-MESA participation increases students’ odds of taking AP STEM courses in high school and their aspirations for declaring a STEM major in college.
– These effects are driven primarily by black and white students, respectively.
– Latino and Asian students remain largely unaffected by MESA partiipation.
– MESA may improve black students’ high school STEM engagement but may have little impact on black and Latino students’ STEM outcomes in college.
Current Selections
ClearRacial and Ethnic Heterogeneity in the Effect of MESA on AP STEM Coursework and College STEM Major Aspirations
The Role of High School Racial Composition and Opportunities to Learn in Students' STEM College Participation
1) Do the rates of STEM declaration and graduation vary between high schools?
2) Do opportunities to learn science and mathematics vary depending on high schools’ racial composition? 3) What is the relationship between high school racial composition, opportunities to learn available at high schools, and students’ STEM participation in college? 4) Do these relationships vary by racial/ethnic groups?
The effects of a high school curriculum reform on university enrollment and the choice of college major
– The results show that the reform increased university enrollment rates for both genders.
-The reform increased students’ willingness to enroll at university for males and females alike. The reform effect of university enrollment can be assessed as meaningful with 1.3 and 1.2 percentage points for females and males, respectively.
– With regard to choosing STEM as college major, the authors find a
robust positive effect of the high school curriculum reform on males.
– While the results for males indicate that the reform made them more like to choose a STEM major on a statistically significant level, this is not true for females.
– A likely mechanism for the gender difference in major choices is the underlying preferences of men and women.
Gendered Choices of STEM Subjects for Matriculation Are Not Driven by Prior Differences in Mathematical Achievement
– Gender streaming among STEM fields appears already in secondary school.
– Girls are under-represented in physics, IT and advanced mathematics.
– This pattern is not driven by gender differences in prior achievement in numeracy.
– Socio-economic disadvantage has a greater adverse effect on boys than on girls.
– There is significantly less gender streaming among STEM fields in all-girls schools.
– Students with a language background other than English choose STEM fields with greater frequency than other students, reflecting their comparative advantage, while exhibiting more markedly gendered subject choices, indicating a role for cultural factors.
An Advisor Like Me: Does Gender Matter?
– Gender congruence in the student-adviser relationship is particularly helpful for academically weak students and students without STEM-orientation.
– Gender congruence has no significant impact on students with STEM-orientation regardless of whether their high-school GPAs are below or above the median.
– For students without STEM orientation, gender congruence helps students with below-median high school GPA improve their student outcomes both on the extensive and intensive margins, while helping students with above-median high school GPA improve their outcomes only on the extensive margin.
-The authors find that gender congruence in the student-adviser relationship has a positive and significant effect on the odds of retention and on cumulate GPA upon graduation.
– The authors uncover that much of the gender congruence effect
on the extensive margin tends to be concentrated in the freshman and sophomore years, while the gender congruence effect on the intensive margin is less immediate and shows up only in cumulative GPA upon graduation.
– Student-adviser gender congruence is found to work differently for students with different backgrounds and interests.
– Gender congruence has no significant impact on students with STEM-orientation regardless of whether their high-school GPAs are below or above the median.
Developing a STEM Identity Among Young Women: A Social Identity Perspective
– The vast majority of the literature reviewed underlined how challenging it was for female students to identify with STEM because the social environment provided a variety of signals that women do not belong to STEM and do not embody STEM prototypes.
– Although boys tended to have higher STEM career interest overall, girls with higher STEM interest and who belonged to a mixed-gender group of friends had the highest STEM career interest scores among their female peers. In contrast, girls who belonged to primarily female friend groups and perceived their friend group to not be supportive of STEM had the lowest STEM career interest scores in the sample.
– Being in a class with more male peers who held these gendered biases negatively predicted intent to major in computer science and engineering. In contrast, being in a class with confident female peers positively predicted intent to major in computer science and engineering.
– Female students rated themselves as having lower abilities than their male counterparts.
– White female students were more likely to major in STEM in college if they felt competent in high school math.
– Young women are operating in an environment where parents, peers, and teachers think and say that they do not belong in STEM and their abilities are challenged even when they are academically successful.
– Young women experience challenges to their participation and inclusion when they are in STEM settings.
Identifying Taiwanese Teachers’ Perceived Self-efficacy for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Knowledge
-Male teachers outperformed female teachers in each dimension
of the survey.
-Teachers’ self-efficacy in synthesized knowledge of STEM had two mediating effects. One was in the relationship between self-efficacy in engineering design and attitudes toward STEM education. The other was in the relationship between self-efficacy in Mathematical Thinking and Attitudes toward STEM education. Displaying higher self-efficacy in Engineering Design or Mathematical Thinking is not sufficient to positively predict their attitudes toward STEM education. It is having teachers with higher self-efficacy in the synthesized knowledge of STEM that matters.
-Taiwan teachers tend to have relatively high self-efficacy in terms of their Mathematical Thinking knowledge.
-Taiwan teachers seem to manifest favorable Attitudes regarding STEM education.
-Twain teachers have relatively low confidence in their Engineering Design knowledge.
– Teachers’ Scientific Inquiry and Technology Use did not relate to their self-efficacy in Synthesized Knowledge of STEM and Attitudes toward STEM education.
– Only when teachers demonstrate higher confidence in combining technology use, engineering design, and mathematical thinking into a single learning topic of science in many ways will they believe in the positive impact of STEM education on students.
– When designing teachers’ professional development, the educational authorities concerned should be very intentional in facilitating teachers’ understanding of concepts and processes that are applied through engineering design and mathematical thinking activities.
Race and gender differences in how sense of belonging influences decisions to major in STEM
– The authors found that white men were most likely to report a sense of belonging whereas women of color were the least likely.
– Representation within one’s STEM sub-discipline, namely biology versus the physical sciences, impacts sense of belonging for women.
– Four key factors were found to contribute to sense of belonging for all students interviewed: interpersonal relationships, perceived competence, personal interest, and science identity.
– The authors findings indicate that students who remain in STEM majors report a greater sense of belonging than those who leave STEM.
– Students from underrepresented groups are less likely to
feel they belong.
– Both race and gender moderate the experiences that impact sense of belonging for science students.
– Women of color reported the feeling a sense of belonging less frequently than any demographic group.
– Lack of belonging reported by men is primarily experienced by men of color
The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education
-Girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of every three countries.
-In nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled.
-Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. An explanation of this paradox that the authors offer is that “the liberal mores in these cultures, combined with smaller financial costs of foregoing a STEM path, amplify the influence of intraindividual academic strengths. The result would be the differentiation of the academic foci of girls and boys during secondary education and later in college, and across time, increasing sex differences in science as an academic strength and in graduation with STEM degrees.”
-In 97% of the countries, boys’ intraindividual strength in science was (significantly) larger than that of girls.
-In all countries, girls’ intraindividual strength in reading was larger than that of boys, while boys’ intraindividual strength in mathematics was larger than that of girls.
-The gap between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to their mean academic performance was near universal.
-Boys’ science self-efficacy was higher than that of girls in 58% of the countries.
-Boys expressed a stronger broad interest in science than girls in 76% of the countries
-Boys reported more joy in science than girls in 43% of the countries.
-Countries with lower levels of gender equality had relatively more women among STEM graduates than did more gender-equal countries.
-The sex differences in academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM graduation gap.
The Relationship of STEM Attitudes and Career Interest
-The authors findings reinforce prior research that students across key demographic factors perceive biological/clinical and physical science career paths differently, resulting in two career clusters.
-The relationship of mathematics attitudes to career
interest varied by STEM career cluster.
-Findings were supportive of the conclusion that students’ attitudes towards STEM careers are not static over their primary and
secondary grades, stabilizing and leveling during their secondary years.
-Gender showed significantly different interest levels for the two career clusters: males higher for physical sciences and females higher for biological/clinical sciences.
-Racial/ethnic disparity in STEM career interests can be seen more readily in physical sciences and engineering than in the biological sciences.
-The authors’ work reinforces findings that students, as young as elementary grades, are forming attitudinal associations between their academic and life experience and future STEM careers.
Fighting for Desired Versions of a Future Self: How Young Women Negotiated STEM-Related Identities in the Discursive Landscape of Educational Opportunity
Authors illustrate the local struggles that young women of color at two high schools in the same school district engaged in to construct and maintain STEM-related identities in the context of their high school lives. In particular, authors focus on the local discourses and practices of the school learning environments within and against which four of the young women in the larger study engaged in STEM identity work.
Gender Gaps in Math Performance, Perceived Mathematical Ability and College STEM Education: The Role of Parental Occupation
– All three factors, math achievement, perceived math ability, and parental occupation in a science field, are found to be significant predictors of the probability of majoring in science in college.
– Having a parent working in a science related field is associated with a better performance in math but not necessarily higher levels of perceived math ability, given math performance.
– Most of the observed positive effects of having a parent in a science related occupation seem to be concentrated among females.
– Estimated effects of higher levels of math achievement are about double for boys than for girls. Estimates of perceived math ability are also slightly larger for boys.
The "Exceptional" Physics Girl: A Sociological Analysis of Multimethod Data from Young Women Aged 10-16 to Explore Gendered Patterns of Post-16 Participation
This article applies Bourdieusian and Butlerian conceptual lenses to qualitative and quantitative data collected as part of a wider longitudinal study of students’ science and career aspirations age 10-16.
Building Better Bridges into STEM: A Synthesis of 25 Years of Literature on STEM Summer Bridge Programs
– The authors identify 14 distinct bridge program goals that can be organized into three categories: academic success goals, psychosocial goals, and department-level goals.
– Academic success goals include: Remediation- Providing Students with Foundational Knowledge in a STEM Domain, Improving Student Content Knowledge in a Discipline, Maximizing Student GPA, Increasing Student Retention, and Increasing Student Graduation Rate from College.
– Psychosocial goals include: Increasing Interest in the Major, Improving Student Sense of Belonging, Increasing Student Sense of Preparedness, Increasing Student Self-Efficacy, Networking with Students, and Networking with Faculty.
– Department-level goals include Recruiting Students to the Major and Enhancing Diversity in the Major
– The authors’ recommendations include: encouraging bridge developers and evaluators to publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, reporting unsuccessful iterations to help develop more successful future programs, reporting more information about the details of implementing bridge programs (including costs and resources, recruitment and selection, size, curriculum development, and follow-up information), and aligning bridge goals with measured outcomes.
Pressurizing the STEM Pipeline: an Expectancy-Value Theory Analysis of Youths' STEM Attitudes
Through the lens of expectancy-value theory (EVT), what are the potential factors that influence STEM attitudes in the context of computing intervention?
The Relationship Between Self-Efficacy and Advanced STEM Coursework in Female Secondary Students
1: How do female students’ levels of self-efficacy correlate with their decision to enroll in advanced STEM coursework and STEM extracurricular activities? 2: How does the CoP in and surrounding a small rural high school contribute to
female secondary students’ enrollment in advanced STEM coursework?
Undergraduate STEM Instructors’ Teacher Identities and Discourses on Student Gender Expression and Equity
The authors investigated how STEM faculty teaching first-year engineering courses constructed teacher identities and responsibilities. Our research questions included: What discourses do faculty use to construct the meaning of student gender expression in their classroom? How do faculty discursively position themselves in relation to gender equity? What teacher identities and responsibilities do they construct through these discourses?
Venus, Mars, and Math: Gender, Societal Affluence, and Eighth Graders' Aspirations for STEM
To assess the relationship between societal affluence and the gender gap in STEM aspirations.
The Roots of STEM Achievement: An Analysis of Persistence and Attainment in STEM Majors
1. What factors predict that incoming STEM majors who graduate will attain a STEM degree?
2. What elements affect incoming STEM majors’ persistence in college?
3. What variables influence non-STEM majors who graduate college to switch to and attain a degree in a STEM field?
4. What factors motivate undecided majors to declare and graduate with a STEM degree?
Empowering Teachers to Raise Career Awareness in Computing: Lessons Learned
This study aims to provide activities to motivate teachers to use technology in their classrooms and encourage students to pursue a STEM related field, Computer Science in particular.
Women and STEM
Are girls’ math abilities and skills sufficient for them to pursue those fields? If not, when do differences arise and are they affected by environmental factors?
An Exploration of STEM, Entrepreneurship, and Impact on Girls in an Independent Day School
1) Examine the impact of a predominately female STEEM (science, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship and mathematics) teaching staff on girls’ perceptions of STEEM. 2) Examine the impact of adding entrepreneurship to a STEM curriculum.
Using an opportunity-propensity framework to estimate individual-, classroom-, and school-level predictors of middle school science achievement
When a more comprehensive set of opportunity and propensity variables are used in a SEM to predict eighth-grade science achievement, what are the relative magnitudes of the associations measured in the model, and which opportunity and propensity variables have the strongest relationships to the science achievement outcome?
The Burden of Being “Model”: Racialized Experiences of Asian STEM College Students
– The students constructed personal narratives mediated by symbolic cultural systems to make meaning of their experiences, which more often disputed than confirmed the model minority stereotype.
– Eleven students brought up the notion that some Asian students are encouraged to pursue STEM-based fields because the perception is that they will not be successful in other fields, such as English, religion, or history. They discussed being pigeonholed into majoring in STEM in spite of their many diverse life and career interests.
– The experiences of Black and Asian STEM college students overlap significantly, in that both are bound by society’s misrecognition of their race and ability.
– These students were not immune from believing in the stereotypes and biases about their own race, even as they recognized that these stereotypes might be harming them.
– Five students in this study discussed using the MMM and their high achievement in STEM to capitalize on or take advantage of the stereotype.
– South Asian (Indian or Pakistani) students in particular have similar experiences that differ from those of East Asian students. Many women in this sample talked about the salience of skin tone discrimination in their lives and its effects on their academic performance.
Public Understanding of Science and K-12 STEM Education Outcomes: Effects of Idaho Parents' Orientation Toward Science on Students' Attitudes Toward Science
The authors focus on the potential effects of parents’ attitudes toward science on their children’s STEM learning outcomes.
Laying the Tracks for Successful Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education: What Can We Learn from Comparisons of Immigrant-Native Achievement in the USA?
This paper examines the immigrant-native achievement gap in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in college in the USA.
Family Socioeconomic Status and Choice of STEM Major in College: An Analysis of a National Sample
Does students’ decision of STEM enrollment in college differ systematically by family SES?
Why does teacher gender matter?
– High school math and science teacher gender affects student interest and self-efficacy in STEM. However, such effects become insignificant once teacher behaviors and attitudes are taken into account, thus pointing towards an omitted variables bias.
– Teacher beliefs about male and female ability in math and science – as well as how teachers treat boys and girls in the classroom – matter more than teacher’s own gender.
-Creating a positive learning environment and making math and science interesting are pivotal in engaging students in these subjects.
– Student interest and self-efficacy are substantially affected by teacher ability to make their subject interesting and to create a positive learning environment.
– Rather than hiring more female teachers or segregating students by gender, training teachers ( increasing empathy and reducing gender biases) could be more effective in increasing student self-efficacy and interest in STEM.
– What matters primarily in this context are not the role models played by teachers (or the stereotype threats), but the time and skills that instructors put in preparing their lectures and supporting their students.
Cracking the Code: Girls' and Women's Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
The report is intended to stimulate debate and inform STEM policies and programmes at global, regional and national levels. Specifically, it aims to: i) document the status of girls’ and women’s participation, learning achievement, and progression in STEM education; ii) ‘crack the code’, i.e., decipher the factors that contribute to girls’ and women’s participation, achievement and progression in STEM education; and, iii) identify interventions that promote girls’ and women’s interest in and engagement with STEM studies.
Macrosystem Analysis of Programs and Strategies to Increase Underrepresented Populations in the Geosciences
– Key approaches identified in the literature to advance participation of underrepresented populations in the geosciences include: mentoring, peer support networks and community building, bridge programs, pedagogies, undergraduate research experiences, institutional climate and culture, specific geoscience education programs.
– In mentorship of underrepresented students, interactions of minority students with their research mentor can result in increased likelihood of graduate school pursuit and in choosing a career in scientific research.
– A faculty member’s commitment to fostering the student’s academic success results in positive mentor relationship outcomes regardless of the racial similarity between mentor and mentee.
– As it pertains to the geosciences in particular, positive student outcomes of mentoring have been demonstrated in geoscience-specific programs.
– Macrosystem perspectives of peer support networks and community building efforts play an important role in fostering student engagement and retention in STEM majors and positive student outcomes.
– Many positive student outcomes are associated with bridge programs, including increased interest in the geosciences, relationship building between student and faculty members, development of research skills, knowledge gained regarding careers in STEM and the geosciences, knowledge gained about the college application process, and increased self-efficacy.
Decomposing the Racial Gap in STEM Major Attrition: A Course-Level Investigation
This paper examines differences in STEM retention between minority and non-minority
undergraduate students. It examines the role of ability in the switching decision and timing, they estimate STEM and non-STEM ability, and then compare the joint distribution of students who switch out of STEM versus STEM stayers.
Mind the Gap: Student Researchers Use Secondary Data to Explore Disparities in STEM Education
1) How do students’ math and science self-efficacies relate to students’ post-secondary education plans? Are there differences by gender? 2) Is gender or race related to students’ taking of computer science courses? In the student’s choice of a computer science career? 3) Do students with individualized education plans (IEPs) differ from general education students in their expectations to obtain a degree post high school? Of the students that have an IEP, are there differences in their expectations for post-secondary plans by socioeconomic status? 4) Does participating in extracurricular activities (EA) have an effect on a student’s plans to attend college? Does SES status affect the relationship between participation and educational plans?
Early Experiences and Integration in the Persistence of First-Generation College Students in STEM and Non-STEM Majors
To what extent are demographic and academic background, commitment and support, early experiences and integration, and ï¬rst semester academic outcomes related to the persistence of First generation college students (FGCSs) based on major in physical sciences, engineering, math, and computer sciences (PEMC-STEM), other-STEM, and non-STEM)?.
STEM Field Persistence: The Impact of Engagement on Postsecondary STEM Persistence for Underrepresented Minority Students
1) Do the BPS:04/09 data support that underrepresented minority students leave STEM fields? 2) Does the BPS:04/09 demonstrate differential engagement for underrepresented minority students in STEM fields? 3) Do the differing engagement behaviors contribute to STEM attrition of underrepresented minorities?
The Role of STEM High Schools in Reducing Gaps in Science and Mathematics Coursetaking: Evidence from North Carolina
The authors examined whether underserved students in North Carolina STEM high schools have similar or higher rates of advanced science and mathematics course taking than students in neighboring traditional high schools.
The Impact of Inclusive STEM High Schools on Student Achievement
To estimate the impact of “inclusive” science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) high schools.
Aligning Science Achievement and STEM Expectations for College Success: A Comparative Study of Curricular Standardization
This paper examines student science
achievement in the precollege years, focusing
on students who indicate they plan to major
in science or pursue a science career. It compares the United States with other industrialized countries in terms of science achievement and determines the degree to which crossnational variations in standardization of the curriculum are related to science achievement, net of other country-level factors such as teacher quality and economic development. The authors then examine cross-national variations in students’
future orientations toward STEM to determine
whether curricular standardization is related
to the alignment of students’ science achievement with their plans to pursue a STEM major or career
Exploring the Foundations of the Future STEM Workforce: K-12 Indicators of Postsecondary STEM Success
- What K-12 indicators predict postsecondary STEM success?
- To what extent do K-12 indicators of postsecondary STEM success differ for Hispanic and non-Hispanic students?
The Role of Mothers’ Communication in Promoting Motivation for Math and Science Course-Taking in High School
– There was a significant effect of the experimental intervention on course-taking, such that adolescents whose parents received the intervention took more MS in 12th grade, compared with controls.
– There was an indirect effect of personal connections on STEM course-taking through adolescent’s interest.- More years of mother’s education were associated with higher perceptions of adolescents’ math ability.
– Neither mothers’ years of education nor mothers’ perception of adolescents’ math ability predicted number of conversations between mothers and adolescents or personal connections articulated in the interviews.
– Mothers with more years of education generated more elaborated responses in their interview.
– There was a significant interaction between number of conversations and elaboration, such that the highest level of interest occurred with high elaboration and few conversations.
– Adolescents whose parents received the intervention reported more UV in 10th grade than those whose parents were in the control group.
– Higher levels of interest in 10th grade predicted more STEM courses taken in 12th grade.
– There was a significant interaction between elaboration and number of conversations such that the highest levels of course-taking were achieved either with the combination of high elaboration and fewer conversations, or less elaboration but more conversations.
Examination of Factors that Predict Academic Adjustment and Success of Community College Transfer Students in STEM at 4-Year Institutions
1) What background characteristics, community college experiences, and university experiences predict academic adjustment for community college transfer students in engineering and other STEM (nonengineering) disciplines? 2) What background characteristics, community college experiences, and university experiences predict cumulative GPA for community college transfer students in engineering and other STEM (nonengineering) disciplines?
Characteristics of US Students That Pursued a STEM Major and Factors That Predicted Their Persistence in Degree Completion
1) What are the characteristics of students’ who declared a STEM major? 2)What are the characteristics of students who completed a STEM major? 3)What factors influence students who persisted to complete a STEM major?