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Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers

Internationally, the need to advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is recognized as being vital for meeting social and economic challenges and developing a scientifically, mathematically, and technologically literate citizenry. In many countries, however, there ar...

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Autores principales: Lane, Ciara, Kaya-Capocci, Sila, Kelly, Regina, O’Connell, Tracey, Goos, Merrilyn
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9558732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248500
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.959972
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author Lane, Ciara
Kaya-Capocci, Sila
Kelly, Regina
O’Connell, Tracey
Goos, Merrilyn
author_facet Lane, Ciara
Kaya-Capocci, Sila
Kelly, Regina
O’Connell, Tracey
Goos, Merrilyn
author_sort Lane, Ciara
collection PubMed
description Internationally, the need to advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is recognized as being vital for meeting social and economic challenges and developing a scientifically, mathematically, and technologically literate citizenry. In many countries, however, there are gender differences in the participation and achievement of girls and women in STEM education and STEM careers, usually to the disadvantage of females. This paper aims to identify challenges to female students’ participation in STEM both at post-primary (secondary school) level and beyond in the Irish context. The research questions we aim to address in this paper are: (1) what are student attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics as measured through interest and perceived ability in STEM, students’ valuing of STEM and students’ commitment to STEM? and (2) what gender differences occur regarding students’ attitudes to science, technology, engineering and mathematics? A survey was completed by 308 post-primary students in Ireland as part of a one-year research project titled “STEMChAT: Women as catalysts for change in STEM education.” Data analysis compiled descriptive statistics, including response frequencies and percentages and median and interquartile range values, and compared gender differences in survey responses using the Kruskal–Wallis H Test. Results indicated that female students had significantly more positive attitudes to science compared to males while in comparison, males had significantly more positive responses to mathematics compared to females. Challenges regarding access to and understanding of STEM in the context of post-primary education are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-95587322022-10-14 Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers Lane, Ciara Kaya-Capocci, Sila Kelly, Regina O’Connell, Tracey Goos, Merrilyn Front Psychol Psychology Internationally, the need to advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is recognized as being vital for meeting social and economic challenges and developing a scientifically, mathematically, and technologically literate citizenry. In many countries, however, there are gender differences in the participation and achievement of girls and women in STEM education and STEM careers, usually to the disadvantage of females. This paper aims to identify challenges to female students’ participation in STEM both at post-primary (secondary school) level and beyond in the Irish context. The research questions we aim to address in this paper are: (1) what are student attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics as measured through interest and perceived ability in STEM, students’ valuing of STEM and students’ commitment to STEM? and (2) what gender differences occur regarding students’ attitudes to science, technology, engineering and mathematics? A survey was completed by 308 post-primary students in Ireland as part of a one-year research project titled “STEMChAT: Women as catalysts for change in STEM education.” Data analysis compiled descriptive statistics, including response frequencies and percentages and median and interquartile range values, and compared gender differences in survey responses using the Kruskal–Wallis H Test. Results indicated that female students had significantly more positive attitudes to science compared to males while in comparison, males had significantly more positive responses to mathematics compared to females. Challenges regarding access to and understanding of STEM in the context of post-primary education are discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9558732/ /pubmed/36248500 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.959972 Text en Copyright © 2022 Lane, Kaya-Capocci, Kelly, O’Connell and Goos. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lane, Ciara
Kaya-Capocci, Sila
Kelly, Regina
O’Connell, Tracey
Goos, Merrilyn
Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers
title Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers
title_full Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers
title_fullStr Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers
title_full_unstemmed Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers
title_short Fascinating or dull? Female students’ attitudes towards STEM subjects and careers
title_sort fascinating or dull? female students’ attitudes towards stem subjects and careers
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9558732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248500
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.959972
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