Gender Performance Gaps Across Different Assessment Methods and the Underlying Mechanisms: The Case of Incoming Preparation and Test Anxiety

A persistent ‘gender penalty’ in exam performance disproportionately impacts women in large introductory science courses, where exam grades generally account for the majority of the students’ assessment of learning. Previous work in introductory biology demonstrates that some social psychological factors may underlie these gender penalties, including test anxiety and interest in course content. In this paper, we examine the extent that gender...