Gender Differences in Teenagers’ Perceptions and Attitudes toward Sciences
Abstract
The adolescence represents a significant period in the life of an individual, characterized by rapid transformations and evolutions, where new experiences are faced and lived - practically, the most complex stage on the road to maturity. In general, the dynamics of this age is marked by deep crisis, by internal and external conflicts, emerged in the attempts to discover the self-identity. Studies on gender differences in adolescence are focused on issues concerning the formation of self-identity, self-esteem, appearance of crisis that marks this stage and ways to overcome them on educational performance and school success, but also on the existed options of choosing a career or crystalizing the future profession. Differences in the perception and attitude of male and female adolescents are important in terms of discovering the mechanisms that favor to achieve outstanding results, which may generate interest for major topics and motivational support for specific activities. But when Science area (even in the traditional format of Physics-Chemistry-Biology) is presented to adolescences, it seems that it cannot be said that Science peak their interest, being qualified as having rather a negative image for most of them. In this sense, the aim of the paper is to highlight the teen-agers’ perception and their attitude towards scientific activities, taking into account the gender variable, considering the designing of appropriate learning opportunities in relation to students’ interests and particularities. The analysis was performed following the feed-back expressed by 185 high-school students (11th and 12th grades), before the classroom interventions of inquire-based science teaching modules designed in the frame of the European FP7 Project entitled: “PROFILES - Professional Reflection Oriented Focus on Inquiry-based Learning and Education through Science”.
References
[2] Coman A. Stereotipuri de gen în discursul publicitar. O incursiune în patriarhatul mediatic. [Gender stereotypes in the advertising speech. An incursion into the mediatic patriarchy.]. Bucureşti: Editura Economică; 2005. 248 p.
[3] Eurydice/EACEA (ed.). Gender Differences in Educational Outcomes. Study on the Measures Taken and the Current Situation in Europe. Brussels: European Commission; 2010. 142 p.
[4] Forsthuber B. Diferenţele de gen şi efectele lor asupra rezultatelor şcolare: Un studiu privind măsurile întreprinse până în prezent şi situaţia actuală în Europa - document este publicat de Agenţia Executivă pentru Educaţie, Audiovizual şi Cultură (EACEA P9 Eurydice). [Gender differences and their effects on school results: A study on the measures taken so far and the current situation in Europe - document published by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA P9 Eurydice).] [Internet]. 2010 [cited 2017 Mar 31]. Available from: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/ documents/thematic_reports/120RO.pdf
[5] Maccoby EE, Jacklin CN. The psychology of sex differences. Stanford: Stanford University Press; 1974. 634 p.
[6] Hyde JS. The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist. 2005; 60(6): 581-592.
[7] Ardila A, Rosselli M, Matute E, Inozemtseva O. Gender differences in cognitive development. Developmental Psychology. 2011; 47(4): 984-990.
[8] Jones MG, Howe A, Rua MJ. (2000). Gender Differences in Students’ Experiences, Interests, and Attitudes toward Science and Scientists. Science education. 2000; 84(2): 180-192.
[9] Bolte C, Streller S, Rannikmäe M, Hofstein A, Mamlok-Naaman R, Rauch F, Dulle M. Introduction: about PROFILES. In: Bolte C, Holbrook J, Mamlok-Naaman R, Rauch F, editors. Science Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development in Europe. Case Studies from the PROFILES Project. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin / Klagenfurt: Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. 2014; 4-15.
Copyright (c) 2017 LUMEN Proceedings
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported License, permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.