Fostering European Students’ STEM Vocational Choices

Abstract

There are many influences on students’ career aspirations towards Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). These include a variety of cognitive and attitudinal factors, which require careful consideration. It has been acknowledged that industry possesses expertise and resources which can help STEM education address the main factors involved in this process. Using data from a pan-European project ECB-inGenious, aimed to enhance students’ aspirations towards STEM careers by engaging schools in collaboration with industry, we were able to assess a variety of contemporary initiatives developed by European industries for STEM learning and career education and analyse their impact on teachers and students. The results demonstrate that school-industry partnerships can provide for this complexity and have a positive role to play in addressing the needs for STEM enrichment and career learning in school. However, our study has confirmed that some gaps and barriers present strong challenges to the establishment, effective implementation and sustainability of such kind of partnership. We have also shown that for a partnership to be effective, it has to be sustainable and have a long-term commitment on both sides. Such partnerships are not easy to develop and require additional structural and organisational support and guidance on how to make this experience as worthwhile as it should be. The research evidence makes clear that the longer teachers stayed in the project, the more their confidence and skill in addressing students’ STEM career aspirations grew, bringing marked improvement in students’ knowledge and motivation for STEM education and careers.