"I see myself as a STEM person" : exploring high school students' self-identification with STEM
Grimalt Álvaro, Carme (Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Departament Pedagogia)
Couso, Digna (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Didàctica de la Matemàtica i de les Ciències Experimentals)
Boixadera Planas, Ester (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Servei d'Estadística Aplicada (SEA))
Godec, Spela (University College London)

Data:	2022
Resum:	In the literature, STEM identity tends to be characterized either as students' relationship with the STEM field "as a whole," or their relationship with a particular STEM area, such as science. With this study, we add to the existing scholarship by characterizing the profiles of students who identified themselves as "STEM people. " A 52-item questionnaire was administered to 1004 students aged 12-16 from high schools in and around Barcelona, Spain. To profile different groups of students, we performed a hierarchical cluster analysis that included responses relating to participants' interest, competence, self-efficacy, and aspirations to different STEM and non-STEM areas. Our analysis generated six different clusters, which we interpreted as ranging from positive to negative self-identification with STEM. Our particular interest was in the two clusters we interpreted as exhibiting positive STEM identity (C1 and C2). The analysis suggested that there were two different ways of considering oneself as a STEM person. Students who self-identified as STEM people were either more inclined toward technology and engineering (C1) or science (C2), particularly in terms of their aspirations. These two clusters were also strongly gendered, with C1 being dominated by boys and C2 by girls. Although our findings suggest the existence of a conscious "sense of STEM identity," we suggest that students who self-identified as STEM people may have ascribed different meanings to the STEM based on their preferences. As such, this study questions the suitability of studying STEM identity "as a whole" without also considering how students relate to individual STEM and non-STEM areas.
Ajuts:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-1399 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-01682 Agencia Estatal de Investigación PGC2018-096581-B-C21
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Cluster analysis ; Gender ; Secondary education ; STEM identity
Publicat a:	Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 59, Issue 5 (May 2022) , p. 720-745, ISSN 1098-2736

DOI: 10.1002/tea.21742

26 p, 3.8 MB

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