Two 15-minute writing exercises close the gender gap in university-level physics. Read the description by Ed Yong in his blog Not Exactly Rocket Science at Discover magazine, or the study published in Science https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1195996
From Ed Yong’s blog:
In the university’s physics course, men typically do better than women but Miyake’s study shows that this has nothing to do with innate ability. With nothing but his fifteen-minute exercise, performed twice at the beginning of the year, he virtually abolished the gender divide and allowed the female physicists to challenge their male peers.
After all students were assigned to write two short essays affirming their values, women did as well as men on the course exam, and on an objective, standard physics test. Women in the control group who wrote brief essays that were not about their own values attained lower scores than men on both exams.
Previous attempts to reduce the gender achievement gap in science have focused mostly on instructional methods; in this study, student attitudes (and perhaps their environment) were highlighted. The benefits of this technique could extend well beyond physics and gender, to any STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) course and to any underrepresented group.