Race Matters, but not Gender

Some new results point out that having black teachers has an important impact on getting black students to continue in science.  What’s particularly interesting for me is that they did not find that gender of teachers had a particular impact on female students.  This echoes a finding by Joanne Cohoon about computer science from several years ago, but I do keep hearing from teachers that having female teachers is critical for getting female students to succeed in computing. Joanne found that the gender of the teacher didn’t matter — it was encouragement that mattered, whether from a female or male teacher.

A new study points to another factor: the role of black college instructors in encouraging black science students to persist as science majors. The study finds a statistically significant relationship between black students who plan to be a science major having at least one black science instructor as freshmen and then sticking to their plans. The finding could be significant because many students (in particular members of under-represented minority groups) who start off as science majors fail to continue on that path — so a change in retention of science majors could have a major impact. At the same time, the study did not find a similar impact based on gender.

via News: Race Matters – Inside Higher Ed.