A Longitudinal Study of Engineering Student Performance and Retention: Gender Differences in Student Performance and Attitudes (Abstract)

Author(s): Richard Felder, Gary Felder, Meredith Mauney, Charles Hamrin and Jacquelin Dietz

Felder et al. compared men and women with several different approaches to their course work and dealing with academic difficulty. All the participants were involved in chemical engineering, but the authors believe their findings can be generalized to all engineering students. Key issues addressed in the report are:

Students' attitudes towards their education and themselves.

Gender differences in students' academic performance.

Factors encouraging/discouraging persistence.

Students' Attitudes towards Their Education and Themselves

Women continue to show more anxiety than men about beginning their course work and school in general. Men begin course work much more confident than women in their:

• Preparation.
• Educational background.
• Problem-solving ability.

Authors of this study particularly wanted to pinpoint why some women maintain their confidence while so many other women lose confidence in their abilities, sometimes to the point of leaving engineering altogether. Comparative factors in the backgrounds of the participants include:

• The women were more likely to have attended school in an urban or suburban area, men more likely to come from rural and small-town communities.
• Parents of women were more highly educated than those of men.
• Roughly equal percentages of participants had fathers with training in science or technology, but notably more women had mothers with such training.
• A much higher percentage of women had mothers who worked outside the home.

From this background description, one may infer what type of background may be favorable for women entering science and engineering.

Gender Differences in Students' Academic Performance

Students with urban and suburban backgrounds consistently outperformed students from rural and small-town areas. Parents' education levels correlated with academic success. Considering the background of the study's female participants, one could reasonably expect women to outperform men. However, in spite of the higher indicators of success possessed by women, this expectation was not fulfilled. Data and background predictions did not match up with what actually occurred. Men received better grades,and retained more of their self-confidence, and more men stayed in chemical engineering than women.

When students run into math difficulties, men are more likely to credit difficulties to challenges inherent in the subject, while women are more likely to explain away failure by lack of ability. This is the first of many discrepancies in men's and women's perceptions of their own performance.

Regarding general academic performance, women are more likely to attribute poor performance to lack of ability, while men more often attribute it to lack of hard work or to unfair treatment. If students do well, women will more likely chalk it up to outside help while men see it as a reinforcement of their own ability.

Regarding course performance, women were asked to indicate what grade would satisfy them and what grade they actually expected to receive in a course. The women's expectations decreased as the term progressed; they downrated their ability and ended up underestimating themselves.

Courses involving group work were included in this study. Although group work was found to be generally positive and well-received by students, the findings inspired the authors to caution educators about potential reactions of students to group work:

• Men were more likely to feel they did more than their fair share of work.
• Women were more likely to feel as though their contributions were undervalued or ignored.
• Men enjoyed the challenge of explaining material to another student.
• Women appreciated personal explanations, but--
• If women passively absorbed information, they tended not to master the material as thoroughly as the men who gave the explanations.

Factors Encouraging/Discouraging Persistence

Too many women begin their engineering courses too readily accepting older studies stating that males are innately superior in certain math reasoning and visual-spatial abilities. Some of the alleged ability differences are contradicted by different experiences, studies with more careful analysis, and less gender bias in standardized testing. For the women who do not realize this, many become discouraged by messages suggesting that science and math are not for them. These messages come subtle but impressionably from home and school (mostly classmates, but some instructors).

As a result, girls lose more confidence than boys in their math/science capabilities on their way from elementary school to high school. When young women reach college, traditional introductory courses that stress individual work and competitive grading tend to discourage women and further erode confidence. The breaking point may be reached during periods of academic difficulty; the study found that:

• Women were more likely than men to switch out of chemical engineering after failing a course.
• Women were more likely than men to switch out in spite of good academic standing.
• Women began their education with better predictors of success than men, yet still dropped out at a higher rate than men.
• These difficulties could be lessened by the development of introducing courses that encourage and reward the "cooperative behavior often necessary in scientific investigation."