Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

The Proof Is In The Pudding – Using Perceived Stress To Measure Short-Term Impact In Initiatives To Enhance Gender Balance In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

The problem of gender imbalance in computing higher education has forced academics and professionals to implement a wide range of initiatives. Many initiatives use recruitment or retention numbers as their most obvious evidence of impact. This type of evidence of impact is, however, more resource heavy to obtain, as well as often requires a longitudinal approach. There are many shorter term initiatives that use other ways to measure their success.

First, this poster presents with a review of existing evaluation measures in interventions to recruit and retain women in computing education across the board. Three main groups of evaluation come …

Girls Are Good At Stem: Opening Minds And Providing Evidence Reduce Boys' Stereotyping Of Girls' Stem Ability, Emily N. Cyr, Kathryn M. Kroeper, Hilary B. Bergsieker, Tara C. Dennehy, Christine Logel, Jennifer R. Steele, Rita A. Knasel, W. Tyler Hartwig, Priscilla Shum, Stephanie L. Reeves, Odilia Dys-Steenbergen, Amrit Litt, Christopher Lok, Taylor Ballinger, Haemi Nam, Crystal Tse, Amanda L. Forest, Mark Zanna, Sheryl Staub-French, Mary Wells, Toni Schmader, Stephen C. Wright, Steven J. Spencer

Psychology Faculty Publications

Girls and women face persistent negative stereotyping within STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). This field intervention was designed to improve boys' perceptions of girls' STEM ability. Boys (N = 667; mostly White and East Asian) aged 9-15 years in Canadian STEM summer camps (2017-2019) had an intervention or control conversation with trained camp staff. The intervention was a multi-stage persuasive appeal: a values affirmation, an illustration of girls' ability in STEM, a personalized anecdote, and reflection. Control participants discussed general camp experiences. Boys who received the intervention (vs. control) had more positive perceptions of girls' STEM ability, d = 0.23, …