Elucidating the Role of Curiosity in Science Identity and Self-Efficacy Within STEM Undergraduates

• In Event: Student Engagement and Cognitive Processes in Engineering and Computing Education

Abstract

Students in STEM who are part of minoritized groups continue to be underrepresented in post-secondary education (National Science Foundation, 2023). Understanding how to attract, retain, and support these students to STEM can help promote broader representation. For example, factors such as self-efficacy and science identity are highly predictive of STEM learning and career outcomes (Trujillo and Tanner, 2014), and curiosity is vital for pursuing questions that undergird groundbreaking discoveries in STEM and is associated with science achievement (Gottfried et al., 2016; Ogle et al., 2017). This study investigates the nature of and relations among STEM undergraduates’ curiosity, self-efficacy, and science identity as a first step in understanding how to attract, retain, and support STEM learners.

Authors

• Jason Sitt, University of Virginia

• Ryan Burke, University of Virginia

• Jamie Jirout, University of Virginia