Customer Reviews

Women's Science: Learning and Succeeding from the Margins

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As a women science teacher, I was excited when I heard aboutthis book and fascinated as I began to read. Eisenhart and Finkelhave filled their book with specific cases and statistics which are relevant and are well-referenced.

However, I found some aspects of the cases being discussed to be disturbing.

For example, the students in the innovative genetics course were placed in groups according to gender and previously-demonstrated scientific ability. Granted, this is how you construct an experiment, but is it really fair to the high school students? They found that all the groups except the one composed of girls who had not done well in science benefited from the course. Might these girls have done well if they had been in a group with girls previously-successful in science? Who knows.

I was offended by the description of the teacher laughing when a student says he's been trying to steal other students' answers and telling the class some scientists do this. This should have been an opportunity to talk about ethics in science.

Despite these problems, I do recommend the book for its insights into science education.