Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation

Abstract

Writing to Close Gaps Some have questioned whether findings in the laboratory obtained under controlled conditions and limited contexts bear any relevance to behavior in real-world environments in which ordinary people cope with real-life challenges. Recent studies have shown a replicable and long-term effect of a brief writing exercise on the academic performance of African-American seventh graders in an inner-city public school. Miyake et al. (p. 1234 ) extended this approach to show that a similar kind of writing exercise can help to reduce the gender gap observed in the performance of female students in an undergraduate physics class, where performance is measured not only via course grades and exam scores, but also on a standardized test.