Dr. Sarah's Handout on Positive Effects

Compiled with the help of Andrew Nestler

Some quotes from research concluding that teaching methods designed to identify and eliminate gender bias have positive effects on male students as well as female students

``Not only are more women and people of color likely to become scientists, but also more men may choose careers in science, since these improved methods have been shown to also be attractive to white males." -- Sue Rosser in ``Female-Friendly Science'' citing Jane B. Kahle's 1985 ``Women In Science"

``Although evolved to attract men of color, women, and others underrepresented in the pool of scientists, these techniques have been shown to be as successful -- or more so -- for white males." -- Cinda-Sue Davis and Sue Rosser in ``Program And Curricular Interventions" in the best ``The Equity Equation" citing Rosser and Kelly's 1994 ``From Hostile Exclusion To Friendly Inclusion"

``Males who perceived mathematics teachers as treating males the same as females tended to take more mathematics." -- Jane M. Armstrong in ``National Assessment of Women In Mathematics" in the 1985 text ``Women And Mathematics: Balancing The Equation"

Here are some sources of research concluding that teaching methods designed to identify and eliminate gender bias have positive effects on male students as well as female students:

Susan McGee Bailey (1996). Shortchanging girls and boys. Educational Leadership 53 (8): 75 - 79.

Kathryn A. Wheeler (1993), How schools can stop shortchanging girls (and boys): Gender equity strategies. Wellesley, MA: Center for the Research on Women.

The two works above appear as references in the 1998 book Feisty females: Inspiring girls to think mathematically by Karen Karp, E. Todd Brown, Linda Allen and Candy Allen. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Jane M. Armstrong (1985). National assessment of women in mathematics. Women and mathematics: Balancing the equation. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.

S.V. Rosser and B. Kelly (1994). From hostile exclusion to friendly inclusion: USC System Model Project for the transformation of science and math teaching to reach women in varied campus settings. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 1 (1), 29 - 44.

Additional References

There's an interesting article "Toward A Feminist Algebra," about choosing good word problems, in the book Teaching the majority: Breaking the gender barrier in Science, mathematics and Engineering, edited by Sue Rosser. Interestingly, that article shows women's and men's track times, decreasing, plotted with linear regressions. Only this article uses the data to conclude that at some point the women's times will meet the men's times (right!). i.e. they mistakenly/fraudulently assume that the times will decrease linearly forever (to zero??).

Myra Sadker and David Sadker (1994). Failing at fairness: How America's schools cheat girls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1992). How schools shortchange girls: The AAUW report. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.