Communications of the ACM
Female Topics Encourage Girls to Study Science
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Science should be presented in a female friendly way to get girls more interested in the subject, says the University of Luxembourg's Sylvie Kerger.
Kerger gave 134 boys and 160 girls questionnaires on their interests in 80 topics, encouraging them to imagine they were selecting their subjects for a new school next year. The students rated their interest on a scale of 1 to 5, and the results showed that girls have a significantly higher interest in information technology, statistics, and physics when concepts were presented in a female-friendly way.
However, Kerger's study also revealed that boys' interest significantly declined when topics were presented this way. Gender-specific classes could work for some students.
"Perhaps teachers and or schools could offer science modules or groups dealing with the same concepts but presenting them in the context of different topics," Kerger says. "Each student could then choose the science modules or groups using the topics that seem the most interesting to themselves."
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