Have you ever wondered why so few girls choose careers in STEM disciplines? A quick answer, perhaps based on a superficial reading of reality, would say that scientific professions are structurally male-dominated: full and total dedication to science, to its timelines, to its “publish or perish” processes. A more careful reading, however, might suggest something more, a cultural structure rooted in the construction of science-based professions that favors the hiring of men rather than women, privileging certain patterns of repetitive syntax rather than a reasoned vision of integration. Equal opportunity and gender equity policies are certainly steering common sentiment toward a revision of cultural patterns and stereotypes, but…is that enough? Is it enough to listen to the stories of those who heroically make it along the way, as if they were ‘extraordinary examples of the human species’? Being a woman and being a scientist is not an act of heroism and cannot be reduced to being treated as such. It is in the ordinariness of career-building processes that we must look carefully and seek a possible, plausible answer to the question we have asked ourselves.
So, let’s start looking for warning signs in the education system, in the processes that build a sense of belonging to the scientific community, in why “I feel capable of thinking scientifically.” To answer these questions, we asked Eugenia Etkina, Distinguished Professor Emerita at Rutgers University in New Jersey, a physicist who was awarded the Millikan Medal in 2015, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) for teaching physics. Rereading her story, we understand how she herself has sought to answer these questions in her life as a researcher.
Eugenia grew up in the Soviet Union, in a family where science was at home: her father was a physicist, her mother a mathematician, as was her sister. So, after graduating with a degree in physics education and deciding to give up a possible career as a professional balerina—at the insistence of her mother, who always told her, “You have to earn your money using your head, not your legs”—she began teaching physics and astronomy at a high school.
The year was 1982. Seventy-five percent of physics teachers were women, because it was considered a low-paying job. The Soviet education system was not very different from the Italian system (today!): transmissive teaching, the teacher explains, assigns an exercise, calls on students at the blackboard, then asks a question about everything they need to know, and failure to answer means public denigration. Such a system humiliates and generates fear. Eugenia did not want to do that.
Throughout her entire teaching career, she never called anyone up to the blackboard to undergo such emotional and cognitive torture. Yet, unfortunately, this is still how the system works today. This is our first warning sign.
In 1995, , Eugenia arrived in the United States, began working at Rutgers University, teaching physics to “at-risk students,” and in the meantime earned her PhD in Russia in teaching physics to gifted students.
Her work was revolutionary, but she needed to discuss and share her ideas with those who had been researching physics education for years. She also found herself in a situation that was different from the one she had left behind:
physics teaching was predominantly male, and there was a different cultural perception of her role in society. So, tentatively, she studied and tried to put into practice the teaching models she encountered in this new context. Above all, the research proposed the adoption of the POE (Predict-Observe-Explain) approach, which is still widely used in teaching practice today.
Eugenia tried to use it in her university courses for teacher training. She observed the female students in her course being scared to make predictions of the outcomes of the experiments before seeing them for the fear of being wrong and feeling discouraged when their prediction did not match the outcome of the experiment. As the demand to make predictions using their intuition repeated in every class, their confidence and desire to participate started slowly decreasing. Why was that? Eugenia thought that while making predictions of a new experiment having no idea what is going on and then seeing the unmatching results was creating cognitive conflict, which was considered productive for learning, it was not productive for students’ self-esteem. Was it important that the students felt good about themselves when learning physics? Eugenia answered this question positively. It was as important as learning the physics concepts for all students but for female students it was crucial. Without feeling that they could learn physics, that they belong in physics, their study of physics turned into a mechanical memorization of the right answers, not the understanding of the fundamentals of physics as a science.
The teaching approach to physics that she wanted to develop could and had to never put all students in a position where they felt afraid to respond. Added to this was another warning sign:
girls are invisible in the eyes of teachers. Take a fourth-grade class: the teacher asks a question, some hands go up, the teacher calls only on the boys. Unfortunately, this happens very often. This is what Eugenia observed while working with primary school teachers teaching science. The female teacher never called on the girls, only the boys. When Eugenia asked her why, she responded that she didn’t even realize that she was always doing this: it came automatically to her, and in doing so she probably undermined what little confidence the girls had in themselves.
These three warning signs—humiliation in the classroom, the construction of cognitive-emotional barriers, and invisibility—led Eugenia to devote her entire life to developing and promoting a teaching approach for physics called Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE). For thirty years, ISLE has been revolutionizing the way teachers and students behave in the classroom while teaching and learning physics, overcoming the obstacles that traditional teaching methods (and many reformed methods) unfortunately still create today.
The stories of the girls who have experienced ISLE speak of integration, a sense of belonging, creativity, and confidence in their own abilities. This is no coincidence; it is happening all over the world, in all classrooms where teachers, inspired by the work of Eugenia, and Slovenian physics teacher educator Gorazd Planinšič, and many other teachers and researchers trained in ISLE, are trying to build a new school.
We must believe in this new school, where a bell is ringing—can you hear it?— telling us that it is time for change.
Valentina Bologna
contract professor at the University of Trieste
PhD in Physics
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