Using electronic sensors to support gender neutral STEM activities in primary school

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) gender divide is still a nowadays multidimensional problem. During the last decades, research has been studying the factors that can contribute to close the gender gap in what concerns participation, achievement and progression in STEM education. The empirical study presented in this paper assessed, with a gender perspective, the results of the use of electronic sensors to explore and solve environmental health problems by children of four primary school classes. The developed experiment was designed to promote gender inclusion. The results evidenced that children acquired knowledge linked to the use of the sensors, and were able to produce suggestions to solve the explored problems. Nonetheless, gender differences were not promoted by the experiment didactic activities, evidencing affordances of such activities to narrow gender gaps.