Understanding African American Students' Experiences in STEM Education: An Ecological Systems Approach

Abstract

Promoting racial and ethnic minority students' interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers remains a primary workforce goal. To advance this goal, this study examined, through an ecological lens, 18 African American high school seniors' perceptions of their experiences related to their aspirations for STEM careers. All students were enrolled in STEM programs. Using a phenomenological approach to analyze the outcomes of focus group interviews, the authors identified themes at the ontogenic, microsystem, and macrosystem levels. Environmental factors, such as counseling, family expectations, and available resources, played a substantial role in influencing the students' interests, experiences, and perceptions in their pursuits of STEM careers. Implications highlight the importance of counselors in encouraging students of diverse backgrounds to pursue STEM courses and for policy makers to provide resources that support students' STEM goals. Future research is needed to examine the longitudinal effects of high school STEM programs on diverse populations.

Choosing STEM College Majors: Exploring the Role of Pre-College Engineering Courses

“…Our research questions are grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), which seeks to explain how individual interests, choices, and performances interact to shape career-related decisions (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000. Over the past decade, SCCT has been used to frame a number of STEM-and engineering-focused studies that examine several post-high school outcomes including: schoolto-college transition (Cardella, Wolsky, Andrews, Paulsen, & Jones, 2014;Rowan-Kenyon, Perna, & Swan, 2011;Stipanovic & Woo, 2017;Zoltowski et al, 2014); selection of STEM or engineering college majors (VanDeGrift & Lao, 2017;Wang, 2013); the STEM gender gap (Hardin & Longhurst, 2016;Trenor, Yu, Waight, Zerda, & Ting, 2008); and the experiences of diverse and underrepresented populations in STEM pathways (Byars-Winston, Estrada, Howard, Davis, & Zapata, 2010;Dika, Alvarez, Santos, & Suarez, 2016;Fouad & Santana, 2017). In the global context, SCCT has been used in 37 studies of students in STEM courses or majors in 21 English-speaking countries.…”

Conceptualizing COVID‐19‐Related Career Concerns Using Bioecological Systems: Implications for Career Practice

“…Each of these constructs has the potential to influence a person's career development in ways that can be illustrated through Bronfenbrenner's ( 2005 ) model of interconnected systems. The process‐person‐context‐time model has been tested in several quantitative studies (Benson & Buehler, 2012 ; Farrant & Zubrick, 2012 ) and used as a qualitative theoretical framework (Stipanovic & Woo, 2017 ). Additionally, Tudge and colleagues ( 2009 , 2016 ) reviewed dozens of studies that evaluated specific constructs of the model or used Bronfenbrenner's work as the primary theoretical framework within empirical research.…”

“…Applying the bioecological lens to career work has gained traction because of the attention paid to examining clients or students within their unique context, rather than looking at career development as a more universal linear process. Moreover, scholars have noted that many career development theories do not accurately represent the experiences of women and individuals of color, and they note that bioecological systems can aid with these populations (Arthur & McMahon, 2005 ; Betz, 2002 ; Cook et al, 2002 ; Stipanovic & Woo, 2017 ). Contemporary career models tend to take less of a one‐size‐fits‐all approach and can work in tandem with a bioecological lens to aid in supporting clients' and students' career concerns.…”

Teaching Strategies Employed by Academics in STEM Education: A Qualitative Inquiry

“…Furthermore, past studies have emphasized the need for STEM education and STEM skills that should be mastered [8] by engineering students who will be future engineers [3,9]. This due to the higher requirements for graduates in STEM education [10] needed with multi-skilled, innovative and competitive [11] in this advanced global industry.…”