FCI Normalized Gain, Scientific Reasoning Ability, Thinking In Physics, And Gender Effects

We observe no significant effect of gender on grades in our IE introductory mechanics courses at Loyola Marymount University, but we do observe a significant gender gap on FCI normalized gains, with males achieving higher gains than females. Over the past three years, FCI gains have improved for both male and female students in IE classes taught with the Thinking in Physics (TIP) pedagogy. However, a gender gap on FCI gains remains, even when scientific reasoning abilities are taken into account. Indeed, the gap appears much greater for students with the strongest scientific reasoning skills and the highest FCI gains. Data from IE introductory physics courses using modeling at Edward Little High School in Maine show a similar result with some additional data showing a reverse gender gap for those students with very weak scientific reasoning skills.