2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Youth typically decide whether to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers as early as middle school, suggesting that nurturing STEM interest in elementary and middle (primary) school is a key factor in attracting youth to engineering. Goals of racial equity and attracting youth into engineering have birthed the proliferation of many informal STEM education (ISE) programs (e.g., out-of-school programs, summer camps, etc.). Though research suggests that ISE increases participants’ STEM interest, it is unclear whether ISE is successful in sparking STEM interest in previously uninterested youth. This gap exists partly because little is known about the initial STEM interest of ISE participants.

Using a survey research design, we addressed this gap by studying initial STEM interest among 336 primary school youth from the mountain west region of the United States: 44 of whom participated in an in-person out-of-school ISE program (which serves racially minoritized youth), post-COVID, and 292 who did not. The research questions guiding this study were:

RQ1. To what extent do youth who did or did not participate in the ISE program differ in their initial STEM interest?

RQ2. Controlling for STEM identity, performance, recognition and future-self, along with race and family income, to what degree is initial STEM interest predictive of youths’ decision to participate in the out-of-school program?

This research contributes to pre-college engineering education scholarship by deepening our understanding of youth who participate in ISE and illuminating ways to better attract those uninterested in STEM. By providing insight into the baseline interest of ISE participants, our research furthers the field’s understanding of the long-term outcomes of ISE.

We used a STEM Identity survey containing Interest, Performance, Recognition, and Future-Self constructs. For RQ1, we conducted a two-tailed independent samples t-test. We found a moderately large difference in STEM interest between ISE participants and non- participants in this study (t(131.805) = -8.764, p < .001, d = .63). For RQ2, we used logistic regression. Results indicate that youth with high initial STEM interest are nearly 40 times more likely to choose to participate in this ISE program than youth with lower STEM interest (OR_Interest = 39.72). Further, the Hispanic youth we studied were more likely to choose to participate than non-Hispanic youth (OR_Hispanic = 2.83).

These findings provide initial evidence that youth attracted to ISE have high initial STEM interest. Understanding this allows ISE stakeholders to develop strategies to both attract youth who are uninterested in STEM and support those who already have interest. In this way, our study elucidates who is currently participating in this program and how recruiting strategies could be tailored in ways that strengthen ISE’s ability to broaden participation in STEM. Moreover, reaching students with higher STEM interest is beneficial because it can prevent their exclusion from STEM, particularly those from marginalized racial groups. Attracting these youth to ISE can foster positive STEM identity formation among them. We report the details of the study, methods, analyses and findings. We then discuss implications of these findings for pre-college engineering education research.