Analysis of determinants of female secondary students’ STEM career motivation in South Korea

• In Event: Roundtable Session 5
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Improvement of School Systems and Educational Systems to Promote Social Justice and Inclusion

Proposal

Creative innovations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are rapidly changing the world. However, women make up only 29.3 percent of scientific researchers globally, and rates are even lower in the Asia-Pacific region signifying a loss of talent and feminine perspectives in developing solutions. In South Korea with the highest ratio of R&D expenditures to GDP for the ICT technologies development, women hold only 20.1 percent of research positions which is even more problematic. This reality shows that the STEM field still has a long way to go to ensure Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, equitable quality education, and SDG 5, gender equality.
Despite the current global phenomenon that girls outperform boys in mathematics and science, female students, especially at the secondary level, tend to lose interest and self-efficacy in STEM which eventually lowers their career motivation. This is no exception for South Korea as well. Scholars have found that this is due to the various barriers such as socio-cultural norms like gender-biased stereotypes and observed behaviors, lack of successful female role models, and pedagogical factors like lack of interaction with teachers and access to extracurricular programs.
Yet considering that there have been limited studies analyzing specific factors of this phenomenon, especially in Asian countries, this study focuses on identifying specific determinants that influence female secondary students’ STEM career motivation in South Korea through in-depth interviews. The study is expected to contribute to an expanding body of literature on determinants of girls’ low STEM career motivation in the world and provide meaningful insight to domestic research which has been mainly focused on college and workforce levels through quantitative methods so far when it comes to relevant topics.

The study poses the following research questions:
· Main Research Question: How do Korean female high-school students perceive STEM and how does it influence their STEM career motivation?
· Sub-Question: Are there any other unique factors not described by previous studies that discourage the STEM career motivation of Korean female high-school students?

In-depth interviews with Korean female high-school students mainly in their first-grade were conducted considering that choosing the academic track (STEM vs. non-STEM) in their first-grade plays a significant role in their careers. The data of second-grade students who have already chosen their academic track were also collected to examine what made their choices and the collected data were analyzed by content analysis.
Preliminary findings suggest that Korean female high school students tend to hesitate to have a STEM career due to low confidence in STEM or subject difficulty based on their self-perception of male students and themselves. This was mainly influenced by learned gender-biased stereotypes formed through the interaction with peers and siblings. Regardless of actual academic performance, they tend to think boys are innately better at mathematics and science due to their natural characteristics while girls are better at reading and memorizing (non-STEM). Further research with more diverse samples such as girls’ high schools and STEM-specific high schools is necessary.

Author

• Yijun Won, Waseda University