Abstract
Previous research has found that young people’s prototypes of science students and scientists affect their inclination to choose tertiary STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Consequently, many recruitment initiatives include role models to challenge these prototypes. The present study followed 15 STEM-oriented upper-secondary school students from university-distant backgrounds during and after their participation in an 18-months long university-based recruitment and outreach project involving tertiary STEM students as role models. The analysis focusses on how the students’ meetings with the role models affected their thoughts concerning STEM students and attending university. The regular self-to-prototype matching process was shown in real-life role-models meetings to be extended to a more complex three-way matching process between students’ self-perceptions, prototype images and situation-specific conceptions of role models. Furthermore, the study underlined the positive effect of prolonged role-model contact, the importance of using several role models and that traditional school subjects catered more resistant prototype images than unfamiliar ones did.
Highlights
The past couple of decades, concerns about the participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have been endemic in the Western World (European Commission, 2004) and have sparked a substantial amount of research and development activities
Mary Mary is the kind of student which STEM recruitment projects using role models wish to target
She has a profound interest in mathematics, a high work ethic and a natural skill for STEM, but she cannot really see herself pursuing a math career
Summary
The past couple of decades, concerns about the participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have been endemic in the Western World (European Commission, 2004) and have sparked a substantial amount of research and development activities. This has led to an increased focus on the role that potential identities related to STEM disciplines play in students’ choice of study and on how young people conceive what a science student is like (Archer et al., 12(1), 2016 [73]. When students consider which study to pursue they consider what identities are available in a particular disciplinary culture and context, how these imaginable identities fit with their conceptions of who they are and who they wish to become, and whether pursuing this line of study proposes an attractive and realistic identity development (Holmegaard, 2015)
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