Breaking Down the STEM Pathway: Community Resource for Improving Mexican-Origin Adolescent’s Life Chances

• In Event: 3-092 - Novel Approaches for Measuring Neighborhoods and their Influence on Child Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Industry, government, and academic leaders express their concern for persistent racial and ethnic disparities in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce (Landivar, 2013). Historically, Mexican-origin children are underrepresented at all stages of STEM educational pathways. As children from Mexican-origin families make up a substantial share of all U.S. students, these disparities will have a significant impact on the future workforce (Lopez & Radford, 2017). Moving beyond oft-studied sociodemographic factors, the current paper explores how neighborhood resources promote Mexican-origin children’s STEM progress to identify ways to facilitate their participation in STEM workforce.
Primary data were drawn from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 [ELS] tracking about 15,360 students’ educational progress in STEM. Precursor STEM outcomes (e.g., the cumulative grade point averages (GPA) in math and science) are drawn from the end of high school (grade 12; second follow-up), and primary STEM outcomes (e.g., receipt of certificate, degree, or major in STEM field) are assessed in young adulthood (post-secondary; third follow-up). The current paper using novel administrative data linking various community resources (e.g., non-profit organizations, libraries, museums, and labor market) extracted from multiple sources including the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the Institute of Museum & Library Services, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Correlations between neighborhood resource variables and socio-demographics are presented in Table 1.
Preliminary data analyses utilizing a multilevel modeling framework with random intercepts and slopes show a positive association between community-based resources and children’s STEM outcomes, after controlling for background factors including individuals’ demographics, family/parent, school and census-derived socioeconomic variables (see Table 2). In particular, a local labor market with a higher proportion of STEM-related occupations was significantly associated with youth’s higher enrollment in both advanced math and science courses in high school. These local neighborhood labor market characteristics, however, only modify STEM progress among non-Mexican-origin children. Among Mexican-origin children, a higher number of non-profit organizations, especially art and culture focused organizations, was associated with students’ more advanced science course-taking in high school.
Overall, findings suggest that providing access to neighborhood-based resources promotive of STEM may be a means to facilitating Mexican-origin adolescent’s educational STEM pursuit and increasing their chances of entering the STEM workforce. Future analysis will investigate the intersection of community resources and family context across the STEM pipeline.

Authors

• Sae Oh, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Tama Leventhal, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University
  Non-Presenting Author