Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

Paving Better Paths to the Future through Gender-Specific Curricula Interventions

Young women and men with disabilities face unique barriers in the transition from school to adulthood. In recognition of the IES 20th anniversary, we are spotlighting Paths 2 the Future, a career development intervention for students with disabilities with gender-specific versions for boys and girls. For this blog post, virtual intern Audrey Im checks in with IES grantees Dr. Lauren Lindstrom (University of California, Davis) and Dr. John Lind (University of Oregon) about their experiences iteratively developing Paths 2 the Future. What started as an intervention to provide career guidance to high school girls with disabilities has now expanded to a package of interventions that also address the needs of high school-aged men with disabilities and underserved students of all genders.

Headshot of Dr. Lauren Lindstrom

In 2007, Lauren Lindstrom (then a senior research associate at the University of Oregon) received a grant from the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) to develop PATHS, a curriculum to improve education and career outcomes of high school girls with learning disabilities, ADD/ADHD, and emotional or behavioral disabilities. Lindstrom and her team created a curriculum advancing gender equity, disability awareness, and career readiness, which was then implemented in six high schools as an 18-week program.

According to Dr. Lindstrom, her team created PATHS just for girls after examining the disparate post-school outcomes for high school girls with disabilities enrolled in existing transition programs. “I consistently noticed that the girls were less likely to go to work, and if they went to work, they were working in really low-wage jobs,” she said. “And this was with the benefit of an intervention, right? Same kind of disabilities, same schools, but very different outcomes. So that really sparked my interest.”

In 2015, Dr. Lindstrom received a second grant to conduct a randomized controlled trial to test whether the intervention, now called Paths 2 the Future (P2F), improved career knowledge and skills among participants.

“We realized that this was probably one of the very first randomized controlled trials of a gender-specific career intervention,” Lindstrom said.

Lindstrom and her team sampled 366 girls with high-incidence disabilities in 26 Oregon high schools. The girls randomly assigned to the P2F intervention received the curriculum’s four core modules on self-awareness, disability knowledge, gender identity, and career and college readiness. They also received extensive information on career-related activities. The girls in the control group received the existing transition services of their respective schools. This study period lasted one 18-week semester and included a 6-month follow up with the students.

The P2F study found that the girls in the treatment group not only had more awareness of their identity and career possibilities after completing the curriculum, but they also had more confidence to talk about those topics. “The nature of being in a girl-only class really mattered,” Lindstrom said. “The students told us they felt safe there. They said things like ‘I’m a different person now. I feel empowered to talk, to think differently about my future.’” Lindstrom’s study also found that students in the treatment group were more likely to seek and have work experience in high school, an important observation as early work experience has proven to be a predictor for their future employment.

Headshot of Dr. John Lind

Lindstrom’s co-PI and research collaborator, Dr. John Lind, wondered if the P2F model would also work for boys. Lind, a research associate at the University of Oregon, received a 2019 IES grant Paths to the Future for Young Men (P2F-Young Men) to modify the P2F curriculum to take into account the specific needs of high school boys with high-incidence disabilities. These needs included (but were not limited to) building healthy relationships, breaking down gender stereotypes, and managing anger and stress.

“I think these needs are applicable to a range of genders but doing it in a classroom with just young men opens up the opportunity for potentially deeper discussions,” Lind said. “And that’s feedback that we’ve gotten anecdotally from the teachers we work with.”

After fully developing the P2F-Young Men curriculum, the researchers are currently conducting a small randomized controlled trial with eight teachers and their students at Oregon high schools. Although they are still in the process of collecting data for this study, Lind noted that teachers report that having a gender-specific curriculum helped the boys feel more comfortable in having discussions. “This is anecdotal at this point,” Lind acknowledged, “but if that stands true by the end of our study, I think that’s a really important finding.”

To Lindstrom and Lind, having separate curriculum interventions for different genders was necessary to address gender-specific issues and foster a safe learning environment. At the same time, they felt that it was important for all students across the gender spectrum to have access to these curricula to promote social-emotional development and build knowledge of career pathways.

“Teachers and schools have come to us and said, well is it just for cisgender students or people who are born as a certain gender? And our answer to that is no,” Lind affirmed. “What we’ve done with P2F-Young Men is create a transition curriculum for people who identify as young men. We start early in the curriculum of getting to know yourself, exploring yourself, your strength.”

In 2017, through funding from the National Center for Education Research (NCER), Lindstrom and Lind also developed a non-gender-specific version of the curriculum called P2F for All. This curriculum was targeted to underserved youth who face barriers to educational attainment and, due to a variety of reasons, may not be receiving transition services or college and career readiness support. Their study developed and tested the new P2F for All curriculum and found that it increased participating students’ career readiness, emotional coping skills, and interpersonal skills.

P2F for All aimed to take the findings from their gender-specific studies focused on the needs of students with disabilities and create a new, comprehensive career readiness curriculum—one that succeeded at addressing the needs of underserved students, not just those identified for special education services, regardless of gender. “What we strive to do in special education is provide services that are individualized and meet the needs of the person,” Lind said. “I think we’ve got a range of lessons to address that, and, ultimately, I think that lessons could be pulled out of a menu to meet specific needs for all students.”

Lauren Lindstrom is a professor and dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Prior to UC-Davis, Dr. Lindstrom served more than 25 years as an academic and administrator at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. Dean Lindstrom is an active researcher whose areas of interest include inclusive education, gender equity, career and college readiness and transition services for youth with disabilities. 

John Lind is a research associate at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. As a former special education teacher, Dr. Lind has extensive experience developing and implementing strength-based interventions for youth with disabilities, including adolescents with emotional and behavior disabilities. He has also worked as an educational consultant, providing training and technical assistance to international, national, and state departments of education on issues related to IDEA, effective classroom management, multi-tiered levels of support, and inclusion. Currently, he is the director of the SIGnetwork, a clearinghouse of resources for the OSEP-funded State Personnel Development Grantees.

This blog was written by Virtual Student Federal Service Intern Audrey Im and produced by Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov). Akilah Nelson (Akilah.Nelson@ed.gov) is the program officer for the IES Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living portfolio. The blog is part of a larger series on DEIA in Education Research.

Exploring New Insights and Approaches to Closing the Gender Achievement Gap in STEM

Gender achievement gaps in education, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domain continue to persist. On the 2015 NAEP, male students continue to significantly outperform female students in science in Grades 8 and 12, and on the 2017 NAEP, male students outperformed female students in mathematics at Grades 4 and 8. In addition, a recent study by Reardon and colleagues supported by IES found that the gender achievement gap favoring male students in mathematics was related to local socioeconomic conditions, with the gap being more prevalent in more socioeconomically advantaged school districts.

Although we know that the gender achievement gap is pervasive, particularly in STEM, what can we do to help close the gap? Previously, IES released a Practice Guide on Encouraging Girls in Math and Science that included evidence-based recommendations for how practitioners can better support and encourage girls to pursue math- and science-related fields. Adding to this research base, three new FY 2018 IES grants funded under the Education Research Grants program will explore potential causes and correlates of gender differences in achievement that can provide new insights and approaches to closing the gender achievement gap in STEM.  Here is a brief summary of these studies along with their potential contributions to research, practice, and policy.

Gender Stereotypes in STEM – Although many factors influence the gender gap in STEM, research points to gender difference in students' interest and motivation in STEM as a major contributor to later disparities in STEM majors and careers. Allison Master and colleagues will explore how and when gender stereotypes about academic fields emerge, the relationship between stereotypes and motivation in STEM fields, and whether teaching a growth mindset (i.e., the belief that intelligence is malleable) can change stereotypes and improve students' sense of belonging, self-efficacy, interest, and outcomes in STEM in grades 2 to 8. The results from this study will be used to inform the development of future interventions to reduce the impact of STEM-gender stereotypes.

The Relation of Gender-Integrated Classroom Climate to Students' Academic Outcomes - Because boys and girls are typically taught together in classrooms, there is the assumption that boys and girls are cooperative and integrated in their classroom activities, yet evidence suggests this may not be the case.  Some classroom climates facilitate gender integration, while other classroom climates may perpetuate gender segregation where students tend to only work with classmates of the same gender. Carol Lynn Martin and colleagues will examine how gender integration relates to 4th to 6th grade students' school-related engagement and academic perceptions and achievement. The results from this study will provide preliminary evidence of potentially promising practices for gender integration in classrooms that can help girls feel more comfortable working with boys and may encourage persistence in STEM.

Underrepresented Student Learning in Online Introductory STEM College Courses – Online instruction has the potential to make course content more accessible to a larger number of students, thereby strengthening the STEM pipeline. Michelle Perry and colleagues will explore the interaction among various characteristics of online instruction and postsecondary students' persistence in STEM courses. In particular, the researchers will explores how students traditionally underrepresented in STEM (e.g., women, first-generation students, minorities) benefit from or are impeded by online course features (e.g., course videos, discussion boards). The results from this study will provide a theory of postsecondary online STEM instruction that could strengthen persistence in STEM among women and others traditionally underrepresented in STEM. 

Written by Christina Chhin, Education Research Analyst, National Center for Education Research