Abstract
Women and girls, particularly women and girls of color, remain underrepresented in STEM disciplines. This underrepresentation begins as early as late elementary school age. Educators, particularly those in informal STEM education, can help address gender inequity in STEM by understanding how research can be translated into actionable strategies. This article summarizes research on gender equitable practices for middle school girls in the last decade and addresses the disconnect between research and practice by presenting the findings in a way that educators can immediately act on. The research falls into six strategies that have demonstrated positive influences on gender inequity in STEM education: (1) connecting STEM experiences to girls’ lives; (2) supporting girls as they investigate questions and solve problems using STEM practices; (3) empowering girls to embrace struggle, overcome challenges, and increase self-confidence in STEM; (4) encouraging girls to identify and challenge STEM stereotypes; (5) emphasizing that STEM is collaborative, social, and community-oriented; (6) providing opportunities for girls to interact with and learn from diverse STEM role models. Our review highlights that each of these strategies are important to developing positive STEM identities in girls, particularly girls of color, which can help them to bridge the STEM gender and racial gap.
Highlights
Women remain underrepresented in many of the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields compared to their representation in the US population (National Science Foundation (NSF), 2019)
We focused on articles of formal and informal STEM education (ISE), it is important to highlight the value of ISE spaces as they are often overlooked in education policy discussions compared to formal education, which is unfortunate considering K-12 aged students spend the majority (81%) of their time in nonschool settings (National Research Council (NRC), 2009)
We identified six themes that we present as the six SciGirls strategies that support girls in their development of positive STEM identities:
Summary
Women remain underrepresented in many of the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields compared to their representation in the US population (National Science Foundation (NSF), 2019). As part of the authors’ efforts to advocate best practices for gender equitable informal STEM education at this developmental level, we have compiled this literature review which focuses on strategies that have shown positive results in improving and/ or sustaining girls’ interest in STEM and sense of belonging in STEM careers in the last decade. We chose the foundational definition of the construct from Calabrese Barton et al (2013), Eccles (2007), and Carlone and Johnson (2007) According to these researchers, STEM identity requires opportunities to develop interest and competence in STEM-related skills, perform these competencies, and be recognized by perceived experts (Carlone and Johnson, 2007). STEM identity development is both a reflection of how one perceives, positions, and aligns one-
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