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ABSTRACT: Rachel Ivie, in a recent article "Deconstructing the 'Leaky
Pipeline" shows an interesting graph "Actual and Expected Percentage
of Women and Men in Physics in the U.S. for 6 categories: high school
students, Bachelor's degrees, PhD degrees, Assistant Professors,
Associate Professors, and Full Professors. Two BIG LEAKS of women
from the physics pipeline are apparent between (A) women high school
students of physics (about 47%) and women Bachelor's degrees in
physics (about 21%), and (B) women Ph.D.'s in physics (14%) and women
full physics professors (6%). Fiona McDonnell's ethnographic research
suggests that BIG LEAK A may be due to women's strong rejection of
the practices and rituals associated with their high school physics
course. This is consistent with the research of Lorenzo, Crouch,
&Mazur, indicating a reduction in the gender gap in conceptual
understanding in an introductory university physics course by using
interactive engagement pedagogy. Reduction in the flow of women out
of the above two major physics pipeline leaks, A & B, would seem to
be required if the American Physical Society's Committee on the
Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) is to meet its laudable goal of
doubling the number of women in physics over the next 15 years.
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The thread "Winnie and Math," initiated on the CTP-L list (AAPT
Committee on Teacher Preparation) by Paul Hickman, and Keith Clay's
remark of 16 Aug 2007: "I'm hoping folks are familiar with Rachel
Ivie's fabulous work on women in physics. . ." reminded me of a
recent article by Rachel Ivie, "Deconstructing the 'Leaky Pipeline' "
in the June/July 2007 issue of the new AAPT journal "Interactions."
Ivie's article includes an interesting graph "Actual and Expected
Percentage of Women and Men in Physics in the U.S. for 6 categories:
high school students, Bachelor's degrees, PhD degrees, Assistant
Professors, Associate Professors, and Full Professors.
Ivie writes: "Compared to their representation in other fields,
women are underrepresented in physics, especially at the top levels.
In fact, the gap gets progressively wider at every rung up the
academic ladder. . .[as is indicated by her graph]. . . . .For
example, women accounted for 14% of all Ph.D.s earned in physics in
2005, but far fewer women - only six percent - were full professors
of physics in 2006. This statistical phenomenon is known as the
'leaky pipeline,' reflecting as widely held belief that more women
drop out of physics at every step along the educational path. In
contrast to the prevailing view, however, data compiled by the
American Institute of Physics (AIP) show that for women in physics,
these leaks only occur at specific points along the path."
Ivie's graph shows that in addition to the leak between physics
Ph.D.'s and full physics professors, another prominent leak occurs
between high school and university graduation: about 47% of high
school physics students are women, but only about 21% of physics
Bachelor's degrees are awarded to women.
Fiona McDonnell (2005), in her article "Why so few choose physics: An
alternative explanation for the leaky pipeline,addressed the leak
of women between high school physics and physics Bachelor's degrees
shown in the data of Ivie & Ray (2005). She wrote:
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Why do so many students who enter physics with an interest in
pursuing a career in science, and who experience academic success in
high school physics, lose interest in science-physics most
especially-as a field of study following their formal exposure to the
discipline?
Part of the answer to this question, I suggest, is evident in the
nature of students' responses to the instructional practices and
culture of their physics classroom. In the late 1990s, I conducted a
formal qualitative study to understand the images of physics and
physicists held by high school physics students [Hughes-McDonnell
(1996)].
The study involved seventeen students, nine boys and eight girls,
drawn from nine physics classrooms in seven public high schools in
the northeast. Students were enrolled in the most advanced level of
physics offered by his/her respective high school. For the vast
majority of students with whom I spoke, THEIR DECISION NOT TO PURSUE
PHYSICS AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL OR TO TAKE ONLY WHAT MIGHT BE REQUIRED
FOR ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC FIELD WAS THE RESULT OF THEIR STRONG REJECTION
OF THE PRACTICES AND RITUALS ASSOCIATED WITH THEIR HIGH SCHOOL
PHYSICS COURSE (my CAPS); and many distanced themselves from the
worldview that they ascribed to those practices.
While these practices and belief systems do not necessarily reflect
or represent those of physics or of practicing physicists, they do
constitute students' introduction to the discipline. Why should
students believe that physics is anything other than what they have
experienced? The practices of school physics and the impact they have
on students' view of physics as a potential field of study pose a
barrier for some students that is both psychological and
philosophical in nature. The authoritarian practices of school
physics and the culture of physics that students infer from their
experiences in school physics must be accounted for in efforts to
understand the different choices made by similarly prepared students.
I present a few examples from my own research.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Consistent with McDonnell's alternative explanation for the leak of
women between high school physics and physics Bachelor's in "Proof
and Prejudice: Women in Mathematics and Physics" [Hake (2006)], I
wrote:
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
It would appear that the physics pipeline leak of females between
high school and earning a bachelor's degree might be reduced by the
incorporation of more interactive engagement strategies in
introductory physics courses.
The abstract of "Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom"
[Lorenzo et al. (2006)] reads:
"We investigate if the gender gap in conceptual understanding in an
introductory university physics course can be reduced by using
interactive engagement . . . (IE). . . methods that promote in-class
interaction, reduce competition, foster collaboration, and emphasize
conceptual understanding. To this end we analyzed data from the
introductory calculus-based physics course for non-majors at Harvard
University taught traditionally or using different degrees of
interactive engagement. OUR RESULTS SHOW THAT TEACHING WITH CERTAIN
INTERACTIVE STRATEGIES NOT ONLY YIELDS SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED
UNDERSTANDING FOR BOTH MALES AND FEMALES, BUT ALSO REDUCES THE GENDER
GAP. In the most interactively taught courses, the pre-instruction
gender gap was gone by the end of the semester."
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Also in the June/July 2007 issue of "Interactions," Ted Hodapp
(2007), Director of Education and Diversity Programs at the American
Physical Society (APS), discusses a recent conference held by the
APS's Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) of
department chairs, managers of national laboratories, and funding
agencies, with an aim to further CSWP's long range goal of doubling
the number of women in physics over the next 15 years. This would
seem to require reduction in the flow of women out of the above two
major physics pipeline leaks between: (A) high school physics and
physics Bachelor's degrees and (B) Ph.D.'s in physics and full
physics professors.
Six other references germane to Women in Physics are:
2. "Women, Gender, Mathematics, and Science" [McDermott (2005).
3. "Scrutinizing Feminist Epistemology: An Examination of Gender in
Science" [Almeder, Koertge, & Pinnick (2003)]
4. "Women in Physics: A Review" McCullough (2002).
5. "Relationship of Individual Student Normalized Learning Gains in
Mechanics with Gender, High-School Physics, and Pretest Scores on
Mathematics and Spatial Visualization" [Hake (2002)].
Almeder, R.F., N. Koertge, & C.L. Pinnick, eds. 2003. "Scrutinizing
Feminist Epistemology: An Examination of Gender in Science." Rutgers
University Press; Amazon.com information at
<http://tinyurl.com/29rtf4>.
Bleier, R. 1988. "Feminist Approaches to Science." Pergamon Press.
Hake, R.R. 2002. "Relationship of Individual Student Normalized
Learning Gains in Mechanics with Gender, High-School Physics, and
Pretest Scores on Mathematics and Spatial Visualization," submitted
to the Physics Education Research Conference; Boise, Idaho; August
2002; online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/PERC2002h-Hake.pdf> (220 KB).
Therein I wrote [see that article for references other than Mallow &
Hake (2002)]: "A salient result of the present research is the
demonstration of gender disparity in normalized gains [Table I (row
2) and Fig. 1]. The effect size d = 0.68 is not far from the d = 0.8
that Cohen (1988) loosely designates as "large." However, this gender
effect size is eclipsed by the VERY large d = 2.43 (Hake 2002b) for
"Interactive Engagement" vs "Traditional" courses in the survey of
Hake (1998a,b). [Eight reasons for this unusually large d are given
in Hake (2004a).] Thus, in my opinion, EFFORT TO INCREASE THE DEGREE
OF EFFECTIVE INTERACTIVE ENGAGEMENT FOR ALL STUDENTS SHOULD PROBABLY
TAKE A HIGHER PRIORITY THAN EFFORT TO REDUCE GENDER DISPARITY IN FCI
<g> VALUES, even despite the deplorable gender inequity in physics
participation [Mallow & Hake (2002)].
Hake, R.R. 2006. "Proof and Prejudice: Women in Mathematics and
Physics," online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0604&L=pod&O=A&P=15426>.
Post of 23 & 24 Apr 2006 to AERA-A, AERA-B, AERA-C, AERA-D, AERA-J,
AERA-K, AERA-L, ASSESS, EvalTalk, Math-Learn, Phys-L, PhysLrnR, POD,
PsychTeacher (rejected), RUME, STLHE-L, TeachingEdPsych, & TIPS. See
also Hake (2007).
Hake, R.R. 2007. "Re: Winnie and Math," online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0708&L=pod&O=D&P=16976>.
Post of 15 August to AERA-C, AERA-J, AERA-K, AERA-L, AP-Physics,
CTP-L, Math-Learn, Math-Teach, Physhare, POD, RUME, PhysLrnR, TIPS, &
PsychTeacher (rejected).
Hodapp, T. 2007. "A Meeting of Minds on Welcoming Women,"
Interactions, June/July, p. 29.
Hughes-McDonnell, F. 1996. ''Understanding high school physics
students' perspectives of their classroom experiences and their
images of physics and physicists: A pilot study,'' Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA, 1996; unpublished.
Ivie, R. and K. Stowe. 2000. "Women in Physics, 2000." American
Institute of Physics.
Ivie and Stowe wrote: "Although women now earn more than one half of
all bachelor's degrees in the U.S., physics is not attracting women
as quickly as other fields, including life sciences, chemistry, and
engineering . . . Compared to other fields, women are sorely
underrepresented in physics at both the bachelor's and PhD levels . .
. . Observers have offered various explanations for women's poor
representation in physics. Many of the explanations do not hold up in
light of available data. It is possible that women still experience
subtle discrimination leading them away from physics and that women
choose careers that are less clearly linked to physics." For a report
on "Women in Physics, 2000" see Feder (2000).
Ivie, R. & K.N. Ray. 2005. "Women in Physics and Astronomy, 2005" online at
<http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/women05.pdf> (264 kB).
For an earlier report see Ivie and Stowe (2000). For discussions of
the Ivie/Ray report see AIP (2005, 2006) and Czujko & Ivie (2005).
Ivie, R. 2007. "Deconstructing the 'Leaky Pipeline': Gender
discrimination may be a factor in explaining the absence of women
physics faculty, but the numbers tell a different story,"
Interactions, June/July, pp. 24-25.
Keller, E.F. 1985. "Reflections on Gender and Science." Yale
University Press. For counters to Keller see, e.g., Newton (1997),
pages 27 and 209; and the index entries for "Keller" in Koertge
(1998).
Koertge, N., ed. 1998. "A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodern
Myths About Science." Oxford University Press; information at
<http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780195117257>. For
anti-postmodernist comment on the work of Ruth Bleier, Sandra
Harding, Evelyn Fox Keller, Helen Longino, and Londa Schiebinger see
the corresponding index headings. See also Almeder, Koertge, &
Pinnick (2003).
McCullough, L. 2002. "Women in Physics: A Review." Phys. Teach.
40(2): 86-91, online to subscribers at
<http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=PHTEAH&Volume=40&Issue=2>.
McCullough wrote: "Researchers studying the theoretical underpinnings
of the nature of science itself [Keller 1985, Bleier 1988,
Schiebinger 1999] suggest that the very nature of science itself and
the scientific method is inherently masculine, which can serve as a
barrier to women."
McDonnell, F. 2005. "Editorial: Why so few choose physics: An
alternative explanation for the leaky pipeline," Am. J. Phys. 73(7):
583-586; online to subscribers at <http://tinyurl.com/2a7mdw>. I
thank Keith Clay of the CTP-L discussion list for calling my
attention to this article. <keith-clay@comcast.net>
Schiebinger, L. 1999. "Has Feminism Changed Science?" Harvard
University Press, information at
<http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SCHHAS.html>. For comments on the
work of Schiebinger (1999) see e.g., index entries for "Schiebinger"
in Koertge (1998).