Session Information
Session 8A, Higher Education and Equality Studies
Papers
Time:
2005-09-09
11:00-12:30
Room:
Agric. G24
Chair:
Barbara Zamorski
Contribution
In January 2002 the faculty of education at the University of Hamburg launched a four year project entitled 'Degendering Science - Extending the Conception and Curriculum of the Natural Sciences'. Our aim is to change the education in physics, chemistry and other sciences into an attractive field for young people and especially for young women by incorporating their criticism and demands. They ask for the integration of interdisciplinary aspects into scientific education and demand to break the taboo on addressing gender problems within science. For this reason we have extended the curriculum of science education by adding new items and issues to this field, most of all by discussing the social dimension of science and the gender question in science. We have developed interdisciplinary courses for undergraduate and graduate students coming from the fields of science education (teacher training), educational science and gender studies. The courses are about women and men in science, ethical values, biomedical constructions of sex and gender, gender in physical perceptions, scientific controversies, scientific knowledge, scientific socialisation and scientific practice. These courses on gender and science have been studied and evaluated on empirical grounds. Up to now more than 100 questionnaires provide information on the reasons of the students to attend the class, whether or not their concerns in gender studies and natural science did change during the course, whether or not they could make important experiences.As a second step and based on the experience with the interdisciplinary courses we developed a 'Module on Gender Studies and Natural Science'. This module will help to guide students from different disciplinary fields and with different previous knowledge through the subject called gender and science. It is composed of six courses of different degrees of difficulty: (i) basic courses, (ii) courses of advances level and (iii) research courses. And the students are supposed to choose four out of them. In the forthcoming period of internationalisation and reorganisation of undergraduate and graduate studies at our university we plan to attach this module to master programs in natural science education (teacher training), educational science, gender studies but also computer science and natural sciences. In my paper I will present selected courses on Gender and Science and their evaluation results. My special focus will be the detailed description on the 'Module on Gender Studies and Natural Science'. I would then like to invite the audience to discuss their experience of bridging the gap between natural science and gender studies in higher education.
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