Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation

Some have questioned whether findings in the laboratory obtained under controlled conditions and limited contexts bear any relevance to behavior in real-world environments in which ordinary people cope with real-life challenges. Recent studies have shown a replicable and long-term effect of a brief writing exercise on the academic performance of African-American seventh graders in an inner-city public school. Miyake et al. (p. 1234) extended this approach to show that a similar kind of writing exercise can help to reduce the gender gap observed in the performance of female students in an undergraduate physics class, where performance is measured not only via course grades and exam scores, but also on a standardized test.

In many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, women are outperformed by men in test scores, jeopardizing their success in science-oriented courses and careers. The current study tested the effectiveness of a psychological intervention, called values affirmation, in reducing the gender achievement gap in a college-level introductory physics class. In this randomized double-blind study, 399 students either wrote about their most important values or not, twice at the beginning of the 15-week course. Values affirmation reduced the male-female performance and learning difference substantially and elevated women's modal grades from the C to B range. Benefits were strongest for women who tended to endorse the stereotype that men do better than women in physics. A brief psychological intervention may be a promising way to address the gender gap in science performance and learning.