Person:

Sadler, Philip

To encourage the formation of science identity among girls, many scholars and practitioners have suggested to assign samegender science teachers to students so that the teachers can serve as gender role models. However, direct evidence of any long‐term effect of gender‐matching is scarce. In a nationally representative survey of college students from the United States, we investigated if gender‐matching between students and their first high school science teachers was associated with students’ stronger identity in those science subjects in college. In physics, we found no gender‐matching effect. In chemistry, there was a gender‐matching effect only for women students. In biology, there were gender‐matching effects for students of both genders. In addition, we found that students in general had a lower science identity if they reported a negative influence of opposite gender domination (IOGD) on their career choices. However, for female students who were at the negative end of the IOGD scale, female biology teachers raised the level of biology identity to the grand average. Our findings suggested that the gender role model effect was strongest when the gender role models resonated with the overall disciplinary gender representation at the school or societal levels.

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) provide opportunities to learn a vast range of subjects. Because MOOCs are open to anyone with computer access and rarely have prerequisite requirements, the range of student backgrounds can be far more varied than in conventional classroom-based courses. Prior studies have shown that misconceptions have a huge impact on students' learning performance; however, no study has empirically examined the relationship between misconceptions and learning persistence. This study of 12,913 MOOC-takers examines how students' misconceptions about the upcoming course material affect course completion. Using a survival analysis approach, we found that, controlling for the score in a pre-course test, students holding more misconceptions had a higher dropout rate at the start of the course, an effect that diminished over time. Other student variables were found to have a positive impact on survival that persisted throughout the entire course: U.S. location, higher age, an intention to complete, better English skills, prior familiarity with the subject, motivation to earn a certificate, and score and time spent on the previous problem set (homework). By contrast, student gender, education level, number of previous MOOCs completed, and motivation to participate in online discussion forums did not affect survival.