edpsych podcast audio

The podcast discusses the under-representation of women in STEM and how the learning environment and biases in these fields contribute to this issue. The first exposure to STEM courses usually happens in K-12 schooling, and girls face obstacles in this stage as well as throughout their careers. STEM courses require hands-on learning and active problem-solving skills. Girls who take leadership roles can be seen as bossy, discouraging their participation. Stereotypes about girls' intelligence in subjects like math and science also exist. Personal experiences and the learning environment can shape girls' mindset and limit their access to STEM careers. The podcast highlights the importance of supportive and inclusive environments in K-12 schooling to encourage girls in STEM. Female role models and a lack of gender-based competition can make a difference in girls' participation. Intervening in K-12 schooling can lead to more women in STEM careers in the future. Welcome to my Educational Psychology podcast and today's episode, Women's Problems with STEM, A Rose Full of Thorns. I'm Ansley Herron. Today, I'm going to talk about the experience of women in STEM and how the environment and learning in specific content areas affects the under-representation of women in STEM. However, first, I need to outline my topics. There are many reasons for the under-representation of women in STEM, and there are plenty of biases in these fields that make it harder for women to enter careers in STEM and be successful in their educational career. This issue extends through all ages of schooling and career, and it is important to note that even when K-12 schooling creates girls who are knowledgeable and capable of having success in STEM careers, there are still many obstacles that women have to face once they actually get into the field. A lot of these issues stem from the experience that girls have in their K-12 schooling since this is where the first exposure to STEM courses usually takes place. The educational psychology example I'm investigating is learning in different content areas. Different subject areas must be taught differently in order for students to best learn the material and ones that start to get tricky are STEM courses. Math and science courses are harder than other courses and require a lot of base knowledge and understanding of scientific principles, and they also require that students feel comfortable in their environments in order to succeed. Trying to understand complex science and math requires a lot of brainpower, so being comfortable in your environment really is a must. STEM courses require hands-on learning and actively using problem-solving abilities. When learning in STEM classes, an important key to success is actually participating in the science itself, instead of passively learning about it through lectures. In order for students to do their best and actively participate, the classrooms needs to foster an accepting and challenging environment where students can learn, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and grow. It is extremely important to be an active participant in science in order to learn in K-12 schooling, but there is another issue for girls who want to lead teams during school. Instead of being seen as assertive like their male counterparts, girls who act as leaders can be perceived as bossy. This is extremely discouraging and an unfair advantage for girls who want to do the same thing as their male classmates and can lead to lowered participation out of fear of being judged by their classmates. STEM is based on collaboration, so if girls feel like they can't take the lead in collaborative settings, it makes it much harder for them to exist comfortably in scientific spaces. Girls and boys have different experiences in their K-12 learning, even if they're put in the same setting. There are still unfortunately stereotypes about girls not being as smart as boys in school, and in content areas like math and science that require a lot of work, it can be discouraging for girls to hear. I know that when I was growing up, I personally felt that I couldn't do math because I kept hearing those stereotypes, and it drastically affected the way I was learning in my science and math-based courses. In places where I could have been encouraged to participate and truly learn the material, I was left behind. When I was falling behind in those foundational STEM courses, it made it harder for me to catch up in the later STEM classes like pre-calculus, and because of my discouragement, I actually avoided calculus and physics altogether in high school. I know that I took it as a personal failure, and I kept that mindset with me for a long time. I consider myself to have a growth mindset, but there still is something in the back of my mind telling me that I would never be successful in learning complex math even if I tried my hardest. These are mindsets that can be internalized during K-12 schooling, and since K-12 is setting students up to search for a career, these limiting beliefs make STEM careers more inaccessible for girls who've had a bad experience with STEM in grade school. Before this podcast, I talked to my friend Ava, a woman in STEM. She's a cognitive science major looking to attend medical school after she graduates, and she had different experiences to draw from regarding STEM classes because she attended a co-ed school for middle school and an all-girls school in high school. While attending co-ed school, she felt discouraged in STEM classes because of the environment, and she was coddled by some of her teachers in these subject areas. I can't emphasize this enough when it comes to learning science in K-12. It is necessary to participate in science and feel like a scientist. Ava wasn't able to participate as much in her STEM classes because she wasn't actively challenged the way her male peers were. When she worked through a problem, it was good enough, but when her male classmate finished his work, he was given more problems to get through. This uneven treatment made it noticeably harder for the girls in her co-ed classes to feel supported, challenged, or like a scientist. It is very unlikely that her teachers were the only ones to engage in this treatment of their students. Having male classmates who are often louder and more competitive than her made her nervous, leading her to participate less while in co-ed classes. We know how important it is to participate in science while learning in these content areas. This environment affecting her participation could have been discouraging and making it seem like a STEM career would not be a good fit for her as a girl. She was lucky to have access to STEM early on, but the environment of competitiveness and unequal treatment made it likely a cause of under-representation of women in STEM. When girls don't see women in STEM, they might not see it as a possibility for them. When Ava transferred to an all-girls high school, she was able to see female role models in STEM, helping her and the other girls to envision themselves in roles in STEM. The environment completely changed the way she was able to learn, and she was finally able to participate in her STEM classes in a way that supported her STEM career development. She felt more comfortable participating in science labs, and she participated much more in her classes. Since her peers were all girls, she did not feel any gender-based competition, and she didn't hear stereotypes about the sex differences in schooling. When thinking about learning in different content areas, it isn't just enough to engage students through STEM exposure. We need to think about the environments that underlie STEM courses and the different experiences that girls have when encountering these tough subjects. Instead of a competitive atmosphere, we need to make sure that girls have resources and support to succeed in these classes early on, so that they can build on their confidence and be more comfortable participating in these classes. After establishing a supportive environment, girls also need to be challenged in the same way their male peers are and have access to get involved in STEM early on. The K-12 involvement of girls in STEM has been growing, but there's so much more we can do to allow more women to be represented in STEM, and not only entry-level positions, but also leadership positions. By fighting gender stereotypes and creating a more inclusive and supportive school environment, I expect that we can see more girls in STEM in the future. By intervening in K-12 schooling, we will definitely see a difference in the later careers of women in the United States. This has been Ansley Herron, and thank you so much for listening and learning along with me about women's experiences in STEM content areas and how that affects the underrepresentation of women in STEM. I hope we can all look forward to a future of roses with fewer thorns on their stems.