Coordinator: Dr. G. Kaur
Coordinator: Prof. S. Chandrasekharan, Ms. D. Dutta & Mr. Durgaprasad K.
22Thu
Coordinator: Dr. P. K. Joshi
Coordinator: Dean's Office
29Thu
Coordinator: Prof. Jyotsna Vijapurkar
Dr. Kate Wilson, School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia
Girls are underrepresented in STEM at high school, and women are underrepresented in STEM degrees and careers. Part of the reason for this is that, while girls do as well as boys on classroom based assessment, girls underperform on competitive examinations. In India and many other countries, competitive examinations are used to decide university entrance. We have been looking at differences in boys’ and girls’ performance on competitive examinations for the Science Olympiad programs in Australia and India. We find that there are particular types of questions that have large gender gaps. Often the gap is due to the way the question is presented, not to the content it is examining. Negative marking widens the gap. We can reduce gaps by careful question design, and also by better teaching practices.
Dr Kate Wilson, SFHEA, is a senior lecturer and Scientia Education Fellow at UNSW Canberra (@ADFA) in the School of Engineering and IT, and the Learning and Teaching Group (LTG). Kate teaches Engineering and Teaching at UNSW, and is a past Director of the Australian Science Olympiads Physics Program. Kate does research on gender and assessment in science, student learning in physics, and on first year transition. She is an author of five textbooks for high school and university physics. These books are informed by current education research, including Kate’s own research into learning in physics. Kate also runs a primary school science enrichment program, which uses fun hands-on activities to teach fundamental ideas in biology, chemistry and physics.