The research explores the lived experiences of minority women in K-12 educational leadership, examining their motivations for pursuing careers in this field, and the challenges they encounter on their professional and educational journeys. The challenges faced are multifaceted and include issues related to gender, culture, and race/ethnicity.…

The evidence regarding the effectiveness of STEM support programs for K-12 students to spark their interest in the STEM field is mixed. The goals and contents of support programs vary and mostly cover short intervention periods. So far, not many studies exist that cover different learning characteristics of students in long-term STEM support…

Adults with ADHD face multiple challenges, some occupational. While many experienced numerous difficulties as pupils, some chose to train as teachers. Antonovsky's salutogenic model argues that developing a stronger sense of coherence (SOC) may help these teachers to better cope with ADHD's challenges. This study uses grounded theory to explore…

Students' positive perceptions of scientists or engineers have been reported to be positively related to their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career aspirations. However, other research indicates that positive perceptions of experts in these fields might not necessarily lead to students' pursuit of STEM careers.…

There is little attention and consensus in science education for gifted learners, leading to insufficient support and understanding of their needs, which hinders their potential development as future scientists and professionals. Utilizing a narrative research design, the study explores the experiences of nine scientists identified as gifted in…

In this large-scale qualitative study, we use an emergent design to explore pre-service teachers' (PST) motivations to enter the profession. We open-code 2,798 PSTs responses to the directive, 'Explain why you decided to become a teacher', given over the course of a six-year period from one large Texas teacher preparation programme. Using constant…

We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report a nonzero chance of working as a teacher in the…

There has been a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teacher shortage in K-12 schools across the United States (Klassen et al., 2021; Luft et al., 2005). To help provide a possible solution to the nationwide STEM teacher shortage, this study investigated the factors that influence STEM majors to change careers from STEM…

Both, educators and policy makers have expressed growing concerns over the low levels of math and science achievement among American students and the decline in the numbers of young people moving into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers (Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2007; National Science…

We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report a nonzero chance of working as a teacher in the…

This paper addresses a dilemma of education's autonomy: if an educational goal is to be universal, how do people's current problems and concerns are supposed to be integrated or addressed in the educational work, and specifically in teaching the curriculum? The paper looks at this dilemma with a particular educational perspective and within a…

There is an underrepresentation of South Asian American K-12 teachers in the United States compared to those employed in the science and technology fields. The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry was to explore the stories of K-12 South Asian American teachers to understand what impacted their career path and gain an understanding of the…

This narrative study examines Asian (American) educators' motivations to become teachers. Adopting tenets of the Asian Critical Theory, findings suggest that participants attribute their initial interests in teaching to their inequitable schooling experiences characterized by Asian (American) marginalization and misrepresentation. They are thus…

Despite existing recruitment and retention efforts, there has been a persistent underrepresentation of Black men teachers in the U.S. educator workforce. The present study employed a phenomenological approach to examine what motivated Black men (n = 27) to enter the teaching profession. We drew on the social-cognitive career theory (SCCT)…

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence that a novel, industry-situated, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Laboratory (STEM Lab) experience may have on students' (ages 10-18) perceptions of manufacturing-related careers as well as to identify any challenges/strategies for the implementation of these…