Looking inside high school science classrooms: An exploration of males' and females' subjective experience

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This project will provide a descriptive account of what a variety of high school science contexts feel like from the perspective of female and male students. This three-year project, to be conducted through Northern Illinois University, is focused on immediate outcomes; namely, individuals' momentary levels of cognitive and affective engagement while involved in everyday science activity. The project will systematically record students' classroom experiences as they happen, linking various aspects of subjective experience to specific courses, content units, and classroom activities. Using a combination of surveys, interviews, classroom observations, and experience sampling techniques, this mixed-methods research will make a unique contribution to the understanding of the daily processes that contribute to the engagement of both females and males in science. The intellectual merit of this project is that it will provide crucial foundational knowledge about students? actual experiences in science classes. This information will fill a gap in the literature in science education in that it will explore affective processes involved in learning. The broader impact of this project is that it could have substantial effects on instructional practices, course design and curriculum in high school science education. The project is positioned to produce a strong knowledge base about the affective and motivational components of science learning, linking particular subjective states to specific courses, content units, and instructional practices. Beyond this, if the expected gender differences are found in students? subjective experience, the findings could suggest specific ways to alter science curricula in an effort to fully engage males and females in science classrooms.