freeman S, Eddy SL, McDonough M, Smith MK, Okoroafor N, Jordt H, Wenderoth MP (2014). Active learning increasesstudent performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111, 8410–8415.