Tag Archive for: gender

Why not Physics?

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Last month, the Institute of Physics released a report called ‘Why not Physics?‘

The report looked at how many students studied A-level science subjects in different schools in 2016. The good news is that the picture is a little bit better than when the IOP did a similar analysis 4 years ago.

The bad news is that there are still 44% of schools that don’t send any girls to study A-level Physics*.

As well as looking at the number of students who study physics in different types of schools, the report looks at how well students do in their GCSEs in different subjects, and how that affects their choice of A-levels.

“More girls achieve high grades in GCSE physics than boys, and girls generally outperform boys across the board at GCSE.  However, a smaller proportion of girls have physics in their top four subjects at GCSE (65% for girls compared to 81% for boys). When a student does have physics in their top four results, boys are three times more likely to progress to A-level physics than girls.” pg.18

So, on average, girls tend to be doing well in all of their GCSEs, which means that even though they get a good grade in Physics, they also get good grades in their other subjects, which makes physics less likely to be in their top four subjects.

How do GCSE grades influence what subjects a student chooses at A-level? You might think that students will be more likely choose to study A-levels in subjects that they did well in at GCSE.

You can see in Figure 12 from the report that students are much more likely to study a science A-level if the respective GCSE was in their top 4 results at GCSE.

But what happened if a science was not in a student’s top four subjects.

There is no reason why students have to choose A-levels in subjects that were in their top GCSEs. In fact, there are good reasons relating to progression to university or employment, or simply enjoyment, that mean a student might choose to study an A-level that isn’t in their top 4 GCSEs.

Looking at the graph, boys tend to progress to a science subject that was not in their top 4 at about the same rate regardless of whether it was biology, chemistry or physics.

But wait … Girls are more than twice as likely to choose biology when it wasn’t in their top 4 grades, as they were to choose Physics when it was in their top 4 grades.

Read that again.

Girls are more than twice as likely to choose biology when it wasn’t in their top 4 grades, as they were to choose Physics when it was in their top 4 grades.

Why should this be? Why biology? Why not physics? 

One of the recomendations of the IOP report is that:

Schools should provide effective careers guidance that starts at an early stage, focuses on the next educational phase, emphasises the benefit of choosing certain subject combinations to allow progression to a wide variety of opportunities, and actively challenges gender stereotypes and unconscious biases. pg.8

Here at NUSTEM we are working with North East schools to tackle unconscious bias, and minimise its effects on students.  We offer CPD on unconscious bias for teachers, as well as for those who are involved in advising students about A-level and career choice.

If you would be interested in having NUSTEM work with your school on unconscious bias, then get in touch.

 

*This slightly weird definition means that we can also look at schools which don’t have a sixth form, and track where their pupils go.

New opportunities: GET North resources, Whole School Gender Equality, Computing resource grants

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If you’re the sort of person who’s involved and engaged with NUSTEM’s work, these opportunities might be right up your street:

Great Exhibition of the North Teaching Resource Creators

The team running GET North 2018 are looking for help developing teaching resource packs for use across England at Key Stages 2 and 3. Separate packs will be produced to tie into the themes of the Exhibition:

  • KS2: Science, Art and Design, and Design and Technology
  • KS3: Computing, English, and Design and Technology

The organisers are looking to recruit resource creators; professionals who can provide current industry context and support to the resource; and SEN consultants.

Interested? Get the full details and the application form at the GET North website. Deadline 12 noon, 1st December.

IOP Whole School Gender Equality Programme

The Institute of Physics have a long-running project looking at improving gender balance in physics. Their reports and research are valuable and highly influential (they’ve been a key influence on NUSTEM, for example!). Currently 40 schools are part of a whole-school programme, making small changes in their environment which can lead to big changes in student outlook. Funding has recently been secured to expand this programme.

Participating schools will receive whole-school CPD on unconscious bias and gender equality; can nominate a Gender Champion to attend a free 2-day residential course; and will have access to funding to support further work, including dissemination to other schools and partners.

For further details and the contact email through which to express an interest, see the IOP’s website. Also, do keep us informed (nustem@northumbria.ac.uk), as we’re keen to assist in these efforts ourselves.

Community Foundation Raspberry Pi kit funding

This just in… the Community Foundation have up to £2,000 available to support the purchase of Raspberry Pi kits and CPD by primary schools, as part of a new project launched recently by Make Stuff NE and Tech for Life. For more information and to apply for funding, click those links. At the time of writing things aren’t quite working correctly; we think the relevant grant scheme may be this one, in which case it’s a very straightforward (online) form.

Connecting with Physics

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When I did my A-levels a couple of decades ago, there were only two or three girls in my physics class. The situation has got a little better since then, but many girls still find they are in a minority in their physics class. Whilst this doesn’t stop the students enjoying physics and doing well, it can sometimes feel a bit isolating.

To help the situation here in the North East, Think Physics is running a second year of our Physics Connect Network. This aims to allow girls from different schools to connect with each other through on-campus meetings and an online support group.

The network kicks off on January 28th with a Saturday morning session. Award-winning physics communicator Dr Jess Wade will be talking about her research at University College, London, on flexible solar cells. We’ll also look at where physics can lead to in terms of careers.

Later in the term there will be sessions on practical work using K’Nex, an Easter revision morning, and a visit to a local physics-related industry (watch this space for details!).

You can find more about the network sessions here, and the timetable for January 28th, including a booking link, here.

Reece Engineering Summer School

As well as Physics Connect, Think Physics organises a three-week summer school for Year 12 female Physics and Engineering students. Funded by the Reece Foundation, the course provides an introduction to engineering in its many forms. It’s an intense and hectic few weeks, with industry visits, challenges, individual and group research, presentations… everything we can cram into the time.

Applications are now open for the 2017 school: for more information and the application form, click here.

#girlswithtoys

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Yesterday, National Public Radio in the US published an interview with an astronomer, in which he’s quoted saying:

“Many scientists, I think, secretly are what I call ‘boys with toys’.”

Many other scientists are, of course, not boys at all. But they still have toys, and for the last eleven hours or so Twitter has been awash with fantastic photos of scientists, grouped under #girlswithtoys. There are lots of telescopes:

…there are plenty of other bits of apparatus and equipment:

I have no idea what a dual intracellular amp is, but it’s clearly making someone happy.

Then there are the not-really-instruments-just-cool-toys:

Drop whatever you’re doing and spend a few minutes scrolling through the #girlswithtoys stream (see also the live feed). It’s a glorious depiction of scientists doing what they love, with the tools and instruments of their work.

(top image from this tweet – who doesn’t love a spot of Antarctic heli-fishing?)

Update, 11am: One of the most remarkable photographs is this:

Margaret Hamilton during the Apollo Program (NASA / WikiMedia Commons)

Margaret Hamilton during the Apollo Program (NASA / WikiMedia Commons)

I’d never heard of Margaret Hamilton, which seems outrageous given that she was the lead flight software engineer on the Apollo programme. That is: the code written by her team landed men on the moon. In the final moments before touchdown, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module computer was swamped with excess data and pushed beyond its limits. It’s a fairly standard story in software engineering circles about how the development team anticipated such a situation and had built a system that could tolerate it. Their foresight avoided calamity.

I’ve read the story many times, but I’ve never heard it mentioned that Hamilton led that development group, nor that she coined the very term ‘software engineering.’ Her Wikipedia page is awesome.

A-level Subject Take-up

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Ofsted have published an analysis of the numbers and proportions of girls and boys studying A-level subjects in England:

Until now there has been no single source of data for schools or inspectors to consult that sets out the numbers and proportions of girls and boys that progress from Year 11 to AS levels and then from AS to A level. This report provides that data, so that schools can compare their own performance against the national picture. Several subjects have significantly unequal numbers of girls and boys, for example physics.

Do read the report for the figures in detail, but Dom McDonald, Programme Manager, Outreach at the Royal Society of Chemistry has the STEM subjects summary:

Also on Twitter, he went on to note that the most extreme subject appears to be Computing, with a girls:boys ratio of 0.09:1.

Yikes.

The IET launch #LittleEngineers

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The IET have just launched a lovely campaign called Engineer a Better World.  There is also a great accompanying video which encourages children to remain curious and inquisitive.  As the video plays, children are seen stopping and wondering about objects in the world around them.  Although both boys and girls are shown, one of its key messages is that girls and boys can be engineers. It also highlights that 0nly 6% of engineers in the UK are female.

The video is focused on primary school aged children, which is a good idea. This is the age when we should be starting to share ideas about careers with children, and more importantly, parents.

I would also encourage you to read the accompanying report about the IET research into perceptions and understanding of engineering.  Key points from the report are:

Fewer than half of parents of girls would encourage their children to consider a career in engineering, compared to two thirds of parents of boys. More than half of parents feel that engineering careers are more for boys, and children’s views are largely similar.

Two thirds of parents don’t feel they know enough to help their child if asked for advice on engineering – although the majority said they would like to know more after being shown additional information about careers in engineering and technology.

By involving parents earlier in the careers process they too can promote and feel more equipped to advise their children.  If a parent thinks engineering is ‘just’ about fixing engines its understandable why they are not promoting these options to their daughters.  If parents know about the many areas of engineering, the creativity and opportunities it can offer, they may be more inclined to encourage their daughters to become engineers.

Starting careers information and advice earlier allows children and parents more chance to find out about a wider variety of different careers.  At the moment, these conversations occur at about the same time as young people are making choices about GCSEs and concentrating on exams (and their social life).  Careers advice should be a much more sustained process over years of careers discussions and practical investigations, with emphasis placed on the skills and attributes needed to be successful in different careers.

This video, and the campaign by the IET, is a step in the right direction.

Tag Archive for: gender

PSTT2016

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Presentations, notes and resources from the Primary Science Teaching Trust Conference, Belfast, June 2016.

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ASE 2016: Slides and Notes

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Notes, slides, and additional links for Think Physics’ sessions at the ASE Annual Conference, 2016.

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Tag Archive for: gender

Inspiring the next generation of engineers

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In March 2015, the IET launched a campaign aimed at introducing engineering to a primary-age audience. Rather than focusing on what engineers do, they focus on what engineers are like.

The short film they’ve made uses phrases such as ‘Have you ever wondered…?’, and ‘Here’s to the day-dreamers, the distracted, the intrigued…’.  We’ve already written a blog post about the video.

The research (PDF), which was carried out for the IET by Childwise, is a small-scale, mixed methods study. They used paired interviews with children and with parents in 4 different geographical locations.  In total there were 32 children and 18 parents involved.  This small sample size should be taken into account when drawing conclusions from the research.  As well as the qualitative interviews, Childwise also conducted quantitative research using an online survey of 1007 adults and their children aged between 9 and 12.

Key findings of the research for Think Physics.

  • Children (of both genders) enjoy ICT/computing, science, DT, and maths.  However, girls tend to enjoy art, music and English more than STEM subjects.
  • Parents and children don’t really know what sort of careers are available under the banner of ‘engineering’, and tend to default to the ‘building or fixing things’ view of engineering.  Few thought about design or creativity aspects of sector. Girls were most likely to think that engineering relates only to cars.
  • Parents want to support their children with career choices – and suggested more information about careers, role models and visits from engineers into school as possible ways this could happen.

Media publicity about the launch:

STEM Quest club

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One of the aims of the Think Physics project is to show young people that studying science, especially physics, leads to careers that they would want to do.  At Think Physics we’re piloting a programme we’re calling STEM Quest club, which we hope will support this aim.

The research from the ASPIRES project identified that many young people between the ages of 10 and 14 like science, but don’t see it as something that they would want to do as a career.

As an ex-teacher, my experience of secondary school students is that they generally enjoy working with younger children.  When my son was looking for work experience in year 10, he thought that it might be nice to go into a primary school to work – only to find that all the available places had been snapped up weeks before, mostly by girls!

We’re going to put these two ideas together in STEM Quest club.

Working with a partner secondary school, a group of year 9 students will be trained and supported to run an after-school club in a local primary school. We think this will have a number of benefits:

  • will give the year 9 students experience of successfully explaining science and some leadership experience,
  • the opportunity to work towards a CREST silver award,
  • strengthening links between the secondary and primary school,
  • supporting the experience of science in the primary school
  • appeal to girls (whereas a STEM club might not).

During the training, students will try out the different activities they’ll use in the primary school, discuss presentation techniques and think about how best to explain the activities to younger children.

As well as this, we’ll also be doing some ‘consciousness raising’ activities to look at issues of gender equality in STEM subjects and possible career options.

Typical activities we’ll do will be:

  • use the Science Museum Mystery boxes to think about how we can approach problem solving, and also to talk about science not knowing all the answers.
  • To look at how different disciplines are seen in the media by looking at image searches for ‘physicist’, ‘chemist’, ‘biologist’, ‘engineer’ and ‘mathematician’ **.
  • Look at images of real people who work in STEM, and think about what skills and attributes they might need.
  • Identify how STEM careers make a difference to our lives.
  • try and give clear instructions on how to build origami structures, and how to deal with the frustration of not understanding the instructions.

Through the club, we hope that the leaders will gain experience of doing science which will encourage them to continue to study science, hopefully to A-level and beyond.

You can see what we’ve been up to at our first STEM Quest Club here.

 

**It’s worth having a go at this – the results are quite disappointing. When we tried it out, the year 9s came to the conclusion that, if search engines are to be believed, then you have to like wearing ties or scuba gear (for biologists!) to work in science.

Search engine result for images of 'scientist'

Search engine result for images of ‘scientist’