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Gender-related differences in technology education related to problem solving

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this study was to compare the achievement of girls and boys in the area of Technology Education, primarily in the area of problem solving. In today’s society, particularly in the secondary school setting, the courses taught under the auspices of Technology Education are chosen primarily by males. This gender unbalanced enrollment, has been directly influenced by the way society has split up the labour force for centuries by deeming some tasks as those largely performed by males, and others as those performed by females. Although the feminist movement has helped change the perspective of "boys classes", "girls classes", "boys things", "girls things", the trend still remains that most girls tend to continue in the traditional line of Home Economics and Family Management courses, while the boys choose to enrol in courses of a Technological and Scientific nature. This study was carried out on an equal number of girls and boys at the grade 8 level at a large sub-urban secondary school. The primary focus of the study was to test the hypothesis that given a problem to solve in the area of Technology Education, there would-be no differences between the achievement of boys or girls. The study showed that there was no significant difference in the achievement of boys or girls (p < 0.10).

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2008-09-16

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/2067

Mathematics Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace