Development and Pilot Testing in Four Cities of Gender-Sensitive Pedagogy Training for Five-Unit Mathematics Teachers in Order to Reduce Dropdown Rate of Female Students to 20%
Over the last five years, the “Cracking the Glass Ceiling” program has been supporting and empowering female students and their learning, in order to raise the percentage of young women completing high school with a high quality matriculation, including advanced mathematics and a scientific major. The program includes supplemental enrichment activities, such as confidence-building workshops, role modeling and mentoring from volunteer female engineers, as well as site visits to high tech companies.In 2012, the Trump Foundation supported the development of a complementary module for junior high school teachers, in order to help them implement gender-sensitive pedagogy and by that to increase selection of the five unit majors among their female students. The module is comprised of workshops and lectures for the entire school teaching staff on gender awareness and biases; meetings between mathematics teachers and instructional coaches; and a professional development course focused on how to assist weaker students in high-level mathematics tracks. The mathematics material was developed by Ms. Pnina Hod, developer of the “Visual Mathematics” method.
“Cracking the Glass Ceiling” is operated today in 26 schools, reaching 1,400 female students. An external evaluation report, which was conducted in 2014, revealed that 50% of female students who completed the program chose to study 5-unit mathematics in high school. However, 30% of them dropped down by the 11th grade.
To address this, the program approached the foundation once again, in order to assist the upper secondary school teachers to reduce the dropdown rates. Through individual tutoring and a community of practice, they plan to conduct a professional development process with the 5-unit mathematics teachers. Participating teachers will learn pedagogic tools for student-centered clinical teaching, as well as psycho-didactic techniques to overcome gender blindness in teaching, and how to develop motivation and perseverance among students.
If an evaluation finds this module to be successful in reducing the dropout rate to less than 20%, then the intention would be to expand it to additional cities as well.
* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors/ Grant 187