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What does current evidence suggest: doing group work in mixed/balanced gender groups or doing group work in single gender groups?

Setting

  • College level mathematics/science course
  • Group size approximately 3 or 4 (so for mixed gender groups there will often be a solo-male or solo-female; if there's research on which of these are better/more damaging I would also welcome that).

Motivation

Looking at this review article from 1999 for example, there are competing theories of how gender balance affect performance in group work. There are some that advocate single-sex groups to minimize discrimination and conflict, or to maximize satisfaction and supportive behavior; there are some that suggest that majority-minority groups will lead to the minority members being ostracized; there are some that suggest precisely the opposite.

Question

When planning group works for groups of sizes 3 or 4 college students in an introductory mathematics course, is it better to have

  • all male, all female groups versus mixed groups;
  • 1 male 2 female versus 2 male 1 female versus 2 male 2 female groups?

Please only answer with evidence-based research, and not theoretical speculation.

share|improve this question
1  
Especially given the answer, I wonder how one could/would/should go about implementing it without negative side-effects (mainly in the form of misunderstandings about the motivation). I do not want to discuss this here in the comments. The reason I bring it up is that I might end up asking a follow up question, but do not want to front-run you if you might also consider asking a follow up. – quid♦ 4 hours ago
up vote 11 down vote

Here is one article in PNAS. The final sentence quoted below is a summary: "creating small groups with high proportions of women [...] is one way to keep women engaged [...]"

Dasgupta, Nilanjana, Melissa McManus Scircle, and Matthew Hunsinger. "Female peers in small work groups enhance women's motivation, verbal participation, and career aspirations in engineering." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.16 (2015): 4988-4993.

Some quotes from the Abstract:

We provide experimental evidence showing that gender composition of small groups in engineering has a substantial impact on undergraduate women’s persistence. Women participate more actively in engineering groups when members are mostly female vs. mostly male or in equal gender proportions. Women feel less anxious in female-majority groups vs. minority groups, especially as first-year students. Gender-parity groups are less effective than female-majority groups in promoting verbal participation. [...]

These data suggest that creating small groups with high proportions of women in otherwise male-dominated fields is one way to keep women engaged and aspiring toward engineering careers.

share|improve this answer
    
Wow, this study answers pretty much exactly the question I want to ask in the setting I need to apply. I guess with it being as new as it is the effect has not yet been confirmed by followup studies? – Willie Wong 8 hours ago
    
@WillieWong: The first author, "Buju" Dasgupta, subsequently wrote: Dasgupta, Nilanjana. "Viewpoint: How Stereotypes Impact Women in Physics." Physics 9 (2016): 87. (Web link.) But that is not a followup study. Yes, probably too early for independent studies on the same topic. – Joseph O'Rourke 8 hours ago
1  
Right, that Physics article is not really about what I am after. I'll leave the question open for a few more days, but if I read the article in your answer correctly, the authors claim to be the first to study the impact of intermediate gender ratios on women in STEM (previous works mostly on the difference between solo woman in an otherwise all male group versus woman in an all female group). Which would mean that you have given essentially the unique answer to this question... – Willie Wong 8 hours ago
up vote 0 down vote

Peter Liljedahl has done research showing that visibly random grouping increases student participation. I have been doing this in some math classes, and I like how it is working out.

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