Yet the category of “STEM careers” is heterogeneous, with hundreds of possible career paths included, each having very different characteristics. Within this area, researchers have further worked to understand and address a persistent underrepresentation of women and Black students in STEM careers, to promote more equitable participation (National Science Board, 2022). Congress, and there is an increasing prevalence of research publications related to STEM education (Li et al., 2020). For example, there has been significant funding devoted to STEM education through the National Science Foundation and Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Board submits biennial science and engineering indicators to the U.S. Considering this large and growing sector of the economy, researchers and policy-makers have devoted significant attention to motivating individuals to select STEM majors or career paths and retaining students as they pursue these trajectories. labor force comprises careers related to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) (National Science Board, 2022). Findings also point to specific and actionable ideas for how teachers, counselors, and administrators can target career education to cultivate students’ interest in STEM career paths, where there are particular needs.Īpproximately one-quarter of the U.S. Implicationsįindings shed light on how students come to perceive some STEM career paths as relatively more appealing than others, with attention to gender and racial/ethnic differences in these processes. Gender and racial/ethnic comparisons suggest differentiation in how students think about the appeal of various career paths as early as high school. However, within this category, beliefs about helping others were stronger influences on choosing most-preferred careers, whereas concerns about fitting in were more influential for choosing least-preferred careers. Students primarily selected reasons related to utility and attainment value in influencing their choices of most- and least-preferred careers. Students’ career preferences could be classified into four groups: appealing, unappealing, polarizing, or overlooked. A large sample of high school students ( N = 526) completed an online survey during class time about their beliefs regarding fifteen different STEM career categories. A secondary goal was to examine whether there were differences in any patterns as a function of students’ intersecting gender and racial/ethnic identities. The present study examined high school students’ relative preferences for pursuing some types of STEM careers over others and explored what motivational beliefs (defined in accordance with situated expectancy value theory) most influenced students’ relative career preferences. Decades of research have examined what motivates students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, but STEM careers are a broad category encompassing hundreds of distinct vocations.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |