Gender Bias

• The topic that I am considering is the gender bias in STEM education especially at a young age. Girls are discouraged to participate in STEM education because it is a male dominated career field.
  1. Challenges and opportunities for engaging girls in STEM at an early age
• In what ways can we change this idea that STEM education is only meant for males?
• Answer to this question:
  1. Main body paragraph topics:
     1. Get girls interested in science and engineering at a young age.
     2. Counteract bias and raise awareness
  2. Can talk about, but not a main topic:
     1. Create college environments that support women in science and engineering.

Introduction:

Talk about what people think of when they think of an engineer. White male dominated field and then change their vision. Make them think of what the future holds and why women should be represented.

Paragraph Ideas:

• I want to focus mainly on the gender bias issue here where its “abnormal” for girls to want to play with Legos or building blocks. I can also pull some quotes from the TED talk about GoldieBlox
• Challenges for engaging girls
  • They’re expected to not like boy toys
  • They think they’re not smart enough
  • They get discouraged
• Solutions to these issues
  • Make coding a language taught in school
    • Why only foreign languages?
  • Continue to change the norm of toys and create a higher demand for engineering unisex/girl toys
    • GoldieBlox
    • Jewelbots
  • Continue to motivate and educate
    • Follow the progress of students throughout schooling to keep them interested
  • People stop talking about the issue and actually do something about it
• Opportunities
  • People will not think of engineering or STEM careers as male dominated

 

 

Rubric:

Objectives:

Following the course discussions and activities, students will be able to critically research, discuss and analyze one or more important topics related to STEM education and present their findings in a research paper.

 

Overview:

Throughout this course, we have explored a range of issues related to STEM education at the local, national and international level including testing regimes, education policy, and gender and diversity issues.  Due to the topical survey nature of the course, these issues were discussed only superficially.  This assignment is designed to allow you to explore one or more of these topics in more detail.  You may choose one of the areas we have discussed or research one that we have not, for example special education and STEM, the effectiveness of a particular initiative, etc.

 

Please consult with the instructor if you are looking to research a particularly different activity or you have an idea that is not a traditional research paper-

Ex. Creating an annotated lesson plan/ curriculum book for Legos or FIRST teams.

 

How will you be evaluated?

You will be evaluated on the following criteria

On time	/10
Grammar and spelling- Paper is written to the quality of an academic/ College Park scholar.  There are very few grammar and spelling errors.	/15
Topic and introduction- ·         The research topic is clearly stated.  There is a clearly stated problem or question ·         The paper presents an introductory paragraph. ·         A road map for the paper is introduced in the introductory paragraph.	/20
Research- ·         Student locates appropriate scholarly and other research material. ·         Students should and can consult both scholarly and popular materials. ·         Research is appropriately cited in APA format (or another, but be consistent). ·         You may or may not want to include your classroom experience as “evidence” in your paper. (Hint: use the modules/ instructor)	/15
Content – ·         The paper is organized. ·         Claims and arguments are well thought out and summarized.  Student provides and cites evidence for claims. ·         Again, feel free to include “evidence” from your school experience.	/25
Areas for further research and Conclusion: ·         The student is able to point out limits to the paper, areas where there are information gaps, where further research may be necessary or where there are additional questions. ·         Student is able to summarize and synthesize the main points of the paper into a concluding paragraph	/15
Total	/100