Extend existing explanations for gender differences in plans of pursuing STEM degrees and examine the role of the high school context.
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ClearThe K-16 STEM Archive is a searchable database. You can search it by typing in the search field above or filter it using the options in the sidebar. Abstracts are sorted by most recent publication year and primary author’s last name. Read more >>
Pathways to Science and Engineering Bachelor’s Degrees for Men and Women
How would the gender gap in S/E degrees
change if women had the same orientation
toward and preparation for S/E in middle school
and at the end of high school?
Breaking it Down: Engineering Student STEM Confidence at the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender
This study examines social cognitive influences on engineering student STEM confidence, with a particular focus on women and underrepresented minorities.
Compositional Effects, Segregation and Test Scores: Evidence from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
How is the expected test score of an average student predicted by the economic and/or ethnic composition of her or his school?
How Do Academic Achievement and Gender Affect the Earnings of STEM Majors? A Propensity Score Matching Approach
This study examines how the earnings benefits of choosing a STEM major vary both by gender and across the distribution of academic achievement, accounting for the selection into college major using propensity score matching. The purpose of this study is to estimate the earnings gap between STEM and non-STEM majors both across gender and across the distribution of achievement test scores. These estimates improve our understanding of the relationship between STEM major choice and early labor-market earnings, and how this relationship varies across gender.
Persistence and Performance for Latino Community College Students in STEM Majors
1) Do coaching intervention models in STEM courses contribute to student semester-to-semester persistence for Latino community college students who participate in these courses, when compared to students who don’t participate? 2) Do Latino community college students who participate in college STEM courses with coaching intervention models perform better, as measured by final course GPA, when compared to students who do not participate?
Cohort changes in the relationship between adolescents' family attitudes, STEM intentions and attainment
1) Are family attitudes less likely to constrain young women’s STEM intentions and attainment in the 1990s, as compared to the 1970s? 2) Alternatively, did the effect of family attitudes become less gendered during this period, such that family attitudes constrained both women’s and men’s STEM intentions and attainment among the 1992 cohort?
Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion
Does having a small class size in K through 3rd have an impact on postsecondary outcomes?
College Student Pathways to the STEM Disciplines
1) What individual and school-level factors influence students pathways to STEM fields during college? 2) What institutional factors affect students’ likelihood of majoring in a STEM field in college, controlling for differences in student characteristics?
Supporting Future Scientists: Predicting Minority Student Participation in the STEM Opportunity Structure in Higher Education
Researches STEM persistence by identifying the educational experiences and institutional contexts that contribute to student access and involvement in the opportunity structure. The STEM opportunity structure are extracurricular and co-curricular activities that boost performance within STEM majors.
STEM Club Participation and STEM Schooling Outcomes
This study evaluates how math club participation influences math GPA and how science club participation influences science GPA. Additionally, this study evaluates how math or science club participation associates with the probability of selecting a STEM major in college.
Examining the Tracks that Cause Derailment: Institutional Contexts and Engineering Degree Attainments
1) What factors contribute to completing an engineering degree within five years? 2) What factors contribute to students switching out of the engineering program?
Science Identity Trajectories of Latecomers to Science in College
- What trends in science identity trajectories are latecomers to science able to construct during their first year in a college science program?
- How are latecomers’ identity trajectories constrained by or improvised with the cultural models and associated resources available in the figured world of a college science program?
Predictors of Latina/o Community College Student Vocational Choice of STEM Fields: Testing of the STEM-Vocational Choice Model
1) Are there statistically significant effects of exogenous factors associated with observed vocational interest on the dependent variable of vocational choice in STEM at transfer for community college students? 2) Will the exogenous and observed variables in the STEM-VC model serve as a successful predictive model for the intention to major in a STEM field at transfer for Latina/o community college students? For White students? 3) Are there significant differences between Latina/o and White student respondents in the final STEM-VC model measurement and pathway model and what are these differences between the two ethnic populations?
Predictors of Latina/o community college student vocational choice of STEM fields: Testing of the STEM-vocational choice mode
1) Are there statistically significant effects of exogenous factors associated with observed vocational interest on the dependent variable of vocational choice in STEM at transfer for community college students? 2) Will the exogenous and observed variables in the STEM-VC model serve as a successful predictive model for the intention to major in a STEM field at transfer for Latina/o community college students? For White students? 3) Are there significant differences between Latina/o and White student respondents in the final STEM-VC model measurement and pathway model and what are these differences between the two ethnic populations?
Predicting High School Students' Interest in Majoring in a STEM Field: Insight into High School Students' Postsecondary Plans
This study examined how various individual, family, and school level contextual factors impact the likelihood of planning to major in one of the science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields for high school students.
Social Class and the STEM Career Pipeline: An Ethnographic Investigation of Opportunity Structures in High-Poverty Versus Affluent High School
1) What are the mechanisms through which high school opportunity structures link to student choice of STEM major and college destination? 2) To what extent and in what ways do high school opportunity structures differ in schools with a large upper/middle class White population versus a comprehensive urban school (with a STEM focus) with a high population of poor and working class students of color? 3) To what extent do the mechanisms through which the high school opportunity structures link to college major choice and college destination differ in the two schools under investigation?
Choosing an Undergraduate STEM Major: Family Socioeconomic Status, Individual, and Institutional Factors
The purpose of this study wasto examine college students’ enrollment decision in STEM majors with a focus on students’ family SES. This study examinedwhether there is systematic association between students’ family SES and their enrollment in STEM majorsand if so, what the direction and magnitude of the association is. The overarching research question that guided this study was: Do the enrollment in STEM majors vary for students with different family SES background? Specifically, this study addressedthe following research questions: (1) Is students’ family SES related to their decision of whether to enroll in a STEM major in college? (2) Does the enrollment decision in STEM fields vary for students with different college investment levels? and (3) Does the enrollment decision in STEM fields vary at institutions with different scales and levels of STEM major offerings?
High School Economic Composition and College Persistence
The authors examine variation in college persistence according to the economic composition of high schools, which serves as a proxy for unmeasured high school attributes that are conductive to postsecondary success.
Does Immigration Affect whether U.S. Natives Major in Science and Engineering?
Does the amount of immigrants have an impact on the amount of U.S. natives that major in STEM?
The Effects of Single-Sex Compared With Coeducational Schooling on Mathematics and Science Achievement: Data From Korea
– Results for eighth graders indicated no differences between students in single-sex and coeducational schools in mathematics and science achievement.
– Results from the 2003 TIMSS data replicated the finding: students’ mathematics and science achievement was unrelated to the gender composition of their school.
– For both the 2007 and the 2003 data sets, students’ performance was consistently significantly predicted by factors related to socioeconomic status; students (both boys and girls) performed better on the mathematics and science exams when their fathers had more education, their families had more resources, and a lower proportion of their schoolmates came from economically disadvantaged families.
– Both boys’ and girls’ mathematics performance was predicted by the amount of time spent on homework; students do worse when they spend relatively more time on mathematics homework (or students spend more time on homework when they are performing poorly).
How Well Does the SAT and GPA Predict the Retention of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Business Students
This study examined if a higher college preparatory GPA and a higher aggregate score on the SAT helped predict the retention of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and business students.
Gender and ethnic differences in precollege mathematics course work related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pathways
How do students of different ethnicity and gender groups differ in advanced mathematics course-taking and in STEM major choice? What student and school factors can explain these differences? How does high school advanced mathematics course-taking account for disparities in STEM major choice?
Longitudinal Analysis of the Relations Between Opportunities to Learn About Science and the Development of Interests Related to Science
The authors hypothesize that children’s developing interest in science emerges over time through coregulation between children’s interest and the informal science opportunities parents provide. Second, they suggest that this coregulation cycle may differ for boys and girls and this may ultimately account for some of the gender differences in science interest.
Science Aspirations, Capital, and Family Habitus: How Families Shape Children's Engagement and Identification With Science
How and why is science a more ‘‘thinkable”
aspiration in some families and not others?
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.
Low-Income Engineering Students: Considering Financial Aid and Differential Tuition
1) What are the rates of participation in Engineering undergraduate programs at two public, research universities by socio-economic status? 2) What is the actual cost of pursuing a degree in Engineering at two public, research universities by socio-economic status? 3) How does financial aid (e.g., Pell Grants, state aid, institutional aid) fluctuate over time for low-income and other students in Engineering and non-Engineering fields? 4) What are the graduation rates for students in Engineering and non-Engineering majors, by socio-economic status?
Student and high-school characteristics related to completing a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) major in college
What is the relationship between completing a particular high-school mathematics curriculum and completing a STEM major in college? What is the relationship between student and high-school characteristics and performance in college level mathematics? Can the relationship be generalized across high schools of varying sizes, percentages of college-bound students, SES, and location in the US?
The Earnings Benefits of Majoring in STEM Fields Among High Achieving Minority Students
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between majoring in a STEM ?eld in college, and early career earnings among high achieving minority students. Research questions: 1) What are the earnings premiums associated with majoring in STEM fields during college for racial/ethnic minority students? 2) To what extent does congruence between majors and jobs account for the earnings differences? 3) Is there an earnings premium associated with majoring and gaining employment in a STEM field and not gaining employment in a related occupation?
Pathways to a STEMM Profession
This analysis focuses on differences in pathways to a science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine
(STEMM) professions.
Pathways to STEMM Professions for Students From Noncollege Homes
This analysis focuses on differences in pathways to a science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine
(STEMM) profession between households in which no parent has a baccalaureate and households in which at least one parent has a baccalaureate.
Friendship Groups, Personal Motivation, and Gender in Relation to High School Students’ STEM Career Interest
Friendship group characteristics, motivation, and gender were investigated in relation to adolescents’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) career interest. First, the authors investigated the extent to which personal motivation and friendship group STEM climate predicted adolescents’ STEM career interest after controlling for gender and other background factors. They hypothesized that the effects of these variables would be domain-specific, such that the friendship group’s STEM climate and students’ sci-ence motivation would predict STEM career interest after controlling for the friendship group’s English climate and students’ English motivation. Finally, they investigated possible moderation effects.
Stability and Volatility of STEM Career Interest in High School: A Gender Study
To gauge how stable versus volatile the reports of boys’ and girls’ STEM career interests are over the course of high school.
Professional Role Confidence and Gendered Persistence in Engineering
This study examines behavioral and intentional persistence among students who enter an engineering major in college.
Stepping onto the STEM Pathway: Factors Affecting Talented Students' Declaration of STEM Majors in College
1) What are the college educational patterns and experiences of individuals talented in STEM? How do they affect the selection of a college major in STEM? How do they differ by age cohort? 2) What factors predict STEM majors in college?
Influences of Faculty Validation on Community College STEM Students' Persistence and Success
1) What is the relationship between demographic variables and validation scores for community college STEM students? 2) What is the relationship between demographic variables and academic success and persistence for community college STEM students? 3) What is the influence of validation scores on academic success and persistence based on continued enrollment for community college STEM students?
Trajectories of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering Students by Race and Gender
This paper describes the outcomes for students matriculating in and migrating into electrical engineering (EE) and computer engineering (CpE).