What is your Policy on Gender in Science Education?

1. introduction

The Science Department  is committed to achieving equal participation by all students,from Year 7 to year 13.  The Faculty will take action to promote awareness of the curriculum implications of an equal opportunities policy in science.  Consequently, this policy statement should be viewed in the context of the school's overall policy on equal opportunities.

The Science Department  recognises that it must monitor and evaluate its own practice and organisation in order to ensure that gender equity is an essential feature of all its activities.

All teachers will take steps to provide a science education that is equally encouraging,supportive and challenging to both girls and boys.

The Faculty warmly embraces the concept of Science for All .

It is also recognised that students' willingness to learn and that equal access is only a starting point to achieving a scientifically-literate population.

All teachers recognise the whole-school contributions that science ,by its very nature,is obliged to deliver.  These include aspects of social,technological and economic awareness, health education, and to relate issues in a European and Global  Community, and to consider aspects of science which relate to different cultures and beliefs.

2. Rationale

The ways in which girls and boys respond to the content and style of science education are different.  Their responses are influenced by their own attitudes and expectations, by those of their teachers and by the perceived opportunities for employment.  Their perceptions are often based on outdated and inaccurate assumptions about the role of women and men at home and in the work place.  The situation cannot be tackled without considering the values transmitted by the overt an hidden curriculum and the attitudes which we are cultivating in a nd out of the science classroom.

The Faculty believes that those who teach science strategies to redress the imbalances created by pupils' previous gender-differentiated experiences.In meeting the challenge, the support of a wide range of other agencies will also be required.  Support and active involvement from parents and employers, and the media, are all required to address the issues of imbalance.

3. The Policy

(a) Approaches to Teaching and Learning

All curriculum schemes should be reviewed on a regular basis, to ensure that science is shown as a human activity which relates to people's lives.

Teaching and learning styles should:

* Explore and build upon the personal experiences of pupils of both sexes,and provide compensatory experiences to avoid reinforcing existing bias;

* Enable girls and boys to practice a wide range of skills in a non-threatening environment;

* Enable boys and girls to test out their own ideas

* Provide opportunities for working in groups of various sizes and composition as well as individually;

* Provide opportunities for students of both sexes to express themselves both verbally and in written forms.

* Provide opportunities for pupils of both sexes to make evaluative statements about the role of science and technology in society;

* Develop the knowledge and understanding objectives in the context of social and personal responsibility and morality;

* Involve pupils in discussion about sex-stereotyping.

(b) Assessment

The Faculty recognises that assessment schemes should complement equal opportunities. Students should be able to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses, and therefore influence their own learning, by the setting of targets.

The Faculty appreciates the need for formative and diagnostic assessment which will contribute to and enhance this aspect of teaching and learning.