A new data-driven study casts serious doubt on the stereotype that male students perform better than female students in science — specifically, physics.

A team of researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy analyzed both the midterm exam scores and final grades of more than 10,000 Texas A&M students enrolled in four introductory physics courses across more than a decade, finding no evidence that male students consistently outperform female students in these courses.

The work was led by Texas A&M physicist and Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence Tatiana Erukhimova.

With help of nearly two dozen departmental colleagues, the Texas A&M team built a database reflecting the complete introductory physics educational spectrum: the calculus-based course sequence primarily taken by engineering and physics majors as well as the algebra-based course sequence typically taken by life sciences and premed majors. Their final analysis shows that exam performance and final letter grades are largely independent of student gender — results which Erukhimova says show promise in ending gender stereotypes that negatively impact so many female students in STEM.

«There is no consistent trend on male students outperforming female students,» Erukhimova said. «Our study also provides new knowledge regarding whether statistically significant differences based on gender occurred on each exam for four introductory physics courses as the semesters were progressing — an area that has not previously been studied, at least not for such a large data set and over a long period of time.»

When differences in final letter grades for a course were observed, there were no persistent differences across that course’s exams, she said. Conversely, when researchers found differences on exams within a course, they observed no differences for final letter grades in that course. In algebra-based mechanics, they found that female students outperformed male students by a small but statistically significant margin.

Story Source: Materials provided by Texas A&M University. Original written by Shana Hutchins. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.