Pipeline persistence: Examining the association of educational experiences with earned degrees in STEM among U.S. students (original) (raw)
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The Roots of STEM Achievement: An Analysis of Persistence and Attainment in STEM Majors
The American Economist
This article analyzes persistence and attainment in postsecondary science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) education using data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study. Ability is shown to have a consistent impact on STEM performance. Self-efficacy has large estimated impacts, and there is evidence of strong bias against women. High school math preparation and attending small colleges increase the likelihood of noninterested students switching to STEM fields. Overall, there is little evidence that collegiate educational experiences affect persistence or attainment. The results indicate that policies to improve high school math preparation and address the gender gap would be most effective. JEL Classifications: I21, I28
STEM Pathways: Examining Persistence in Rigorous Math and Science Course Taking
Journal of Science Education and Technology, 2016
From 2006 to 2012, Florida Statute §1003.4156 required middle school students to complete electronic personal education planners (ePEPs) before promotion to ninth grade. The ePEP helped them identify programs of study and required high school coursework to accomplish their postsecondary education and career goals. During the same period Florida required completion of the ePEP, Florida's Career and Professional Education Act stimulated a rapid increase in the number of statewide high school career academies. Students with interests in STEM careers created STEM-focused ePEPs and may have enrolled in STEM career academies, which offered a unique opportunity to improve their preparedness for the STEM workforce through the integration of rigorous academic and career and technical education courses. This study examined persistence of STEM-interested (i.e., those with expressed interest in STEM careers) and STEM-capable (i.e., those who completed at least Algebra 1 in eighth grade) students (n = 11,248), including those enrolled in STEM career academies, in rigorous mathematics and science course taking in Florida public high schools in comparison with the national cohort of STEM-interested students to measure the influence of K-12 STEM education efforts in Florida. With the exception of multi-race students, we found that Florida's STEM-capable students had lower persistence in rigorous mathematics and science course taking than students in the national cohort from ninth to eleventh grade. We also found that participation in STEM career academies did not support persistence in rigorous mathematics and science courses, a prerequisite for success in postsecondary STEM education and careers.
Indicators of Success in STEM Majors: A Cohort Study
Journal of College Admission, 2011
Efforts to combat the well-documented problem have recently taken on a new momentum. In 2005 and 2006 alone, more than six major reports were released by respected academic, scientific and business organizations concerning the need to improve US science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education (Kuenzi, 2008). In addition, during these years three bills concerning STEM education were passed into law by the 109th congress and more recently, in 2007 the comprehensive America COMPETES Act was signed into law by the 110th congress (Kuenzi, 2008). The COMPETES act serves to not only expand existing STEM education programs, but also to implement more than 10 new programs to increase the number of students entering STEM disciplines and ultimately, STEM career fields--and it appears that it is working. With all of this attention, and academic and monetary influence directed at trying to better prepare, and recruit students into STEM fields, there has been an increase in the number of students enrolling in STEM majors across the country including the emerging research one university used in this study. As one can see from 1, enrollment in STEM disciplines has steadily increased at this university over the last decade with the largest influx concurrent with the legislation and incentives implemented in 2005. WWW.NACACNET.ORG Astin, A. 1993. What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Kuenzi, J.
Boosting the numbers of STEM majors? The role of high schools with a STEM program
Science Education
This article investigates whether attending a high school that offers a specialized science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics program (high school with a STEM program) boosts the number of students majoring in STEM when they are in college. We use a longitudinal sample of students in North Carolina, whom we follow from middle school through college graduation, to estimate the effect of attending a high school with a STEM program on students' interest in STEM, odds of declaring, and chances of persisting in their intention to major in STEM. Although our multilevel models indicate that attending a high school with a STEM program has a positive association with students' STEM-related outcomes, once we control for sample self-selection through propensity score matching, we do not find evidence that attending high schools with a math and sciencefocused program significantly influences trajectories of STEM educational advantage for public school students in North Carolina. Our study concludes that perhaps even more important for college STEM success than what happens in high school is what STEM-related academic, familial, and formal/informal learning experiences the student had prior to entering high school.
2003 Annual Conference Proceedings
In 1995 the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded six minority-serving institutions in an effort to develop models for undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education that would increase the persistence, graduation, and success of all undergraduate STEM students; improve the quality of undergraduate STEM programs; and increase the diversity in STEM professions and graduate programs. The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), one of the six funded institutions, is located in the southwest corner of Texas bordering Juarez, Mexico and New Mexico. It primarily serves the predominantly Hispanic population of the region. Developed for all entering students in the College of Science and College of Engineering, the Circles of Learning for Entering Students (CircLES) program is a comprehensive institutional effort starting with a weeklong STEM summer orientation. CircLES also provides students with discipline-specific student advising and requires students to participate in one to two semesters of science or engineering-oriented learning communities, based on their pre-college preparation in Mathematics and English. This paper describes the design and findings of a five-year longitudinal study of student persistence in STEM since implementation of the program. Findings from the study indicate that students who participate in the program have higher retention rates in STEM, as well as at the University, and increased persistence toward graduation when compared to 1997 baseline rates. Similar results are
2016
Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest conducted this literature review to identify malleable factors that can be measured in K–12 settings and that predict students’ postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) success (defined as enrolling in, persisting in, and completing a postsecondary STEM major or degree), particularly for Hispanic students. The review found that courses taken in high school and interest or confidence in STEM were strong predictors of postsecondary STEM success for students of all racial/ethnic subgroups. Yet racial/ethnic minority students were less likely than White students to take the highest level math and science courses, and despite similar levels of STEM interest, racial/ethnic minority students were less likely to achieve postsecondary STEM success. Other indicators of postsecondary STEM success included high school grade point average, class rank, math and science achievement, and SAT or ACT scores. Grades in math and science c...
International Journal of Science Education, 2017
This study examines college students' science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) choices as they relate to high school experiences, parent, teacher, and self-expectations, and mathematics and science efficacy. Participants were 2246 graduates of a STEM-focused public Harmony Public Schools in Texas, Harmony Public Schools (HPS). Descriptive analyses indicated that the overall percentage of HPS graduates who chose a STEM major in college was greater than Texas state and national averages. Logistic regression analyses revealed that males and Asian students are more likely to choose a STEM major in college than females and non-Asian students, respectively. Moreover, students whose parents had a college degree in the U.S. are more likely to major in STEM fields than those who did not. Furthermore, males with higher mathematics efficacy and females with higher science efficacy are more likely to choose a STEM major than their counterparts with lower mathematics and science efficacy.
Journal of STEM Teacher Education, 2016
Educators and policymakers in the United States advocate the development of specialized STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) schools, but little is known about the unique features and practices of these schools. Because no meaningful differences have been found attributable to model type (Tofel-Grehl & Callahan, 2014), the current study purposefully sampled 6 specialized STEM schools in the United States that provided different levels of STEM experiences for students related to highly varied goals and missions using a grounded theory approach. Schools were found to fall into two categories, high and low STEM intensity, based on five major traits. Schools categorized as "higher STEM intensity and focus" had students who reported a stronger interest in a future STEM career, offered substantially more high-level STEM classes, and retained a faculty with a higher number of terminal area content degrees compared to schools categorized as "lower STEM intensity." Although there are significant common themes and programmatic themes and features among different STEM schools, substantial differences exist between the nature and intensity of the STEM experiences of schools. Categorizing STEM schools into higher and lower STEM experience intensity provides a useful mechanism for examining those differences. Students in schools with a higher STEM intensity appear to spend more time on the "doing" of science.
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education, 2015
Background/Context Schools are integral to augmenting and diversifying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. This is because K–12 schools can inspire and reinforce students’ interest in STEM, in addition to academically preparing them to pursue a STEM career. Previous literature emphasizes the importance of high-quality STEM academic preparation in high school and the role of informal and formal exposure to STEM as important influences on students’ chances of following a STEM career. Interestingly, although many students decide to major in STEM fields while they are in high school, the majority of the extant literature about why students choose STEM majors primarily focuses on students’ experiences during the college years. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Through our research, we seek to investigate how learning experiences of inspiration/reinforcement/preparation toward STEM that students have during high school can help explain ...