There are gender differences in learning styles specific to science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) that teachers of these subjects should keep in mind when developing lesson plans and teaching in the classroom. First, overall, girls have much less experience in the hands-on application of learning principles in lab settings than boys. This could occur in the computer lab, the science lab, or the auto lab – the principle is the same for all of these settings – it requires an overall technology problem-solving schema, accompanied by use and manipulation of tools, and spatial relation skills that very few girls bring with them to the classroom on day one in comparison to boys.Let’s look at some of the reasons why girls come to the STEM classroom with less of the core skills needed for success in this subject area. Overall, girls and boys play with different kinds of games in early childhood that provide different types of learning experiences. Most girls play games that emphasize relationships (i.e., playing house, playing with dolls) or creativity (i.e., drawing, painting). In contrast, boys play computer and video games or games that emphasize building (i.e., LEGO®), both of which develop problem-solving, spatial-relationship and hands-on skills.A study of gender differences in spatial relations skills of engineering students in the U.S. and Brazil found that there was a large disparity between the skills of female and male students. These studies attributed female student’s lesser skills set to two statistically significant factors: 1) less experience playing with building toys and 2) having taken less drafting courses prior to the engineering program. Spatial relations skills are critical to engineering. A gender study of computer science majors at Carnegie-Mellon University (one of the preeminent computer science programs in the country) found that, overall, male students come equipped with much better computer skills than female students. This equips male students with a considerable advantage in the classroom and could impact the confidence of female students.Are these gender differences nature or nurture? There is considerable evidence that they are nurture. Studies show that most leading computer and video games appeal to male interests and have predominantly male characters and themes, thus it is not surprising that girls are much less interested in playing them. A study of computer games by Children Now found that 17% of the games have female characters and of these, 50% are either props, they tend to faint, have high-pitched voices, and are highly sexualized.There are a number of studies that suggest that when girls and women are provided with the building blocks they need to succeed in STEM they will do as well if not better than their male counterparts. An Introductory Engineering Robotics class found that while males did somewhat better on the pre-test than females, females did as well as the males on the post-test following the class’s completion.Another critical area of gender difference that teachers of STEM should keep in mind has less to do with actual skills and experience and more to do with perceptions and confidence. For females, confidence is a predictor of success in the STEM classroom. They are much less likely to retain interest if they feel they are incapable of mastering the material. Unfortunately, two factors work against female confidence level: 1) most girls will actually have less experience with STEM course content than their male counterparts and 2) males tend to overplay their accomplishments while females minimize their own. A study done of Carnegie Mellon Computer Science PhD students found that even when male and female students were doing equally well grade wise, female students reported feeling less comfortable. Fifty-three percent of males rated themselves as “highly prepared” in contrast to 0% of females.It is important to note that many of the learning style differences described above are not strictly gender-based. They are instead based on differences of students with a background in STEM, problem-solving, and hands-on skills learned from childhood play and life experience and those who haven’t had the same type of exposure. A review of the literature on minority students and STEM finds that students of color are less likely to have the STEM background experiences and thus are missing many of the same STEM building blocks as girls and have the same lack of confidence. Many of the STEM curriculum and pedagogy solutions that work for female students will also work for students of color for this reason.Bridge Classes/Modules to Ensure Core Skills Teachers will likely see a gap in the core STEM skills of female and minority students for the reasons described above. Below are some solutions applied elsewhere to ensure that girls and women (and students of color) will get the building block STEM skills that many will be missing.Teachers in the Cisco Academy Gender Initiative study assessed the skill levels of each of their students and then provided them with individualized lesson plans to ensure their success that ran parallel to the class assignments. Other teachers taught key skills not included in the curriculum at the beginning of the course, such as calculating math integers and tool identification and use. Students were provided with additional lab time, staffed by a female teaching assistant, knowing that the female students would disproportionately benefit from additional hands-on experience.Carnegie-Mellon University came to view their curriculum as a continuum, with students entering at different points based on their background and experience. Carnegie-Mellon’s new frame of a “continuum” is purposefully different than the traditional negative model in which classes start with a high bar that necessitates “remedial” tutoring for students with less experience, stigmatizing them and undermining their confidence. Below is a list of ideas and suggestions that will help ALL students to succeed in the STEM classroom.1. Building ConfidenceHow do teachers build confidence in female students who often have less experience than their male counterparts and perceive they are behind even when they are not?1) Practice-based experience and research has shown that ensuring female students have the opportunity to gain experience with STEM, in a supportive environment, will increase their confidence level.2) Bringing in female role models that have been successful in the STEM field is another important parallel strategy that should be used to assist your female students in seeing themselves as capable of mastering STEM classes: if she could do it, then I can too!3) Consistent positive reinforcement by STEM teachers of their female students, with a positive expectation of outcome, will assist them in hanging in there during those difficult beginning weeks when they have not yet developed a technology schema or hands-on proficiency and everything they undertake seems like a huge challenge.2. Appealing to Female Interests Many of the typical STEM activities for the classroom appeal to male interests and turn off girls. For example, curriculum in robots often involves monsters that explode or cars that go fast. “Roboeducators” observed that robots involved in performance art or are characterized as animals are more appealing to girls. Engineering activities can be about how a hair dryer works or designing a playground for those with disabilities as well as about building bridges. Teachers should consider using all types of examples when they are teaching and incorporating activities in efforts to appeal female and male interests. Teachers can also direct students to come up with their own projects as a way of ensuring girls can work in an area of significance to them.Research also shows that there are Mars/Venus differences between the genders and how each engages in technology. Overall, girls and women are excited by how the technology will be used – its application and context. Men will discuss how big the hard drive or engine is, how fast the processor runs, and debate the merits of one motherboard or engine versus another. These are topics that are, overall, of less interest to most females.The Carnegie-Mellon Study took into account the differences of what engages female students and modified the Computer Science programs’ curriculum so that the context for the program was taught much earlier on in the semester and moved some of the more technical aspects of the curriculum (such as coding) to later in the semester. Authors observed that the female students were much more positive about getting through the tedious coding classes when they understood the purpose of it. Teachers should ensure that the context for the technology they are teaching is addressed early on in the semester by using real world stories and case studies to capture the interest of all of their students.3. Group Dynamics in the Classroom Research studies by American Association of University Women and Children Now have found that most females prefer collaboration and not competition in the classroom. Conversely, most males greatly enjoy competition as a method of learning and play. Many hands-on activities in technology classes are set up as competitions. Robotics for example, regularly uses competitiveness as a methodology of teaching. Teachers should
be cognizant of the preference of many girls for collaborative work and should add-in these types of exercises to their classes. Some ways to do this are by having students work in assigned pairs or teams and having a team grade as well as an individual grade. (See Reading 2 on Cooperative Learning.)Another Mars/Venus dynamic that STEM teachers should be aware of occurs in the lab there male students will usually dominate the equipment and females will take notes or simply watch. Overall, male students have more experience and thus confidence with hands-on lab equipment than their female counterparts. Teachers should create situations to ensure that their female students are spending an equal amount of time in hands-on activities. Some approaches have been: 1) to pair the female students only with each other during labs in the beginning of the class semester so that they get the hands-on time and their confidence increases, putting them in a better position to work effectively with the male students later on, 2) allot a specific time for each student in pair to use the lab equipment and announce when it’s time to switch and monitor this, and 3) provide feedback to male students who are taking over by letting them know that their partner needs to do the activity as well.4. Moving Female Students from Passive Learners to Proactive Problem Solvers The main skill in STEM is problem solving in hands-on lab situations. For reasons already discussed regarding a lack of experience, most girls don’t come to STEM classes with these problem-solving skills. Instead, girls often want to be shown how to do things, repeatedly, rather than experimenting in a lab setting to get to the answer. Adding to this issue, many girls fear that they will break the equipment. In contrast, male students will often jump in and manipulate the equipment before being given any instructions by their teacher. Teachers can address this by such activities as: 1) having them take apart old equipment and put it together again, 2) creating “scavenger hunt” exercises that force them to navigate through menus, and 3) emphasizing that they are learning the problem solving process and that this is equally important to learning the content of the lesson and insisting that they figure out hands-on exercises on their own.Research has also shown that females tend to engage in STEM activities in a rote, smaller picture way while males use higher order thinking skills to understand the bigger picture and the relationship between the parts. Again, moving female students (and the non-techsavvy student in general) to become problem solvers (versus just understanding the content piece of the STEM puzzle) will move them to use higher order thinking skills in STEM.Finally, many teachers have reported that many female students will often want to understand how everything relates to each other before they move into action in the lab or move through a lesson plan to complete a specific activity. The female students try to avoid making mistakes along the way and will not only want to read the documentation needed for the lesson, they will often want to read the entire manual before taking any action. In contrast, the male student often needs to be convinced to look at the documentation at all. Boys are not as concerned with making a mistake a long the way as long as what they do ultimately works. The disadvantage for female students is that they often are so worried about understanding the whole picture that they don’t move onto the hands-on activity or they don’t do it in a timely fashion, so that they are consistently the last ones in the class to finish. Teachers can assist female (and non-tech-savvy) students to move through class material more quickly by providing instruction on how to quickly scan for only the necessary information needed to complete an assignment.5. Role Models Since the numbers of women in STEM are still small, girls have very few opportunities to see female role models solving science, technology, engineering or math problems. Teachers should bring female role models into the classroom as guest speakers or teachers, or visit them on industry tours, to send the message to girls that they can succeed in the STEM classroom and careers.Bibliography Medina, Afonso, Celso, Helena B.P. Gerson, and Sheryl A. Sorby. “Identifying Gender Differences in the 3-D Visualization Skills of Engineering Students in Brazil and in the United States”. International Network for Engineering Eucation and Research page. 2 August 2004: [http://www.ineer.org/Events/ICEE/papers/193.pdf].Milto, Elissa, Chris Rogers, and Merredith Portsmore. “Gender Differences in Confidence Levels, Group Interactions, and Feelings about Competition in an Introductory Robotics Course”. American Society for Engineering Education page. 8 July 2004: [http://fie.engrng.pitt.edu/fie2002/papers/1597.pdf].“Fair Play: Violence, Gender and Race in Video Games 2001”. Children Now page. 19 August 2004: [http://www.childrennow.org/media/video-games/2001/].“Girls and Gaming: Gender and Video Game Marketing, 2000”. Children Now page. 17 June 2004: [http://www.childrennow.org/media/medianow/mnwinter2001.html].Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age. District of Columbia: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 2000.Margolis, Jane and Allan Fisher. Unlocking the Computer Clubhouse: Women in Computer. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.Taglia, Dan and Kenneth Berry. “Girls in Robotics”. Online Posting. 16 September 2004: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roboeducators/.“Cisco Gender Initiative”. Cisco Learning Institute. 30 July 2004: [http://gender.ciscolearning.org/Strategies/Strategies_by_Type/Index.html].

If you don’t consistently put good things into your brain, then confusion and lies will clog it up, and they are incredibly hard to get out. Information is a never ending battle: we must be ever vigilant to what we put into our own heads because if we are intellectually lazy, there is a much less likely chance of us understanding anything about the world that we live in, and we will constantly be walking around, observing miseries, and questioning “Why? Why?”, because we didn’t take the time to put good information into our heads earlier on with which we could recall and make associations about the world that we live in and then we could use logic to understand things more clearly and take more appropriate actions.Without logic, our actions are meaningless, and we will have no idea what we are doing, and confusion will be our companion instead of reason.Reason is all around us, whether we realize it or not. It is everywhere: it is unavoidable. Why some people accept it while others don’t, especially on very simple issues, is one of the mysteries of the universe that I’m sure I will stew over for a while (stop telling me to “not think about it and just have fun” because thinking IS my fun. I know that a lot of people don’t understand that, but it’s true).I have spent my whole life wondering why some people are less intelligent than others (as have many others), and I honestly do not know. But those people are no excuse for the rest of us not being able to learn. This is why individual liberty is so important: I have the right to learn even if others do not value education as much as I do.As I’ve stated before, learning and writing are as natural to me as breathing, and I see a lot of people that say things like “I forgot what I learned in school” and then they complain about how terrible their life is. Would reason not be an appropriate facility to use in this circumstance? Why your life is so terrible? Instead, I see people using faulty logic and their lives get more and more terrible. It seems to me that logic dictates that we must use logic if we wish to understand issues.There is much vilification of science and logic and reason from religious enthusiasts, and sadly, the only way for these people to break through from this is for God to reveal the truth to them, which I am hopeful of, but in the meantime, the Bible is right: there will be misery in our lives as long as we are here, because of the things that people such as the religious enthusiasts do. There is far too much to discuss to put into this article, but I’m sure I will think about it for a couple of years and then write an article about the subject.Logic gets a bad rap because of simple things like “Well you can’t see and measure God, so that means science is a lie.” Well, you see, this is one instance where it is important to understand why logic is so important. That is faulty logic. It’s based on the fear of God, but it does not make sense for science to be evil simply because we can measure it but we can’t measure God. I don’t understand how science, which can make our lives happier, is evil, but God, who can also make our lives happier, is good. This is where lies start to entangle truth and make it hard to understand what is true and what is false. Only a divine revelation can explain to us what is true and what is false, and this is why I think that logic is so important. I think that logic is truly divine, in that it explains to us what truths are in the truest sense of the meaning of the word “truth.”Once again, why some people are not capable of learning certain things or accepting certain truths and do not value learning, I do not know. But I do know that if I am to understand anything about the universe, as is the case for anyone else, then I must value my own education and I must use logic to obtain these truths because logic is as true as can be.How we know something to be logical when something else is not, and how we can tell if someone isn’t using logic despite the fact that they say they are are topics for many other articles down the road, but I do know that if there are any logical statements to be had in the universe (as I know there are plenty), then we must accept these and use these, and I believe that because these things are so true and so helpful, that we must use our learning and education to learn about more of the logic truths that are in the universe that we might not quite be aware of so that we can add these to our repertoire as well, and our lives will only benefit because of the things that we can learn by using the infinite amount of logic that is out there and is only yet waiting to be discovered.But we can do none of this if we do not learn, and people will not learn if they do not want to learn. Why I value education while others don’t is a big mystery of the universe, but Ido know that if I don’t value my education, I will not learn, and because I value understanding, I must value my education. Why I value education and why others don’t are subjects for many other articles, but if you want to have any understanding of the universe (as many people say they do as evidenced by all of the questions they ask, which is a good thing), you must do two things: you must accept logic, and you must value your own education enough to learn.My biggest fear is getting older and to stop learning, like many adults do that never cared about school and just stop learning altogether. That is my biggest fear, and sometimes, it feels like one of those “inevitabilities” that adults talk about, but I’m not quite sure if all of these adults are truthful, despite their good intentions. This is one thing that I want to learn about, and one of the (I would guess to be) infinite number of reasons as to why education and logic are so vitally important if we are going to be happy. Perhaps some people can be happy without those things, but I look at all of the things that these two things can do for people and see that it can grant them happiness, whether or not they realize it (for instance, computers are logic machines, and it required some type of understanding to piece them together, and once that was done, happiness was had by all that use computers), so I know that for at least me personally, my happiness will not come unless I am allowed to use logic for all of the learning that I want to obtain in the world, and I think that many others could follow suit because although it could be argued that “ignorance is bliss”, I know this isn’t true for me because I love education so much, and I would imagine that if more people started following down my path, they would be pleasantly surprised at the things that they learned as well.So if I can get people to love this as much as I do, that would be a good thing, even though this is not my ultimate cause. My ultimate cause is to learn for myself because it makes me happy, but logic dictates that there are only so many things you can do after you learn something, and one of those things is to share it with the world, which is what I’m doing. Whether or not people care is their own decision, but that is not why I am doing this. I am doing this for my own benefit and because I love it as much as anyone could love anything in the world, and if there is someone else in the world either like that that is reading this or if reading this causes someone else to be like that, that would be a great accomplishment indeed.

Science the knowledgeable and applied activity surrounding the systematic study of the construction and performance of the corporeal and natural world through reflection and research. Islam is the Foundation of Science.Mankind is at the threshold of the 21st century in rapports of the common period. This period is correctly called the material age with computers, microelectronic mail and business and E-commerce and the Internet with WEB pages. To many thinkers, religion is unknown to science. Science simply means a particular branch of knowledge. In Arabic, it is called Education. A scientist in Arabic is called an Education. The west is wrong in unraveling Science from Religion. The great entire Muslim scientists about thousand years ago were at the vanguard of knowledge mainly in the sciences and technology without ever giving up their faith. In fact, Islam in general and the Qur’an in specific enthused the Muslim scientists to seek and advance information. Hence they attained all these without any battle with religion.There is no human work in presence that covers statements as far beyond the level of knowledge of its time as the Qur’an. Scientific sentiments similar to those in the Qur’an are the result of the modern information. In the explanations to translations of the Qur’an that have seemed in European tongues, we are only been able to find distributed and unclear orientations to them. Nor do reporters writing in Arabic provide a complete study of the features of the Qur’an that deal with scientific substances.When assessing entitlements of amazing scientific information in exposed scriptures such as the Quran and Islam it is critical to remember the pronouncement, astonishing claims demand extraordinary proof. For positively, wonders are not to be taken lightly. If miracles really are the consequences of direct interference by God, and if they really are destined as symbols to demonstrate both his/her/their being and power, SO we should expect them to serve those drives in a clear and unmistakable manner. If God is going finished all that trouble to deliver us with signs, it would overthrow his purpose of making the signs difficult to identify.Islamic Conviction and Science.
There is, possibly, no better design of the close links between Islam and science than the Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) often-quoted declarations: Looking for knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim. “Knowledge is the lost property of the follower. Whoever follows a track looking for knowledge, Allah will make his path to heaven easy. To imitate is really the scientific spirit, which suggestions to concern and discoveries about Allah’s creation and usual phenomena. Allah guides the determinations of the scientists to meaningful drives.The more one examines the more one knows about Allah and His project of the universe. The importance is on rational which leads the way to the treasuring care of Allah to found all things in nature to service for the advantage of manhood. Allah (SWT) has given us the abilities and the intelligent genius for this determination. The Muslim should never esteem the study of natural sciences as prohibited terrain. According to the Muslim civilizations, he who search for knowledge is blessed, but the explorer who also achieves success is twice blessed. The Muslim literati have proved this in the past and they already set the inclination.Some Scientific Subjects and Islam.Astronomy and Islam.
Before The Westerners the particulars the Qur’an contains on convinced points of astronomy, it is mutual for someone to reply that there is nothing rare in this since the Muslims made important findings in the field of astronomy long before the other nations. There are many things and their knowledge which mention in Quran.Sun Stars and Moon.
In Qur’an differentiates among them by the use of different terms: light (Noor) of the moon and lamp for the sun. In Quran Allah mentions did you see how Allah shaped seven universes Paradise, one above the other, and made them the moonlight and the sun a lighter? The moon is a sluggish body which redirects light, whereas the sun is a consecrated body in a state of enduring burning constructing both light and heat. About stars, it mentions in Quran that we have decorated the deepest heaven with jumbles, the planets. In Quran, Allah mentions that He bend the night upon the day and the day upon the night.Geology.
Geology is an earth science comprising the study of solid Earth, the Stones and rocks of which it is composed, and the procedures by which they change. With the reflections of Quran about the planet or Other Planet. They deal, not only with the physical marvels observed on earth but also with details regarding the living creatures that inhabit it.Biology.
Quran is dealing with living things, both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, particularly with respect to imitation. We should really dedicate much more time to this subject, but, due to the incomplete scope of this presentation.Botany.
Botany is the Subject restated to plants.Development in botany at the time of Muhammad (PUBH) was not progressive enough in any country for scientists to know that plants have both male and female parts. Yet, you may read the chapter of Quran In which Allah Mention Allah is the One who directed down rain from the sky and with it transported forth a variety of plants in pairs.Physiology.
In the field of physiology, there is one verse which appears tremendously important. One thousand years before the detection of the blood circulatory structure, and unevenly thirteen periods before it was determined that the interior structures were sustained by the procedure of digestive, a verse in the Quran described the basis of the constituents of milk, in conformism with scientific facts.Embryology.
Embryology the division of biology and drug concerned with the study of embryos and their growth. There are lots of declarations in the Quran on the topic of human reproduction which establishes a test to the embryologist looking for a human.The Quotations of Prophet Muhammad is the second exposed source of Islam. Like the Quran, it covers scientific information unobtainable 1400 years ago. From these miracles is the “seven” earth, stated by the Prophet in several of his sayings. This work was devoted to proving there is no battle between science and Islam. From the reading and study of the Qur’an Muslims made many scientific discoveries and inventions in past.