The Confidence Gap: Part I


Physics is a tough subject and the introductory courses are often designed to weed out those unable to handle it. It is not surprising that a good number of students end up losing faith in their ability to do physics and switching majors. But this selection process does seem to operate more strongly on female students, with more dropping out after each course even when their grades are no worse that those of men who remain in the department.

A. Explanation of the problem

Physics is a tough subject and the introductory courses are often designed to weed out those unable to handle it. It is not surprising that a good number of students end up losing faith in their ability to do physics and switching majors. But this selection process does seem to operate more strongly on female students, with more dropping out after each course even when their grades are no worse that those of men who remain in the department. Thus there appears to be a "confidence gap" which results in women students being more easily discouraged than men.

I've observed this process with some amusement in situations where a male student and a female student both receive a poor grade in a class. The female student decides that clearly she lacks sufficient aptitude for physics, and should become a history major instead. In contrast, the male student decides that clearly the professor couldn?t teach his way out of a paper bag, the teaching assistant was utterly incompetent, the test was so confusingly written that even students who understood the material cold weren't able to figure out how to answer the questions, and the grading was obviously biased.

Now this somewhat warped way of viewing the world certainly has its faults. But there's no denying that it can be effective in helping people to boost their confidence and push on despite negative evaluations from others. From other sources I've read, it sounds as though this is a commonly observed difference in female versus male psychology, and not something unique to the sciences. Thus my assumption is that any policies that generally rattle students? self confidence will disproportionately impact women. Accordingly, I will try to identify some of these policies and see how they might be altered.

I should note that I am aware of the idea of stereotype threat developed by Claude Steele. Briefly, Steele has evidence that when students are faced with a test on which stereotypes predict that they are not expected to do well (because, for example, "women aren't good at math") it is the added stress of responsibility for overcoming the stereotype that contributes to lower scores. When the pressure is relieved (by, for example, stating at the outset that this particular test does not show gender differences in performance), students do markedly better.

This is interesting work, but it is still unclear how these findings can be applied to a regular classroom situation, as opposed to a singled controlled test. One conclusion from Steele's work is that explicitly introducing race or gender into a test situation increases stereotype anxiety. For this reason I think that efforts to specifically reassure women are likely to be counterproductive, by reinforcing the idea that women require extra help to succeed. A better tactic is to emphasize that students of both sexes can have difficulties in the physics classroom, and focus on ways of making life easier for all students.

Posted: Wed - April 16, 2003 at 06:09 PM      

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