A helpful way to understand why women and minorities struggle to persist in STEM majors in college is provided by the goal congruency theory from psychology. Jessi L. Smith, Erin Cech, Anneke Metz, Meghan Huntoon, and Christina Moyer used the theory to frame their research published in the 2014 article, “Giving Back or Giving Up:… Read more »
I started this blog in September 2013 with the metaphor and an image of the “STEM pipeline.” The metaphor assumes that all potential STEM professionals follow a similar career path, and those who don’t accomplish certain milestones or lack key attributes “leak out” of the pipeline. Cannady, Greenwald, and Harris make a convincing argument that… Read more »
Do women majoring in STEM disciplines in countries other than the United States encounter the same challenges to persistence that we’ve identified in our universities? A June 2014 article in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education by Garcia Villa and Gonzalez y Gonzalez suggests they do. The authors of “Women Students in Engineering… Read more »
