Community colleges enroll almost half of U.S. undergraduates and were predicted to produce 12% of the workforce for STEM professions in 2018. Half of these students are the first in their families to attend college and therefore are more likely unfamiliar with the steps required to transfer to four-year universities or internship programs.…

Community colleges are a vital source of students in the STEM career pipeline. Yet, research indicates that rather than diversifying the STEM workforce, community colleges may be perpetuating gender imbalances. This qualitative phenomenological study was designed to examine differences in male and female experiences in two male-dominated community…

America's higher education institutions have aligned computer science curricula with today's modern technology. Despite these efforts, data have shown that there is slow growth among young women majoring in computer science and even slower growth in this area at community colleges. Higher education institutions have also acknowledged a gap between…

Critical math and science educators have argued for pedagogies that focus on equity, social justice, and the identities of learners. To inform debates about the purposes and values of math and science pedagogy, we need to better understand how different kinds of curriculum and instruction are taken up by learners over time. This study examines the…

Individuals coming from low-income backgrounds, particularly women and people of color, are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM fields. The low representation is often attributed to low enrollment and completion rates in STEM programs. Community colleges play a crucial role in increasing diversity in the workforce. However, there is not…

An opportunity exists to attract students from historically underrepresented communities into the geosciences, the least diverse of the STEM fields. Home to a diverse population, Riverside County in Southern California supports several community colleges with thriving geoscience programs where students can take a range of geology courses in…

This research is an exploratory study that focused on describing the experiences of adult students who identify themselves as women enrolled in male-dominated Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) career pathway programs at a large Midwestern multi-campus community college. The study was undertaken to build on the research of women in…

Academic achievement of public school students in the United States has significantly fallen behind other countries. Students' lack of knowledge of, or interest in, basic science and math has led to fewer graduates of science, technology, engineering, and math-related fields (STEM), a factor that may affect their career success and will certainly…

The aims of our current study were to (1) explore how community college science and mathematics majors made meaning of their experiences with mentor teachers as part of an early field experience and (2) understand the ways students' experiences with mentors influenced their interest in teaching. Using interviews and written reflection activities,…

Several avenues are open to students who wish to study advanced science or mathematics in high school, which include Advanced Placement courses and teacher-designed courses unaffiliated with organized programs. We employ a retrospective cohort study of 4,691 nationally representative college students at 34 randomly selected, colleges and…

Despite the awareness of the importance of self-efficacy, this concept has been studied in a limited sense among community college students (Collins & Bissell, 2004), but it has been shown to be significantly related to career decisions among enrollees (Kelly & Hatcher, 2013). The literature does not address what types of experiences can…

Efforts to increase the number of women who pursue and complete advanced degrees in computer and information sciences (CIS) have been limited, in part, by a lack of research on pathways into and out of community college CIS classes. This longitudinal study tests three widely held beliefs about how to increase the number of CIS majors at 4-year…

The Mathematical Resilience Scale measures students' attitudes toward studying mathematics, using three correlated factors: Value, Struggle, and Growth. The Mathematical Resilience Scale was developed and validated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across three samples. Results provide a new approach to gauge the likelihood of…

This study examines physics teachers' views on factors that contribute to the declining interest in physics among school students. A total of 190 physics teachers from 91 secondary schools and nine junior colleges in Singapore participated in this study, which used a survey instrument to seek their views. Rasch analysis was used to analyze the…

Currently, there is little in-depth understanding of how individuals effectively orchestrate school and work-related experiences over time from high school through college and beyond to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This appears important because, unlike societies such as Germany, youth in the U.S. face…