Search

Girls still face biases and barriers in specific fields of their education, such as mathematics and sciences. Educators should, thus, be aware of those biases and barriers and redesign their teaching strategies to embrace gender-sensitive methodologies. Of the characteristics in which gender differences persist, cooperation and competitiveness have been paid particular attention from educational researchers, because they shape social relations among students and affect their performance. The purposes of this paper are to (i) provide a succinct review of relevant literature regarding the importance of studying student questioning, the still existing gender gap in Higher Education, and gender differences in cooperation and competitiveness, (ii) describe two strategies implemented in a mixed-gender first year chemistry broad foundation class at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) where evidences of those differences were found, (iii) resume the methodological approach, which included interviews to an equal number of male and female students, (iv) present, analyze and compare evidences of male and female tendency to cooperate and compete in the mentioned Higher Education class, and (v) discuss the limitations of our study and point out improvements that could be made in further studies.