Project by: Emma Diamond (10th Grade), Margaret MacGillivray (10th Grade)
Project Advisor: Charlene Cruz-Cerdas
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Shauna Finn and Charlene Cruz-Cerdas

Description of the Project:

Our goal for this project was to learn more about the gender dynamics in classes at LREI. Throughout nine weeks, we conducted a sociological study about how gender affects participation in class. We came up with a research question, sent out a survey, and then analyzed the data we received.

Final Product (e.g., documents, images, video, audio, poster, display, etc.):

Our Poster:

Our final write up about the study:

Gender In The Classroom At LREI

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to examine how gender affects participation in classes at LREI. Throughout our lives, we have noticed a significant difference between female students and male students when it comes to participating in class. We wanted to further examine this and understand how these dynamics affect other students at LREI. In order to get a range of experiences, we used quantitative research. Our study ultimately showed that many male-identifying students are oblivious to gender dynamics in the classroom, while many female-identifying students were aware of these dynamics and experienced them themselves.

Motivation:

We wanted to do this study because we feel that gender and how it affects participation in class discussions is an issue that is often overlooked. Students who participate in class discussions often don’t recognize that their gender may have something to do with their ability to speak in large groups. They instead think they participate purely because they are outspoken. We also think it’s important to bring attention to the various levels of anxiety girls can have in class discussions due to judgments from their male peers. Often, girls are afraid to participate because they are scared they will get the answer wrong, while boys are able to make mistakes without receiving scrutiny from their classmates. We have chosen to do this experiment to dig deeper into the specifics on why this happens and get new input that will bring to light things we hadn’t thought about.

Methodology:

We sent a survey to all four grades in the high school. We decided to include all grades because we were curious if different age groups had different experiences about how gender affects participation. Our survey consisted of various questions regarding student participation in class. At the end of the survey, we asked the student’s gender identity. This question helped us to deepen our study because we were able to observe how students of different gender identities experienced participation at LREI. We decided to do quantitative research rather than qualitative research because we wanted to get answers from a diverse group of students at LREI. It was also important for us to keep this survey anonymous so that respondents felt they could answer the questions honestly. Anonymity enabled us to combat desirability bias, the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others, because respondents knew that their name would not be attached to their answers. 

Findings:

Of the people who filled out the form we sent out, fourteen of them were female while only six of them were male. None of the six male students who filled out the form said that female students participate less, while six of the fourteen female students said that they participate less. One of the male students said that they “do not think participation is an issue with gender” and that “it is an issue with feeling comfortable in the class and not wanting to feel dumb for asking the question you are going to ask or saying something your gonna say.” 

One of the six girls who said girls participate less said that the reason why is because “females in our school are more likely to have social anxiety, or feel judged when they say something. Usually, when a female says something in class and a male disagrees, some try to overpower them using their loud deep voice or make snarky comments afterwards, which affects not only the female who spoke up but it also makes others uncomfortable.” 

Of the six male students who filled out the form, five of them said they feel most comfortable participating in class discussions in at least one of their history or english classes. However, out of the fourteen female students who filled out the form, nine of them said they feel most comfortable participating in small group discussions in both their history and english, and only five of them said they feel most comfortable sharing to the whole group.

Implications:

Our hypothesis turned out to be mostly correct. Our fear was that boys wouldn’t fill out the form because of fear of confirmation bias, and seeing that only six boys filled out the form, there was probably apathy towards the issue from male students. We thought that girls would be more aware of the gender dynamics in the classroom, and that hypothesis was confirmed as it was only girls who recognized that girls participate less. In addition, we predicted more of a lack of participation in class discussions from female students, and that was confirmed by the nine out of fourteen girls who said they didn’t feel comfortable participating in large group discussions. 

Unfortunately, we were not pleasantly surprised by anyone’s answers. Most of the male students remained oblivious to the gender dynamics in the classroom while the female students were well aware of them, many experiencing these dynamics themselves. We hope that after our project, more male students will be informed of these inequalities in the classrooms.

 

Final Reflection on Learning:

Emma: Through this project, I learned the steps of conducting a sociological study. Specifically, I learned small things that make a study more successful. For example, Charlene taught us that the order of the questions in a survey is extremely deliberate because it can affect respondents’ answers, specifically, how honest they are. In addition, I learned that many other students at LREI relate to my struggles with participation in class.

Margaret: This project taught me a lot about our school and about gender roles in the classroom. I feel that we often talk about gender in the abstract, but it was interested to see how it translates into our actual school. I also really enjoyed getting to orchestrate a psychology experiment. I learned the various ways that one can make people be more honest in surveys, and the psychological thinking behind sociology experiments. Overall, I learned a lot throughout this honors project and I will take that knowledge with me in the future!

Update on Progress from Weeks 1-3 (include any photos or video if relevant):

During the first few weeks of our project, we met with Charlene in order to narrow our research question. Coming into the project, we knew that we wanted to conduct a sociological study, but we’re not sure about the specific topic we wanted to research. After our first meeting, we were able to narrow down to the topic of Gender in the Classroom and how gender affects participation. During the second meeting, we discussed our observations and experiences about how gender manifests in the classroom. We also discussed our ideas about what the results of the study would be. Below are both:

Emma (ED) and Margaret’s (MM) observations: motivations for this study:

• Girls don’t participate
• Fear of being judged
• Girls scared to talk
• Across disciplines: math, science as well as history and English
• Margaret: boys feel glad when she’s wrong
• With boys, it’s easier to laugh when they’re wrong
• Girls taught to be quiet

Working hypothesis:

• upbringing: girls should be quiet, well-behaved, not speak out of turn, not be rowdy, proper, polite, formal, should not be wrong (expectation to be correct)
• an expectation to be correct; why are the stakes higher 
• fear of being judged by classmates; boys are more judgmental
• boys judgment: they don’t want girls to be right
• boys’ upbringing: allowed to take risks; fail and get back up; taught to be confident even if wrong
• tends to be white, privileged, wealthy, lifers, live close by
• What characteristics do they share?

Before the third meeting, we refined both our research question and our hypothesis. During the third meeting, Charlene helped us to edit both our research question and our hypothesis. Below are our final question and hypothesis:

Question: In classes at LREI, do female students share their ideas publicly less frequently than male students during full class discussions? If so, why?

Hypothesis: We believe that female students share their ideas less frequently than male students during full class discussions in History and English classes at LREI because many girls fear being judged by their classmates and have less confidence in their ideas and are therefore less inclined to speak in class discussions.

Update on Progress from Weeks 4-6 (include any photos or video if relevant):

During the 4th week, we discussed which method we wanted to use to collect our data, in-person interviews or a google survey. We settled on a survey because we wanted to make sure we were able to collect experiences from a diverse group of students at LREI. We also discussed how important it was for this survey to be anonymous because of desirability bias, the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. We wanted to avoid dishonest answers as best we could. Before the 5th week, we drafted our survey questions. During the 5th meeting, Charlene helped us to edit our questions and put them in an order that would get us the most honest responses. We also had to discuss who we would send the survey to. We ultimately decided to send it to the entire school because we wanted as many diverse answers as we could get. Below are the questions we came up with:

Survey Questions:

1. What is your name? (Optional)
2. What grade are you in?
3. What are your pronouns?
4. In what ways do you regularly participate in History class? 
5. In what ways do you regularly participate in English class?
6. If anything, what makes you feel comfortable sharing your ideas in full class discussions? (a certain type of teacher, who your classmates are, etc.)
7. If anything, what makes you feel uncomfortable sharing your ideas in full class discussions? (a certain type of teacher, who your classmates are, personal struggle, etc.)
8. How would you compare girls’ participation in full class discussions to boys’ in English and History classes?
9. Please explain your answer to the previous question. Why do you that is?
10. Do you feel more comfortable participating in full class discussions in English/History classes or math/science classes?
11. Please explain your answer to the previous question? Why is that?
12. Would you like to further discuss your answers with us? (If so, please write in your name in the first question)

After editing the questions, we sent the survey to the entire school. During the 6th week, we began to discuss the responses we were getting, but we did not get many responses during the first week we sent it out. 

Update on Progress from Weeks 7-9 (include any photos or video if relevant):

During week 7th, we presented our survey to the entire high school because we did not get enough responses to properly analyze the data. We ended up receiving a total of 21 responses. During the 8th week, we met with Charlene and began to notice patterns in the data we received. One thing we noticed right when we looked at the responses is that many more female-identifying students responded to the survey than any other gender identity. During the 9th week, Margaret and I wrote our final product, a writeup about our study. This included five different sections: Abstract, Motivation, Methodology, Findings, and Implications. Each of these sections discussed different aspects of our work throughout the project. This writing is above in the final product section.