Extracurricular learning plays a key role in shaping students' interest in (not only) biology. The research examined which extracurricular areas related to biology can make biology more attractive for the participating Finnish and Czech students. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was administered to 178 Finnish and 195 Czech 9th-grade…

Engineering career interest, especially that of young women, declines as they approach high-school graduation. We used expectancy-value theory, which emphasizes expectations for success and subjective value of experiences as antecedent factors to choice, as a framework for investigating new 9th grade soft robot design lessons. Compared to…

This study identifies factors that are significantly related to student intentions to enter science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations by age 30, and examines how those factors differ across definitions of STEM occupation, educational attainment levels, and student demographics. Data from 2009 High School Longitudinal…

Many researchers consider a lacking interest in science and the students' belief that science is too demanding as major reasons why young people do not strive for science-related careers. In this article, we first delineated a theoretical framework to investigate the importance of interest, self-concept, and school factors regarding students'…

This Statistics in Brief provides information about the occupational expectations of high school freshmen in 2009 and how their expectations changed (or did not) by the spring of 2012. The focus is on expectations for a career in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) field, defined in this report as science, technology,…

The leakages in secondary level education brought forward the necessity to restructure the educational system so as to address the social and individual needs and meet the requirements of Turkey; therefore, a "reformation" study became an obligation. The formal education in Turkey starts at the age of 6, when the individual is shaped…

This study examined the relationship between specific factors believed to influence career decision self-efficacy and math/science related goal intentions (proxy for engineering related goal intentions) among African American high school students. Minority students generally tend to be underrepresented in such careers, as indicated by the National…

This longitudinal study analyzes survey responses in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade from diverse public school students (n = 482) to explore gender differences in engineering and science career preferences. Females were far more likely to express interest in a science career (31%) than an engineering career (13%), while the reverse was true for…

The purpose of this descriptive study was to explore Native American (NA) students' perceptions of scientists by using the Draw-A-Scientist Test and to determine if differences in these perceptions exist between grade level, gender, and level of cultural tradition. Data were collected for students in Grades 9-12 within a NA grant off-reservation…

A survey of 6th-12th grade students was conducted to measure their science-related attitudes and interests. Significant gender differences were found among these students. Females reported more anxiety about science as well as less motivation in and enjoyment of science than males. In spite of their unfavorable attitudes toward science, a large…

The purpose of this study was to examine how students' perceptions of their teachers' instructional communication behaviors were related to their affective learning in math and science. A survey was used to collect perceptions from 497 ninth-grade students. The following conclusions were yielded from the data: (1) students' perceptions of their…

In this article, I propose a technology-supported teaching and learning model that aims to bridge the gender gap identified in areas such as mathematics and science. Further, this model promotes collaboration between teacher educators and K-12 teachers. The focus of technology is on the use of video conferencing. This model is further tested by a…

Although gifted girls are closing the gap in math and science achievement, they continue to lose interest and drop out of math/science careers. An intervention was developed for talented at-risk young women that emphasized enhancing career identity and exploration, building science self-efficacy and self-esteem and reducing risky behaviors.…

This chapter addresses how critical choices in the math and science pipeline can be traced back to adolescents' self-concepts of abilities and values at the beginning of high school. (Contains 3 figures.)