Turn-Taking Behaviors in the Physics Classroom

This study adds to the literature on the persisting gender gap in STEM by examining the participation trends of women and men undergraduate students in the physics classroom. Specifically, this study builds on the existing literature of proportions in group interaction originally theorized by Kanter (1977) and investigates the turn-taking behaviors of women and men in classes that differ in their relative levels of gender representation. This study posed four hypotheses: That women will average less oral participation in the physics classroom than men, that more highly skewed classes will result in greater differences in men's and women's participation, that there will be an observable tipping point in women's participation, and that women's average participation will go up with the proportion of women in the classroom. These hypotheses were tested in 10 physics classrooms over the course of one class period each. The student-initiated turns during these class periods were coded by individual turn-taker. These data were analyzed to determine differences between men and women students' turn-taking behaviors in the physics classroom in relation to the proportion of women and men in the classroom. Findings indicate that women did average less participation than men in the physics classroom. However, the data do not point to a consistent relationship between increases in proportions of women in the physics class and increases in women's participation in the class.