The In-Class Questions of Science and Engineering Students: A Gender-Based Perspective

Research in Educational Sciences has suggested that a student’s participation in the classroom varies according to their gender. In STEM fields of higher education, male students tend to participate more in class than female students. However, with respect to the specific form of participation represented by students’ questioning, the conclusions of the existing studies are not yet perfectly overlapping in their findings. Considering that the posing of questions by students is one of the activities that reveal greater student participation and involvement in class, we aimed to investigate and characterize the questioning patterns of male and female students in chemistry classes and within the contexts of various teaching strategies designed to encourage their questioning. In an effort to contribute to a deeper understanding of student questioning in higher education, and with a particular focus on gender differences, this study also sought to identify the contexts and conditions that are more conducive to questioning by male and female students. This study was conducted in two first-year chemistry classes attended by sciences and engineering students at a Portuguese university, following a mixed methodology. Concerning the students’ questioning patterns, specifically in terms of their frequency and contextual occurrence, our findings showed that although in the first semester the female students asked fewer questions in class than the male students, in proportion to the representation of each gender in the class, this trend was reversed in the second semester. As the year developed and students became more acquainted with each other, female students asked more questions. The number of questions asked in each phase of the study leads us to conclude that, with respect to asking questions, female students benefit from strategies that foster familiarisation with the context. On the other hand, male students do not benefit from an increased familiarisation with the context.