– 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.
Current Selections
ClearDeveloping a STEM Identity Among Young Women: A Social Identity Perspective
Is There Systemic Meaningful Evidence of School Poverty Thresholds?
-The author review of the literature about the relationships among SES and educational outcomes revealed surprisingly few SES threshold studies relative to the enormous corpus of research on SES composition effects.
– With few exceptions, the very small number of U.S. studies that report thresholds effects typically were conducted by a school district’s internal staff using cross-sectional data (only one year) for a subpopulation of district’s students.
-Conclusions reached in these studies arguably apply only to the students in the district who took part in the study, in the year in which the data were collected.
-The studies described in this report are not an empirical foundation upon which general educational policy regarding SES thresholds can be reliably or validly based.
– Educational decision makers should focus on reducing concentrations of school-level poverty to as low a level as is feasible given the available demographic mix, and avoid policies based on the unsupported notion that there are poverty thresholds above and below which student achievement levels can be predicted.
– There is not yet a body of systematic, reliable, and valid evidence that school poverty thresholds exist, and that they influence student achievement outcomes.
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.
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?
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.
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?
STEM Education
Review and discuss current research on STEM education in the United States, drawing on recent research in sociology and related fields.
Bourdieu's Notion of Cultural Capital and Its Implications for the Science Curriculum
To examine the specific contributions that science education makes to a student’s cultural capital: in particular, how that capital is acquired in the science classroom (or not), and how that cultural capital will be relevant to their future cultural, academic, and professional lives.
How Do School Peers Influence Student Educational Outcomes? Theory and Evidence from Economics and Other Social Sciences
Provide a description of a wide range of peer influence theories from psychologists, sociologists, and economists; proposes new theory of group contagion.
International Evidence on Ability Grouping with Curriculum Differentiation and the Achievement Gap in Secondary Schools
Review what research from other developed countries says regarding: ability grouping and achievement, achievement gap, etc.
What do we know about explanations for dropout/opt out among young people from STM higher education programmes?
To explore whether research on retention and non-completion in higher education, and in STM programmes in particular, has produced findings that can identify a direction forward for HE institutions and programmes to take measures to reduce the number of students leaving their chosen HE programme
School Choice in a Post-Desegregation World
Discusses evidence with respect to regulated and unregulated school choice.
Segregation and the Test Score Gap
Consider the role of school and neighborhood segregation in explaining trends in the black-white schooling gap.
The Structures of Cultural Meanings Within Desegregated Schools Fifty Years After Brown
Understand the role of cultural meanings in desegregated schools and the impact for racial/ethnic minority students.
Getting to the What, How, and Why of Diversity on Campus
What kinds of diversity initiatives and cross-racial interactions foster learning among diverse students?
Migration Background, Minority-Group Membership and Academic Achievement: Research Evidence from Social, Educational, and Developmental Psychology
Explores the impact on achievement of grouping students both within and between classrooms and schools based on their ability.
The Impact of Brown on Latinos: A Study on Transformation Policy Intentions
Describes the transformation of desegregation policy in San Jose, California where Latino students constituted the plaintiff class.
Science Education with English Language Learners: Synthesis and Research Agenda
Research on science education with English Language Learners
The Transformation of School Desegregation in San Jose, California (1985-2003)
Segregation & desegregation experience of Mexican American students & how desegregation remedies promoted or hindered their access to equal education.
Access and Achievement in Mathematics and Science
Unequal access to math and science course taking and achievement as a self-evident problem in K-12 schools. Why do inequalities persist?
Justice Deferred - A Half Century After Brown v. Board of Education
Reviews the history of the racial desegregation of America’s public schools.
Equity in Heterogeneous Classrooms
Argues that multicultural classrooms should be equitable classrooms through heterogeneous grouping.
School Desegregation and the American Dream
An examination of desegregation as a way to see how conflicts over the American dream have played out in America’s schools.
Economic School Integration
Explores the end of court-ordered desgregation, describes the alternative of socioeconomic integration, and sketches prospects for economic school integration in the future.
Educational Benefits of Racially and Ethnically Diverse School
Summarizes research on school desegregation and the benefits of racial and ethnic diversity in K-12 schooling.
Preservation or Transformation: Where's the Real Educational Discourse on Diversity?
How overlooking critical areas of diversity-related campus initiatives may preserve the very system that diversity advocates seek to transform.
Classroom Composition and Peer Effects
The extent to which the composition of classes affects learning outcomes.
Diversity and Educational Quality
Why benefits of diversity are part of educational quality?
School Composition and Peer Effects in Distinctive Organizational Settings
Reviews the research on school composition and peer effects from three comparative perspectives.
School Desegregation Policies and Judicial Trends in the United States
Historical overview of policies and judicial decisions concerning school segregation in the US, focusing on segregation of Hispanic/Latino students.
Maximizing the Benefits of Student Diversity: Lessons from School Desegregation Research
Summarizes research on effects of desegregation in elementary and secondary schools
When and How School Desegregation Improves Intergroup Relations: The Relationship Between Social Psychology and Social Policy
Analyze studies that focus on when and how does school desegregation improve intergroup relations?
Is Campus Racial Diversity Correlated with Educational Benefits?
Refute the contrary claim that racial diversity confers educational benefits for all admitted students.
Regression Analysis in the Wilmington Case
Discusses the shortcomings of stepwise regression analyses in educational studies and examines the application of regression analyses by expert witnesses.
Teachers' Perceptions and Expectations and The Black-White Test Score Gap
Ways in which teachers’ and students’ behaviors might be causes/consequences of racially disparate perceptions and expectations regarding achievement.
Affirmative Action in the Classroom: Diversity Effects on Student Outcomes: Social Science Evidence
Impact of diversity on student learning in higher education
The Economics of School Reform
Analysis of school reform in the US.
The Tracking and Ability Grouping Debate
What have we actually learned about tracking and ability grouping?
Introduction and Overview: The Role of Social Science in School Desegregation Efforts
Overview of the role of social science in school desegregation
Brown vs. Board of Education
History of Brown v. Board of Education
High Standards in a Tracked System of Schooling: For Which Students and with What Educational Supports?
Equitable opportunity for all children to learn challenging curricula. Changing limiting beliefs of teacher’s methods.
Review of Research on School Desegregation's Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students
Review of the literature on the impact of school desegregation. Focus on methodological and other problems that typify work in this area.
Overrepresentation of Minority Students in Special Education: A Continuing Debate
Review critically the minority overrepresentation problem from a historical perspective.
The Continuing Significance of Desegregation: School Racial Composition and African American Inclusion in American Society
Summarizes research on the long term consequences of desegregation.
The Promise of Brown and the Reality of Academic Groups: The Tracks of My Tears
Examines the antecedents of academic tracking and ability grouping in America and reviews the justification for these concepts in public schools.
Multicultural Education: Its Effects on Students' Racial and Gender Role Attitudes
Describes research on the effects of multicultural education on the perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs of K-12 students
School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations: A Review of the Literature
Assess the current state of literature on desegregation and intergroup relations