STEM Learning and Learning Environments  

Broadening Participation in STEM

A Longitudinal Study Predicting Postsecondary STEM Readiness Among Low-Income Minority Students

Effective Years: 2018-2022

This study continues a longitudinal study that began with students in preschool and will follow them into high school in a large, urban school district including a large number of African-American students and low-income students. The study is a unique opportunity to learn about how the students go through school from preschool through the end of high school. This opportunity will examine how their readiness for STEM careers and their beliefs about STEM. Their path through school will particularly focus on the connections to mathematics learning and achievement. This project will collect new data to make connections to data collected during the students elementary and middle school years. An important contribution to educational research, policy, and practice will be understanding math knowledge development and readiness for STEM careers over students' entire preK-12 experience. This project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. The project is designed to identify growth trajectories and predictors of more and less successful students. This work continues a study of approximately 500 low-income, predominantly African-American students who have been followed from preschool through 8th grade in a large urban school district. The goals are to (1) examine students' growth in math achievement across high school and related high school growth to previous patterns, (2) identify predictors of math achievement and other indicators of postsecondary readiness, and (3) describe low-income and minority students' beliefs about careers in STEM in high school, including how their beliefs have changed since middle school. The students are predominantly African American (80%) and over 90% eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. In each year of the study, the project team will conduct individual student assessments of math knowledge and collect administrative data on ACT math and science scores as well as course enrollment, grades and end-of-course exam scores, graduation rates, and students' intent to attend college after high school. During the fall of eleventh grade, focus groups with students will ask about their plans after high school and their beliefs about careers in STEM. Similar focus groups were conducted with the students in eighth grade. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

7 Publications Related to This Project: