• Open Access

Gender differences in grades versus grade penalties: Are grade anomalies more detrimental for female physics majors?

Alysa Malespina and Chandralekha Singh
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 18, 020127 – Published 21 October 2022

Abstract

Creating equitable learning environments has been an area of significant focus for physics education researchers in recent years. Here we introduce a framework that posits that grade penalty is a measure of academic self-concept and investigate if there are gender differences in grade penalties in physics courses for students majoring in physics. In order to quantify grade penalty, we define grade anomaly as the difference between a student’s grade in a course under consideration and their grade point average (GPA) in all other classes thus far. A grade anomaly lower than students expected grade based on their GPA is a grade penalty and higher than expected average grade is a grade bonus. Our framework posits that since women have traditionally been marginalized in physics, female physics majors are more likely to be negatively impacted by a grade penalty in their courses since their academic self-concept as a physics major hinges on them securing a certain grade. In the study presented here, we examine the average grade anomalies across a number of courses for female and male physics majors. We find that these students received grade penalties in almost all physics courses studied, though there were grade bonuses in a few laboratory courses. We also find that in physics courses, on average, women often had larger grade penalties than men, especially in introductory courses. We hypothesize that, because their grade penalties are often larger than men’s, women’s decisions to pursue a physics major and career may be particularly affected by grade penalties received in their various courses. Furthermore, the grade penalty measure can be easily computed by the physics programs concerned with equity.

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  • Received 19 January 2022
  • Accepted 11 July 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.020127

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics Education Research

Authors & Affiliations

Alysa Malespina* and Chandralekha Singh

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA

  • *alm417@pitt.edu Also at Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA.
  • clsingh@pitt.edu

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 18, Iss. 2 — July - December 2022

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