Abstract

Even within the same cultures, research across disciplines shows ambiguity and inconsistency regarding gender differences in university learning. This study examined the main effect of gender and its possible interactions with disciplinary area on learning strategies and motivational self-regulation among technical and biological science learners at a university in Ecuador. A conceptual content analysis of a 32-item Likert-type questionnaire (0–6) was conducted on a sample of 454 students (265 men, 189 women; 231 technical area, 223 biological area) to group the items into categories: cognition and processing strategies; self-regulation and planning; motivation and self-efficacy; anxiety, procrastination and interference. Women combined yielded significantly higher achievement on all four dimensions compared with men (Cohen's d = 0.33 – 0.55), with the difference significant only for anxiety in the disciplinary area, where it was small (Cohen's d = 0.36). A statistically significant interaction between gender and area was also recorded for motivation and self-efficacy, F(1, 450) = 5.45, p = .020: among males, scores increased slightly in the technical area, while among females, scores increased slightly in the biological area. The results of the present study indicate that the gender difference in self-regulation is not consistent across STEM and biomedical disciplines, and that there is a need to create self-regulation-strengthening pedagogies specifically for the STEM disciplines rather than a too-general format.