Non-Science Major Undergraduate Students' High School Science Experiences: An Exploratory Case Study

The workforce in the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been in great need in the United States for years (Augustine, 2005; National Science Board, 2010). Over one third of doctorates working in the STEM fields in the U S. are born abroad (Atkinson & Mayo, 2011). One of the reasons for this fraction might be that lower percentage of students in the U S. earned an associate or a bachelor's degree in science, when compared to their counterparts in other countries such as China and German (National Science Board, 2014b). Moreover, certain minorities, such as Black and Hispanic, and female students are still underrepresented in science programs and science careers (National Science Foundation & National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2015). In order to provide the potential solution to this supply-demand issue, researchers need to investigate reasons why people in the U.S., especially of certain race/ethnicity/gender groups, pursue careers outside of STEM fields.One of the research projects that have been conducted was Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE). The PRiSE project was conducted with a nationally representative sample of undergraduate students who were enrolled in introductory English classes in the fall of 2007 throughout the United States. The PRiSE project examined the relationship between students' high school science experiences and their persistence in science. One analysis of the PRiSE data related factors from students' high school biology experiences and career outcome expectations with their biology identities and the other discussed students' high school physics experiences and career outcome expectations with their physics identities. In the research analysis of the PRiSE data about the relationship of high school physics experiences and career outcome expectations with students' physics identities, factors from high school physics experiences, along with career outcome expectations can explain 16% of students' physics identities (Hazari, Sonnert, Sadler, & Shanahan, 2010). The further quantitative analysis results from the PRiSE data indicated that there was a correlation of some factors from students' high school biology experiences and career outcome expectations with their biology identities; however, those factors can only explain 13% of their biology identities (Li, Hazari, Sonnert, & Sadler, 2014). Such relatively low correlation coefficients encouraged the research interest in exploring more factors from students' high school science experiences that may influence their science identities and science learning. The findings of several studies have suggested that science identity has an influence on students' science persistence (Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, 2010; Basu, 2008; Brickhouse, Lowery, & Schultz, 2000; Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Cleaves, 2005; Gilmartin, Denson, Li, Bryant, & Aschbacher, 2007; Shanahan, 2009). Therefore, we focused on the influence of high school science experiences on students' persistence in science. Specifically in this study, high school science experiences that influenced the research participants' choices to pursue non-science college majors was investigated.The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between high school science experiences and choice of non-science majors for college studies. Our research question was: From the perspective of three Hispanic female students, what factors from their high school science experiences influenced their choice of non-science college majors, particularly those specific factors related to their Hispanic cultural background and gender role.Because of the primary researcher's role as a Ph D. candidate and researcher in science education, he focused on improving science education in high school and promoting high school students' persistence in science career when conducing this study. The aim of this study was to inform high school science teachers and university science faculty, as well as science education faculty, of the factors that influence students' choices of non-science majors in college. …