Abstract:

There are numerous evidences that prove the differences between woman (girl) and man (boy) in science education in general. Scientists state that there are various differences in the approach of students concerning the learning of such subjects as Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography and Mathematics (Mallow et al., 2010; Zeyer, Wolf, 2010; Devetak, Glažar 2010; Devetak et al., 2009; Colley, Comber, 2003), while the results off the PISA worldwide research reveal that gender differences and inequality are an international problem (Buccheri, Gurber, Bruhwiler, 2011). Moreover, there are factors proving that there are no essential learning differences (Baram-Tsabari, Yarden, 2011, Achor et al., 2010). This raises a scientific problem because all evidences in the didactic approach still cannot be found as universal and useful for both boys and girls worldwide. One the one hand, some research works prove that every student can be taught similarly the same in science education, on the other hand, some scientific arguments would deny this. The discussion does not focus on whether boys or girls are cleverer; the problem rather questions are there any didactical teaching/ learning differences between them and what are they? How scientist could create a better didactic suggestions for teachers who wish to achieve the same positive result for the entire student population. Having this in mind, the ICT and visualization are very important nowadays, so they could be used as an artefact to improve the didactic content. The novelty is to create a theoretical model that could show how visualization could be used in different didactic ways for boys and girls in science education to gain learning/ teaching attainments.

Research goal:
To reveal the main differences of gender approaches to the science education process when computer-based visualization is used as well as to create a theoretical model.

Methodology:
The qualitative data analysis of scientific publications over 2008–2017 was employed to investigate gender differences in the process of science education learning. The method of content analysis was used for identification of various factors.

Results:
The analysis of factors about the gender differences in the field of science education revealed that physics and chemistry were more complicated for females (National Centre for Education Statistics (ED), 2011; Chow, Salmela-Aro, 2011): their learning achievements were lower if compared to males (Quinn, Lyons, 2011). Also, females had less connection with ICT (Abbiss, 2008; Sainz, Lopez-Saez, 2010; Varma, 2010), lower skills in work with ICT (He, Freeman, 2010), lower interest in science (Sjoberg, Schreiner, 2010); they more rarely chose scientific career (Reuben, Sapienza, Zingales, 2014; Roseline Osagie, Azuka Alutu, 2016). Females liked to study more visible subjects such as biology (Batz et al., 2010; Baram-Tsabari, 2008; Salminen-Karlsson, 2009; Baram-Tsabari, Yarden, 2011), also, more than males expressed the need for innovative, interactive lessons in science education (Dijkstra, Goedhart, 2011). According to this, application of computer-based visualization would lead to the formation of the desired didactic conditions. Adoption of different (in some, but not all, cases) didactic content for both boys and girls in science education could be useful for stimulation of students’ motivation and avoidance of epistemic limitedness.

Keywords:

Vizualization, gender, science educaiton.