February 12, 2024
"Gender diversity in STEM [...] not only promotes fairness; it also broadens talent pools and creates safer, more inclusive work environments that benefit everyone"
Key Takeaways
- By collectively establishing norms that adversity is both common and surmountable, an ecological-belonging intervention changes social contexts in ways that help student in diverse contexts thrive.
- Addressing contextual belongingness and gender diversity criteria helps unlock the benefits of diversity
- Social-psychological interventions have the potential to yield long-term benefits under specific conditions, highlighting the nuanced role of diversity in shaping academic environments and outcomes
Classroom gender diversity, defined as the proportion of women in the class, is considered crucial to establishing high-quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. Though many studies on gender diversity in STEM classrooms suggest that gender-diversity improves individual and group academic performances, analyses indicate that these benefits are insignificant or nonexistent. This prompts the question, when do gender-diverse contexts enhance academic performance? Kevin Binning and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh hypothesize that these benefits are dependent on the social contexts that influence intergroup interaction.
To test their theory, the authors assessed whether the introduction of an ecological-belonging intervention would influence the impact of gender diversity in the course. The intervention was accomplished through a structured approach based on two central ideas. First, that encountering challenges with the course and adapting to college life is a normal experience. Second, these difficulties are usually temporary and can be overcome with time and effort. The study compared the classroom environment in a required course for first-year engineering majors that received the intervention: Basic Physics for Science and Engineering, with a similar course: Analytic Geometry and Calculus 1, that was the control.
Once the intervention took place, students received a survey that assessed their sense of belonging (characterized by statements such as "I feel like I belong in this class," or "I feel like an outsider in this class"), touching on their growth mindset ("Anyone can become good at solving physics problems through hard work," or "Only a few specially qualified people are capable of really understanding physics"), and physics self-efficacy ("If I study, I will do well on a physics test," and "I understand concepts") and the gender composition of their typical working behavior.
In control classrooms, cross-gender collaboration was infrequent and reported by only 28% of students, there was a substantial gender gap in physics classroom belonging, and classroom gender diversity did not affect performance. In classrooms receiving the ecological-belonging intervention, however, cross-gender interaction increased by 51%, the gender gap in belonging was reduced by 47%, and higher classroom diversity was associated with higher course grades and one-year GPAs for both men and women.
This study emphasizes the collaborative nature of gender diversity interventions, which sets healthy standards regarding social and academic adversity, fostering increased collaboration across gender lines and a heightened sense of belonging. These findings underscore the potential of social-psychological interventions to yield long-term benefits under specific conditions and highlight the nuanced role of diversity in shaping academic environments and outcomes.
Read the full paper published in Psychological Science
Binning, K. R., Doucette, D., Conrique, B. G., & Singh, C. (2024). Unlocking the Benefits of Gender Diversity: How an Ecological-Belonging Intervention Enhances Performance in Science Classrooms. Psychological Science.
Written by Sarah Liez
Read more about the study in the March 24, 2024, issue of Psychology Today Gender Diversity in Physics Classes Benefits Men and Women