Factors affecting classroom involvement of women engineering students

The “chilly classroom climate” is a term created by Bernice Sandler and Roberta Hall in 1982 to describe the causes and consequences related to lack of confidence, lack of acknowledgment and devaluation of female students. Research implies the chilly classroom climate is especially a problem for female students in engineering. This research project focused on the classroom climate for female engineering students in the hopes to identify strategies to recruit, enroll and retain more women in this field.; This study examined the relationships between women's level of gender identity, learning styles preference, and perceptions of the classroom environment and how these factors affected each other as well as their collective influence on women's self-reported level of classroom involvement in core engineering courses. Participants were 146 undergraduate female engineering students from the University Park campus, of The Pennsylvania State University.; The study included four assessment instruments and one demographic information sheet. The demographic information sheet obtained relevant background information, including race/ethnicity, age, major, class standing, cumulative GPA, and socioeconomic status. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Form M assessed students' learning style preference. The Salter Environmental Type Assessment (SETA) Experimental Form B was used to assess students' perceptions of the classroom environment. The Gender Interconnection Scale (GIS) measured the students' gender connection to men and women. The Classroom Involvement Survey (CIS) was designed to assess the level of students' participation in classroom environments focusing on their self-reported behaviors pertaining to involvement. Classroom involvement included aspects of student participation in and out of class.; Stepwise regression analysis was used to determine whether the independent variables (learning style, classroom environment and gender connection) explained a statistically significant amount of variance in the dependent variable (students' level of classroom involvement).; Based on the results of this study, strategies for creating warmer, more extraverted and feeling oriented classroom environments that are more open and encouraging to student involvement are discussed. Such environments can make a significant difference in the recruitment, enrollment and retention of engineering students and especially for women engineering students. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...