Exploring bias in mechanical engineering students' perceptions of classmates.

ABSTRACT: Gender disparity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is an on-going challenge. Gender bias is one of the possible mechanisms leading to such disparities and has been extensively studied. Previous work showed that there was a gender bias in how students perceived the competence of their peers in undergraduate biology courses. We examined whether there was a similar gender bias in a mechanical engineering course. We conducted the study in two offerings of the course, which used different instructional practices. We found no gender bias in peer perceptions of competence in either of the offerings. However, we did see that the offerings' different instructional practices affected aspects of classroom climate, including: the number of peers who were perceived to be parti

SUBMITTER: Salehi S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6405061 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature