Results of Parité sciences' winter 2024 consultation with educational staff: approaches, preferences and needs.
By Laura Vaché, Mirjam Fines-Neuschild, Maria Delgado
In March 2024, Parité Sciences consulted you to guide its future projects to develop educational resources and tools aimed at overcoming the under-representation of women in STEM.
Who answered?
The online survey, accessible in March 2024 and distributed on Parité sciences networks, collected 155 completed forms.
The majority of respondents said they work in secondary school (1st cycle: 23%, 2nd cycle: 40%), and are located all over Quebec.
Thank you to the teachers (85%) and guidance and educational counsellors (8%) who responded in such large numbers!
The importance of digital technology
In line with the Quebec government's digital competency reference framework, which aims to adapt teaching to new technological trends and thus prepare new generations to better respond to the reality of a constantly changing world, we have noted your strong interest in digital technology, which occupies an extremely important (22%) or very important (50%) place in teaching activities.
Students' favorite activities
You shared with us that the activities that generate the most engagement among students are: science experiments (71%), games (63%) and guest lectures (63%).
Source for educational tools
Unsurprisingly, the Internet is the tool of choice for research. 87% of you use it. Sharing resources with colleagues comes second, at 75%, and finally, 51% of you claim to produce your own tools.
These data support Parité Sciences' initiative to create a community-accessible database listing the various Quebec resources that can contribute to the construction of women's scientific identity. This digital resource, which will be available in late fall 2024 on the Parité Sciences website, aims to simplify material searches and make it easier for teaching staff to prepare inclusive educational activities.
Lack of time as the main issue
79% of respondents indicated that they had not organized or led an activity related to the under-representation of women in their profession. Reasons given included a lack of time and an overloaded curriculum.
A wide range of needs
Respondents to the consultation indicated the type of information or activities they would like to have access to, in order to integrate them into their practices:
Examples of concrete uses of STEM (67%);
Profiles of women scientists from Quebec and elsewhere (61%);
Science activities in the classroom (60%);
Information on STEM careers (58%).
To this end, the Parité Sciences team intends its toolbox to be a source of varied, relevant resources adapted to Quebec realities. Addressing the topics listed above, this new resource will also offer suggestions for organizing interesting extracurricular activities for students, as well as resources for the professional development of practitioners.
Getting informed is always a good idea
Finally, to learn about the under-representation of women in STEM, you told us you use video capsules (65%), asynchronous training (48%) and reference documents (47%).
With this in mind, if you'd like to learn more about this topic, you can take the “Women and Girls in STEM” self-study available on the CADRE 21 platform at any time and at your own pace. You will be awarded a three-hour digital badge in professional development.
Other training suggestions will be included in the new Parité Sciences toolbox.
👉 And if that doesn't reflect your daily life
If you didn't take part in this consultation but would like to share your practices and your needs in terms of pedagogical tools, don't hesitate to complete this short survey. Your answers will enable us to better equip you and support your efforts to achieve parity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
A summary of the results (In French only) of this consultation is available here:
This consultation was made possible thanks to the financial contribution of the Government of Quebec, via the NovaScience program of the Ministère de l'Économie, de l'Innovation et de l'Énergie and the Secrétariat à la condition féminine, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and our partner CERC interactions lumière-matière/light-matter interactions.
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