Abstract
This study examined the impact of several factors on the decision of 18-19 year old Canadian and Swedish students as to whether or not to enroll in STEM studies at university. Amongst the factors that were examined were: student perceptions of their learning environment in science and mathematics classes; cognitive style (systemizing); learning anxiety; and, intrinsic motivation. A theoretical model of relationships between these factors and the decision to pursue STEM studies was hypothesized. Structural Equation Modeling was used to test the model and its gender invariance. The model was determined to be gender invariant, and suggests that the “gender gap” may in fact in part be a “systemizing gap”. The root causes for any effectiveness of an interdisciplinary approach to STEM education are probably many, but it is likely that overcoming this systemizing gap may be one of them.
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Dedic, H., Jungert, T., Rosenfield, S. (2012). Roles that Gender, Systemizing and Teacher Support Play in STEM Education. In: Béraud, A., Godfroy, AS., Michel, J. (eds) GIEE 2011: Gender and Interdisciplinary Education for Engineers. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-982-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-982-4_9
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