The effect of first high school science teacher's gender and gender matching on students' science identity in college

Abstract

To encourage the formation of science identity among girls, many scholars and practitioners have suggested to assign same-gender science teachers to students so that the teachers can serve as gender role models. However, direct evidence of any long-term effect of gender-matching is scarce. In a nationally representative survey of college students from the United States, we investigated if gender-matching between students and their first high school science teachers was associated with students' stronger identity in those science subjects in college. In physics, we found no gender-matching effect. In chemistry, there was a gender-matching effect only for women students. In biology, there were gender-matching effects for students of both genders. In addition, we found that students in general had a lower science identity if they reported a negative influence of opposite gender domination (IOGD) on their career choices. However, for female students who were at the negative end of the IOGD scale, female biology teachers raised the level of biology identity to the grand average. Our findings suggested that the gender role model effect was strongest when the gender role models resonated with the overall disciplinary gender representation at the school or societal levels.