GISEL Boys and Girls Interest on Physics in Different Context Kalle Juuti, Jari Lavonen, Anna Uitto, Reijo Byman & Veijo Meisalo Department of Teacher Education University of Helsinki Mirror Gisel-project

GISEL Background ROSE[1] (The Relevance of Science Education) is an international comparative project based at the University of Oslo, Norway.[1] Develop theoretical perspectives sensitive to the diversity of backgrounds (cultural, social, gender etc.) of pupils for discussion of priorities relating to S&T education. Collect, analyse and discuss data from a wide range of countries and cultural contexts. Develop policy recommendations for the improvement of curricula, textbooks and classroom activities based on the findings above. [1] © Dept. of Teacher Education and School Development, University of Oslo, Box 1099 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway and Svein Sjøberg

GISEL Research question How boys and girls interest on physics differ in different contexts?

GISEL Sample Randomly 75 schools in Finland About 65 students were asked to answer the survey Altogether we selected 4954 students to the survey 81 % of selected schools answered the survey 3699 students

GISEL Questionnaire What I want to learn about international items 17 national items 25 four level likert-type questionnaire not interested – very interested

GISEL Context sum-variable Six contexts: (in mechanics content) 1. Ideal context (Force and movement) 2. Science and technology in society, (Trafic safety) 3. Technical applications, ( Tension forces in bridges) 4. Relation with human being, (muscles and how they are burden) 5. Practical work and investigations, (investigate force phenomena) 6. Technical construction (to design a toy, a tool or a construction)

GISEL Distributions of sum variables Ideal STS Tecn. appl Human beeing Practical work Construction

GISEL Correlations

GISEL Average of the sum variables __Contextavg_girlsavg_boys___ Ideal:1,82,2 STS:2,02,4 Technical applications:1,92,4 Human being:2,32,3 Investigation:2,02,1 Technical construction:1,92,2________ Mean differences between boys and girls are statistically significant

GISEL Mean differences between boys and girls ContextMean differenceeffect size Phenomenon:-0,36-0,59 c) STS:-0,29-0,35 b) Technical application:-0,56-1,00 d) Human being: -0,03-0,05 a) Investigation: -0,16-0,25 b) construction: -0,31-0,50 b) Criteria for effect size (Cohen, J. (1987). Statistical power analysys for the behavioral sciences (Rev. ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. a) Under 0,2 Not effectc) under 0,8 moderate b) under 0,5 smalld) over 0,8 large

GISEL Distributions in the technological application context Girls Boys sum variable score f

GISEL Discussion Boys are more interested in physics than girls in every context Contexts in order of effects sizes  Technical application, Phenomenon, construction, STS, Investigation, Human being In human being-context there was not meaningful differences between boys and girls Still, overlapping between boys and girls distributions. ”traditional” examples in physics textbooks?