The Relationships between Students' Perceptions of Science and Their Career Aspirations in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

This study is to investigate the underlying factors of students’ reported perceptions of science, and whether those factors are associated with students’ STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career interest. Survey data from about 1200 middle school students across five states were collected. Factor analyses were conducted to extract underlying factors from the observed questions about students’ perceptions of science. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine the relationships between the underlying factors and students’ STEM career interest. Results indicate that students’ perceptions of science could be grouped under several underlying factors, some of which were significantly related to STEM career interest. The findings are discussed in relation to their consistency, or lack thereof, with other studies in this area. Perspective and Objective It is important to investigate the relationships between students’ ideas about learning science and their career expectations in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). For STEM workforce development, it is crucial to encourage as many students as possible to consider future STEM careers. Students’ perceptions of science and science learning in early age are often considered as key factors that may lead young students into the STEM workforce pipeline (National Academy of Sciences, 2007). Therefore, it is necessary to examine the extent to which students’ early ideas about learning science relate to their future career expectations in the STEM-related fields. Among various types of perceptions, interest in science and attitudes towards science are two primary and evident indicators for the quality of science education research (Koballa, Jr. & Glynn, 2007; Osborne, Simon, & Collin, 2003). Many researchers make an effort to keep students interested in science or having positive attitudes towards science, with the ultimate goal of encouraging students to choose the STEMrelated fields as future careers (Eijck & Roth, 2009; Johnson, 2011). Interest can be defined as ―a content-specific motivational characteristic composed of intrinsic feeling-related and value-related valences‖ (Schiefele, 1991, p. 299). Interest in science is a primary affective factor of science education and can be influenced by multiple aspects, such as students’ school science experiences (Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, 2010). Attitudes refer to the feelings that a person possesses about an object based on his or her belief of that object (Kind, Jones, & Barmby, 2007). Some researchers discuss that students hold dichotomous attitudes towards science: emotional states towards science and recognition of importance of science in the society (George, 2006; Kim & Song, 2009). Among various influencing factors, school performance plays an important role in forming students’ attitudes towards science (Bhattacharyya & Mead, 2011). Career choice is the decision that students make after the process of developing certain traits or personalities. Guiding students to the STEM-related careers is the ideally ultimate goal of maintaining them in the STEM pipeline (Bui & Alfaro, 2011; Kanter & Konstantopoulos, 2010). In order to improve the STEM workforce and to strengthen the nation’s economic competitiveness in the future, it is important to engage young people to choose STEMrelated fields as their future careers (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). Many researchers assume that students’ interest and attitudes towards science might predict career interest in the STEM-related fields, and thus try different ways to make students engaged in science learning (Aschbacher et al., 2010; Kanter & Konstantopoulos, 2010). But few are completely sure about whether there is an actual relationship between students’ perceptions and ideas about learning science and their STEM career interest. Additionally, some researchers tend to combine interest and attitudes together to illustrate one construct—students’ levels of engagement in science (Guzzetti & Bang, 2011; Hong, 2010). Although interest and attitudes towards science are both primarily affective constructs of science learning, interest emphasizes how students like learning science; whereas attitudes focus on how students think about learning science. Additionally, there may be some other important factors in the affective dimension of science learning (Simpson, Koballa, Jr., Oliver, & Crawley, 1994). So far, many researchers have investigated students’ interest in science, attitudes towards science, and career choice in STEM-related fields respectively (Brown, 2002; Kind et al., 2007; Schiefele, 1991). Few researchers, however, pay attention to the relationships among those three constructs or even other affective factors (Archer et al., 2010). This study is to investigate the underlying affective factors of students’ perceptions and ideas about learning science, and whether there are significant relationships between the underlying factors and students’ career interest in the STEM-related fields. The two research questions for this study are: What is the underlying structure of students’ reported perceptions and ideas about learning science? To what extent are the perceptions and ideas about learning science reported by middle school students significantly related to whether they choose the STEM-related fields as future careers? Data and Methods Survey data were collected from eight middle schools in five states over a two-year period, with topics including students’ various perceptions and ideas about learning science and their future career plans. The questions related to students’ perceptions and ideas about learning science were adapted from an existing attitudinal measure: modified Attitudes towards Science Inventory--mATSI (Weinburgh & Steele, 2000). Participants in the project consist of two consecutive cohorts (sixth to seventh grade cohort and seventh to eighth grade cohort). The data used in this study include the surveys from all seventh grade students: the first year surveys from seventh to eighth grade cohort and the second year surveys from sixth to seventh grade cohort. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of the participants by cohort. As for the first research question, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA) were used to examine the underlying factors (constructs) of the survey items measuring perceptions and ideas about science learning. As for the second research question, logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the relationships between the factors of students’ perceptions and ideas and their choice of STEM-related careers. Results and Discussion Based on the EFA for the 7-8 cohort data, three factors were extracted. Table 2 shows the 19 survey questions grouped under the three factors based on the variables’ factor loading pattern with respect to each of the three factors. Therefore, the three factors were tentatively labeled as the ―interest factor‖, the ―unease factor‖, and the ―attitude factor‖ respectively. We then used CFA to evaluate this three-factor model in the 6-7 cohort data. Findings from CFA suggest that two variables (16a and 12e in Table 2) have relatively small loadings and appear to have little relationship with the unease factor logically. After the two variables are removed, CFA results showed good model fit for the three-factor structure. Finally, we manage to extract three underlying factors out of students’ reported perceptions and ideas about learning science. Table 3 presents descriptive statistics for the percentages of students who reported a career interest in science and engineering (SE) and in science, engineering or medicine (SEM) respectively. It is noted that a considerable percentage of students selected medicine as their future career field, with the percentage increased from about 10% for SE choice to about 28% when medicine was included (SEM). Table 4 presents two logistic regression models in the 7-8 cohort data. In the first model, we consider whether students plan to work in SE only as the outcome variable. In the second model, we treat whether students expect to work in SEM as the outcome variable. In both models, the interest factor and the unease factor are significantly associated with students’ career selection in the general STEM-related fields after demographic information is considered. That is to say, students who are more interested in learning science are significantly more likely to report a career interest in the general STEM-related fields. Students with stronger feelings that it is difficult to learn science are significantly less likely to indicate a career interest in the STEM-related fields. However, the two models in Table 4 demonstrate different results in terms of the relationship between students’ attitudes towards social importance of science and their STEM career interest. In the first model, students with more positive attitudes towards the contribution of science to the society are significantly more likely to report a career interest in SE. In the second model, however, there is no significant relationship between the attitudes towards science and students’ career interest in SEM. In other words, the attitude towards the social significance of science is not a consistent factor in terms of associating with students’ career interest in the general STEM-related fields. In order to further examine our results above, we conducted the same regression analyses in the 6-7 cohort data (Table 5). By comparing Tables 4 and 5, we can infer that the results from the 6-7 cohort data confirm our previous findings. Conclusion Based on factor analyses, we grouped students’ reported perceptions and ideas about learning science into three categories: interest in science, unease about learning science, and attitudes towards social significance of science. Students’ interest and attitudes towards science are always co