Petra Lietz

On decreasing gender differences and attitudinal changes: factors influencing Australian and English pupils' choice of a career in science

Encouraging the entry of women into science-related careers remains problematic in the UK and Australia. Although recent initiatives have resulted in increased participation of girls in science-related subjects in schools, there remains a significant gender divide in entry to scientific programmes of study at post-compulsory and university levels. In this study, datasets for 13-year-old pupils in Australia and England taken from the Third International Maths and Science Survey (TIMSS) were used to derive path models that identify factors influencing the extent to which science-related careers were viewed as desirable by Australian and English pupils. Results indicated that, in both countries, attitudes to science were the strongest factor influencing desire for a job in science. While gender was not found to impact on attitudes, the teaching approach adopted influenced the development of pupil attitudes towards science.

Manual and Automatic Estimates of Growth and Gain Across Year Levels: How Close is Close?

Users of statistical software are frequently unaware of the calculations underlying the routines that they use. Indeed, users—particularly in the social sciences—are often somewhat adverse towards the underlying mathematics, Yet, in order to appreciate the thrust of certain routines, it is beneficial to understand the way in which a program arrives at a particular solution. Based on data from the Economic Literacy Study conducted at year 11 and 12 level across Queensland in 1998, this article renders explicit the steps involved in calculating growth and gain estimates in student performance. To this end, the first part of the article describes the Omanual calculation of such estimates using the Rasch estimates of item thresholds of common items at the different year levels produced by Quest (Adams & Khoo, 1993) as a starting point for the subsequent calibrating, scoring and equating. In the second part of the chapter, we explore the extent to which estimates of change in performance across year levels that are calculated with ConQuest (Wu, Adams & Wilson, 1997).