Girls often express less interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education and careers than boys, despite having comparable aptitude. We randomly assigned 242 girls (Mdn[subscript age] = 12 years; 38% East Asian; 37% White) at Canadian STEM camps to control conversations about generic camp experiences, or intervention…

The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the influence of science volunteering initiatives on the experiences of women and their subsequent inclination to continue volunteering. The research sought to examine the impact of particular social cognitive variables on their eagerness to partake in events and organizations. The study…

For students who face marginalization in a discipline, counterspaces are safe spaces of refuge that allow them to express their multiple identities and foster their sense of belonging. While prior qualitative work on counterspaces has highlighted how and why these spaces support marginalized students, there is little quantitative work that…

Efforts to diversify STEM fields have not completely eliminated higher rates of women leaving certain science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, such as geosciences. A diverse mentorship network is linked to persistence in STEM among college students, but little is known about how it leads to persistence. In particular,…

This research focuses on the experiences of seven undergraduate women who were majoring in physics in a medium-size physics department at a small liberal arts college. In the semistructured, empathetic interviews we conducted, the women discussed how they decided to major in physics, their interactions with their peers and instructors, and who…

To date, success in STEM has been primarily measured via grade point averages, retention in STEM programs, as well as obtaining STEM degrees and careers. Here we consider "choice and autonomy to explore" varied academic options in determining success, as the development of interest is dynamic and sometimes fluid; it changes with the…

In trying to understand women's underrepresentation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), most existing research focuses on one STEM-field or collapses across all STEM-fields. However, these fields differ vastly in female representation: women tend to be most strongly underrepresented in technological and computer science…

While there is a growing body of work that examines disciplinary identity development, unlike qualitative work in this area, quantitative research has not fully incorporated the importance of different contexts, nor has it uniquely focused on underrepresented groups (in this case, women in physics). This study examines how the constructs posited…

Gender equity is a critical agenda for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education to increase women involvement in the STEM pathway. Our study is about the impact of a project in which all-girl teams participated to an educational robotics program. We used quantitative and qualitative data to determine the impact and…

Experience in research facilitates development of science identity and encourages undergraduate student persistence along the pathway to careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Participation in authentic research can foster identity development by influencing a sense of belonging, recognition, interest, and performance and…

The global lack of student motivation towards learning science and gender imbalance in STEM careers provided the impetus for this study, which had two key aims: (1) to examine the influence of female students' perceptions of the psychosocial learning environment on their motivation towards and self-regulation in science learning,; and (2) to…

At large institutions of higher education, students frequently have a choice whether to attend the introductory physics sequence asynchronously online, on-site in a traditional lecture setting, or in a reformed studio setting. In this study, we investigate how these different settings are correlated with measures of self-efficacy, interest in…

This study highlights program retention among Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students in a STEM Intervention Program (SIP) aimed at increasing the representation of underrepresented students in STEM fields. We applied London et al.'s STEM Engagement Framework to determine factors that distinguish who stays in a SIP and…

Backgrounds: This study examined how developing an engineering identity through the interplay between interest, recognition, and performance/competence beliefs and establishing a sense of belonging supported women's persistence beliefs in engineering. Persistence belief in this study is captured through women's certainty of graduating with an…

Despite girls enjoying and being good at physics, the proportion of girls studying physics and going into physics related careers still lags behind that of boys. A large volume of research exists on the factors related to the uptake of girls into physics, however little research looks at the link between parents and their child's physics uptake.…