The Participation of Women and Minorities in Mathematical, Scientific, and Technical Fields

High‐performing institutions and their implications for studying underrepresented minority students in STEM

“…Indeed researchers have explored how institutional environments, policies, and practices infl uence success among URMs in STEM fi elds (Chipman and Thomas, 1987;Herzig, 2004;Nixon, Meikle, and Borman, 2007 (Nixon, Meikle, and Borman, 2007). However, we still have much to learn about how institutional environments enable success among URMs in the STEM fi elds.…”

Opportunities, Achievement, and Choice: Women and Minority Students in Science and Mathematics

“…Although analysts and researchers have acknowledged the importance of one or more of these dimensions, and a few have considered relationships among them (e.g., Berryman, 1983;Chipman & Thomas, 1984;Peterson & Fennema, 1985), little theoretical or empirical work has investigated how these factors work together, attempted to disentangle the relative contribution of each of these influences on participation, or established causal links among them. Because of these gaps in the literature, serious questions remain about what roles schooling opportunities play in achievement, why different groups of students achieve at different levels, or why some groups tend not to choose to take advantage of the schooling opportunities they have available to them.…”

“…Speculation about the relevance of these factors arises from work suggesting that individuals pursue areas that they value and in which they expect success (see, e.g., Chipman & Thomas, 1984). Other support for the potential importance of affective factors comes from the types of analyses described earlier suggesting that a primary reason that women are underrepresented in science is that they choose not to pursue study and careers in cognitive fields.…”

Ethnic and gender differences in mathematics achievement and in dispositions towards the study of mathematics

“…Compared to girls, boys were also shown to perceive mathematics as more useful to them in the future (Thorndike-Christ, 1991). Consequently, relatively large gender differences in favor of males are noted with respect to participation in elective mathematics courses and choice of mathematics-based professions (Chipman & Thomas, 1987;Eccles, 1985Eccles, , 1987Leder, 1992;Title, 1986).…”