Project-Based Learning and Gender Inclusion in Secondary STEM Education

The purpose of this study was to examine the different effects of project-based and lecture-driven teaching methods on female high school engineering students. Participants were male and female high school students who were enrolled in a three-year-long engineering class. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that included a Likert scale section where students answered on a 1-5 scale, 1 meaning a strong disagreement and 5 meaning a strong agreement. The Likert scale questions consisted of lecture-favorable and project-favorable statements. The responses from each question were categorized into female and male averages. From the data, the overall trend was that the averages for females were higher for project-based questions than for lecture-based questions. Additionally, for all the questions, the male and female averages were very similar, with only about a 0.1 to 0.3 difference. Therefore, meaning that all students preferred project-based teaching methods in an engineering classroom.