An Informal Science Education Program’s Impact on STEM Major and STEM Career Outcomes

Leveraging Social Capital to Broaden Participation in STEM

“…Peer support and interactions with academic instructors are valuable bonding-cognitive/affective social capital for young students in formal and informal STEM learning. For instance, in interviews of 66 alumni of the Land Science Program (a 7-year program with a minimum of 165 contact hours per year offered by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City), youth who participated in the program formed enduring relationships with their interest-sharing peers that persisted beyond the program and supported them to navigate their college and career trajectories in STEM (Habig et al, in press). In the higher education context, a large sample of community college freshmen in STEM courses showed—for older students (30 years old or above)—moderate engagement in learning network with peers and discussions with academic advisors related to the least dropout (Wang et al, 2018).…”

“…Among other theoretical perspectives, the concept of social capital has been increasingly employed by researchers and practitioners in STEM education to understand and design new programs/practices for enhancing students’ STEM learning, motivation, and participation (e.g., Archer et al, 2012; Habig et al, in press). Social capital is a resource accessed through social networks (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2000).…”

Experiences, activities, and personal characteristics as predictors of engagement in STEM‐focused summer programs

“…Other longitudinal research suggests the effects of interaction with experts on longer-term engagement outcomes as well. For example, Habig et al (2018) find that exposure to STEM professionals within the context of OST programs is a program design feature that is associated with persistence in a STEM career, and they further explain that the value of this type of exposure is the development of shared science identities and building of social networks (rather than the transmission of specific STEM content knowledge per se). Thus, at a very fine grain size, the results of our exploratory analysis of program activities might be reflecting the broader phenomenon that different design aspects of OST programming support youth engagement in STEM through different "channels," with some activities (like interacting with community experts) primarily addressing issues of relevance (and in the longer-term, identity and networks), whereas other activities (like creating products) provide challenge and affordances for learning as well (National Research Council, 2009).…”

“…It is important for OST educators to understand that both types of STEM-focused activities were engaging for youth. A longitudinal study of the career trajectories of participants in a STEM focused OST program identified having diverse opportunities to practice science as a key program design principle that contributed to persistence in STEM (Habig, Gupta, Levine, & Adams, 2018). As such, offering multiple ways for youth to interact with science content may not only be engaging in the moment but if sustained over time may have longer-term impacts on career development as well.…”

Description of Pre-University Coding Workshops Recruiting for Diversity

“…Some youth are able to engage through extracurricular activities and optional courses in school. Extracurricular activities and informal education can have mixed results, but with the right approach, can create opportunities for diverse audiences to see themselves in engineering and science subjects [16,21] as well as improve personal interest, self-efficacy, and content knowledge [20]. Godwin et al saw that the success of existing out-of-school technology programs to engage girls in traditionally masculine activities like tinkering, robotics, and coding are still unclear [20], leaving an opportunity to incorporate the other strategies to improve success.…”