Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH
Volume 14, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.14.020123
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [DUE-1524575]
- James S. McDonnell Foundation [220020483]
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Self-efficacy can affect performance, career goals, and persistence. Prior studies show that female students have lower self-efficacy than male students in various science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains, and the self-efficacy gap is a factor that contributes to the low representation of female students in STEM. However, prior research has not decoupled self-efficacy differences from performance differences. This study examines the self-efficacy of male and female students with similar performance in introductory physics courses and investigates whether gender gaps in self-efficacy are persistent across different instructors and course formats. Students filled out a self-efficacy in physics survey before physics 1, before physics 2, and at the end of physics 2. Students' achievement was measured by their performance on research-based conceptual physics tests and course grades. The physics courses were taught by several instructors and varied in the type of pedagogy used, with some using a flipped format and others using a traditional, lecture-based format. We found that female students had lower self-efficacy than male students at all performance levels in both physics 1 and physics 2. The self- efficacy gaps continued to grow throughout the introductory physics course sequence, regardless of course format (i.e., traditional or flipped) and instructor. The findings suggest that female students' self-efficacy was negatively impacted by their experiences in introductory physics courses, and this result is persistent across various instructors and course formats. Female students' lower self-efficacy compared to similarly performing male students can result in detrimental short-term and long-term impacts.
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