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Entrance to Four-Year College STEM Majors: Motivation, STEM Course-Taking, NAEP Mathematics Performance, and Social Networks
Sat, April 23, 8:00 to 9:30am PDT (8:00 to 9:30am PDT), Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina, Floor: North Building, Lobby Level, Marriott Grand Ballroom 6Abstract
In April 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected an 8 percent increase in the number of STEM jobs in the 2019-2029 decade compared to a 3.4 increase in non-STEM jobs. Filling these positions is essential for U.S. competitiveness. It is crucial to motivate more students to take an interest in STEM areas and to sustain that interest so that they will choose STEM majors in college (and eventually STEM careers).
While there is some evidence for the role that motivation (e.g., self-efficacy) plays in who majors in a STEM subject in college (e.g., Simon et al., 2015), missing from this literature is the role that having a science and/or mathematics identity play in that process. This study fills that gap by examining the roles that identity, as well as self-efficacy and interest play in who chooses a STEM major in college, after taking into account high school STEM coursetaking, NAEP grade 12 math achievement, and students’ social networks.
Using the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS:09) and the special overlap sample of approximately 3,480 students who participated in the HSLS:09 and took the 2013 Grade 12 NAEP Mathematics Assessment, this study proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework to understand how students’ STEM motivation, high school STEM coursetaking, NAEP math performance, and social networks are related to students’ entrance to a STEM major while controlling family and school background, as seen in Figure 4.1.
HSLS:09 is a nationally representative, longitudinal study of 9th graders who were followed through high school and continue to be followed through college years. HSLS:09 included an algebra assessment, students’ high school transcripts, and a survey containing questions on STEM motivation (mathematics and science), social networks and other contextual variables. Given that the study focuses on students’ pathways to a 4-year college STEM major, the analytic sample was limited to students who made it to a 4-year college at the time of data collection in February 2016. Table 4.1 presents descriptive statistics for the sample.
Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test the conceptual framework. Results from the SEM model, shown in Table 4.2, revealed that students’ mathematics and science motivation (mathematics identity, mathematics self-efficacy, and science identity) were significantly associated with students’ choice of a 4-year college STEM major with science identity displaying the largest effect of all variables included in the model—it had a standardized coefficient of 0.24. Students’ NAEP mathematics performance and STEM coursetaking variables were also positively associated with students’ choice of a STEM major. The study found that neither parental nor peer factors were significantly associated with student’s choosing a STEM major after taking into consideration the other factors in the model.
This study highlights the importance of the role of science and mathematics identities in the early high school years on students’ choice of a STEM major in college, a result which suggests that cultivating and sustaining students’ STEM identities during high school may result in more students majoring in STEM fields in college.