(The following topic I posed as a question while at a North Carolina Technology Association’s “Knowledge Workforce Counsel” panel on girls/women in STEM, hosted at an RTP hotel conference room, edited for brevity and clarity)
“Given the fact that girls at age 7 become better at non-verbal communication compared to boys, as well as the female brain has a much higher bandwidth for communications between the two hemispheres, are there potential pedagogical differences in educational technologies/methodologies that can be incorporated and employed in educating girls vs boys to take advantage of these phenomena?”
I had no sooner uttered the above question to the panel when the fire alarm went off and we had to exit the building. My question of course went unansered, I pose it in this forum.
Addendum to the first part of the question with regard to the “non-verbal communications” consideration: approximately 7-8 % of communications between people are “the words” (the actual dialog), ~35% is “tone” (you can hear anger, happiness, etc., in just the tone), and ~65 percent is facial/etc. expressions (you can SEE anger, happiness, sadness, etc. in someone’s facial/etc. gestures (for interesting efforts to represent this see “Facial Activity Coding System”).
A bit of the history of my assocation with NCTA (formerly North Carolina Electronics and Information Technology Association), I was asked to join the association back in ~1992/1993 by a friend and associate Dr. Matt Kuhn (Interim Director of NCEITA and then President of the Microelectronic Center of North Carolina), and Dr. Ralph Cavin (head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering). I asked if the association would be sponsoring any education initiatives and they invited me to chair a subcommittee to make recomendations to the NCEITA Board of Directors. I agreed, and as the representive of that subcommitte made presentations to the Board. By the time I made the final presentation, former NC Govenor and retired US Senator Terry Sanford was on the board and in attendance at that final presentation (I was fortunate to be introduced to Senator Sanford by the then Executive Director of NCEITA Mrs. Betsy Y. Justice (former Chair of the State of North Carolina Employment Security Commission and Secretary for the NC Department of Revenue).
From what I understand the NCTA Knowledge Workforce Council no longer exists (would be happy to be corrected on history/etc. if warranted)