– 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
How School Socioeconomic Status Affects Achievement Growth across School Transitions in Early Educational Careers
– Findings suggest that a student’s elementary SES composition has a legacy effect on middle school achievement growth net of his
or her own achievement growth and middle school SES composition.
– SES composition effects differ depending on the timing of exposure and a student’s individual free and reduced lunch (FRL) status.
– Findings suggest that early education contexts are critical for math achievement growth in general.
– The authors’ findings show that school segregation by socioeconomic status is problematic for achievement growth for
all students.
– Disadvantages from the elementary school context carry over to the middle school context, and the SES composition effect of students’ middle school depends on students’ prior school experiences.
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?
Gender Differences in Conceptualizations of STEM Career Interest: Complementary Perspectives from Data Mining, Multivariate Data Analysis and Multidimensional Scaling
To extract new information about differences in male versus female conceptual frameworks of STEM career interest in middle school.
The Cumulative Disadvantages of First- and Second-Generation Segregation for Middle School Achievement
1) What was the extent of first- and second-generation segregation in CMS middle schools as of 1997? 2) What student- and school-level factors predicted middle school track placements and achievement in reading and mathematics? 3) Do segregated minority schools and disproportionate minority lower track levels contribute to students’ achievement exclusive of other factors? 4.Do first- and second-generation segregation operate to sequentially and cumulatively disadvantage those who experience it?
Harming the Best: How Schools Affect the Black-White Achievement Gap
Study the impact of school quality on the B-W achievement gap & particularly its evolution across different parts of the achievement distribution.
How Middle School Segregation Contributes to the Race Gap in Academic Achievement
Studies the effects of school racial composition on the academic outcomes of middle school students
Connecting Pieces of the Puzzle: Gender Differences in Black Middle School Students' Achievement
Explores the sources of variation in Black adolescent students’ academic achievement during Middle School.
Tracking and Mixed-Ability Grouping in Secondary School Mathematics Classrooms: A Case Study
Trying to test if tracking produces systematic differences in provision of students.
Teacher-Student Interactions and Race in Integrated Classrooms
Are Black and White students treated differently by White teachers on the basis of race in integrated classrooms?
Tracking and Transitions Through the Middle Grades: Channeling Educational Trajectories
Examines sources of influence on inner-city students’ initial middle school placements in English and mathematics and continuity and change in placements through the end of middle school
Effects of School Restructuring on the Achievement and Engagement of Middle-Grade Students
How differences in the organization of schools influence the learning and behavior of students who attend the schools?
The Organization of Students for Instruction in the Middle School
The structure of tracking systems and the process of assigning students to tracks for instruction at a critical point in schooling, the middle school.
Middle School Ability Grouping and Student Achievement in Science and Mathematics
Effects of middle school ability grouping on cognitive achievements in mathematics and science.