Where the girls aren't: High school girls and advanced placement physics enrollment

During the high school years, when many students first have some choice in course selection, research indicates that girls choose to enroll in more math and science courses, take more advanced placement courses, and take more honors courses in English, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and foreign languages than ever before. Yet, not only are boys more likely to take all of the three core science courses (biology, chemistry, and physics), boys enroll in advanced placement physics approximately three times as often as do girls.; This study examines the perceptions, attitudes, and aspirations of thirty high school girls enrolled in senior-level science electives in an attempt to understand their high school science course choices, and what factors were influencing them. This is a qualitative investigation employing constructivist grounded theory methods. There are two main contributions of this study. First, it presents a new conceptual and analytical framework to investigate the problem of why some high school girls do not enroll in physics coursework. This framework is grounded in the data and is comprised of three existing feminist perspectives along the liberal/radical continuum of feminist thought. Second, this study illuminates a complex set of reasons why participants avoided high school physics (particularly advanced placement physics) coursework. These reasons emerged as three broad categories related to: (a) a lack of connectedness with physics curriculum and instruction; (b) prior negative experiences with physics and math classroom climates; and (c) future academic goals and career aspirations. Taken together, the findings of this study indicate that the problem of high school girls and physics enrollment—particularly advanced placement physics enrollment—is a problem that cannot be evaluated or considered from one perspective.