| The demand for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skilled workers is outpacing the rate at which they are produced from universities in the United States (US); this is particularly true for female students in the physical sciences. The gender gap for interest in STEM subjects is not present in students in the early grades. Yet, studies demonstrate that from the time a girl enters school in kindergarten until the time she begins her senior year of high school, chances are she will have lost much of that interest in STEM subjects as compared to her male peers. Indeed, only about 36% of undergraduate STEM degrees and 19% of undergraduate physics degrees were awarded to US women in 2015.;This study used a pre/post intervention designed to offer students choices of different contexts (biological/health, sports, and traditional) for physics problems. These choices were intended to potentially increase the interest of students, especially females, in the subject matter - with the intention of also positively impacting their achievement. Students' interests, beliefs, conceptual understanding, and motivation toward learning physics in a high school unit on Newton's Laws were examined before and following their completion of an online homework unit composed of these problems. This study was informed by Artino's social-cognitive model of academic motivation and emotion, using choice in an online learning environment (WebAssign) to see if this experience would lead to different academic outcomes. Three research questions guided this study. When given assignment choices designed around gender stereotype: Which types of physics problems do males and females select? Are there any differences in achievement of males and females, and is this related to the types of physics questions they select or other factors?; What are students' attitudes toward, beliefs about, and interest in physics, and what accounts for any changes that occur over the unit?;Seventy-one students in high school physics classes, from five US states, participated in this mixed methods study. Homework problems created on WebAssign were designed, based on the literature, to investigate the role that the context of a physics question has on the type of physics problems male and female students prefer. Three contexts were used: traditional, biological/health, and sports. Fifteen written questions and six questions using a video format made up the intervention. After answering a question, students were prompted to explain their reason for choosing that version of the problem. All of the homework problems were scored, most of which had two or three parts. Students were allowed to re-do a homework problem, for a maximum of five 'tries.' The online program also kept track of the order of the choices made by students and the amount of time they spent on the homework problems. Participants were given the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) to evaluate students' conceptual knowledge, and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) to measure changes in attitudes, both pre-and post-intervention.;Compared with males, females saw improvements from pre to post measure in the Sense Making category of the CLASS, but saw decreases in attitudes on items used in the Problem Solving, Problem Solving Confidence, Conceptual Understanding, and Real World and Personal Interests categories. Females showed gains in trusting their calculations, compared with male students, if the calculation gave a result that was different from what they initially expected, but females also were less likely to expect that physics equations would help their understanding and that they were just for calculations. Males saw a decrease in being satisfied with working on a problem until they understood why it worked the way it does, as compared with their initial attitude. However, students reported interest in the context was a major factor in their reasons for selecting the questions they chose. While female students showed significant improvement on the FCI as compared with males, certain aspects of females' attitudes towards physics decreased.;It was hoped that the intervention would address students' interest in physics, as measured on the CLASS, yet that for the most part did not happen. However, the intervention did lead to gains on sense making for the females, but not the male students. And students scored highly on the homework assignment, which were closely correlated with the FCI scores. Thus, the intervention, at least for the females, increased their achievement on the FCI, and all students seemed to enjoy the choice and engaging with the video problems. Suggestions for future studies are shared. |
