The Place of Gender Stereotypes in the Network of Cognitive Abilities, Self-Perceived Ability and Intrinsic Value of School in School Children Depending on Sex and Preferences in STEM.

Victoria Ismatullina,Georgy Vasin,Ilya Zakharov,Timofey Adamovich,Ivan Voronin

doi:10.3390/bs12030075

Abstract

Adolescents face many barriers on the path towards a STEM profession, especially girls. We examine the gender stereotypes, cognitive abilities, self-perceived ability and intrinsic values of 546 Russian school children from 12 to 17 years old by sex and STEM preferences. In our sample, STEM students compared to no-STEM have higher cognitive abilities, intrinsic motivation towards math and science, are more confident in their math abilities and perceive math as being easier. Boys scored higher in science, math and overall academic self-efficacy, intrinsic learning motivation and math’s importance for future careers. Meanwhile, girls displayed higher levels of gender stereotypes related to STEM and lower self-efficacy in math. A network analysis was conducted to identify the structure of psychological traits and the position of the stem-related stereotypes among them. The analysis arrived at substantially different results when adolescents were grouped by sex or preference towards STEM. It also demonstrated that gender stereotypes are connected with cognitive abilities, with a stronger link in the no-STEM group. Such stereotypes play a more important role for girls than boys and, jointly with the general self-efficacy of cognitive and academic abilities, are associated with the factors that distinguish groups of adolescents in their future careers.

Highlights

It is during adolescence that the career aspirations emerge from the individual’s abilities, interests and values to later determine the academic and career choice in STEM [2,3]
From the point of transferring a set of knowledge about a future career in Russia, schools currently cannot cope with transferring an up-to-date picture to schoolchildren: according to a study by Savostina, Smirnova and Khasbulatova [4], of those who would like to work in the STEM field in the future (47%), 92% noted a general interest in science and technology-related issues and 74% an interest in related professions, but only 47% said they received information about such professions in school
We developed an additional questionnaire with 4 scales in order to measure the background variables in our study: perceived difficulty of math (4 items, e.g., “Math is harder for me than other subjects”), STEM-related gender stereotypes (4 items, e.g., “In general, girls are less interested in STEM than boys”), educational aspirations in math

Summary

Introduction

Maintaining the high level of human capital is one of the main challenges faced by any society that strives for success in the 21st century. The process of choosing a career in Russia is rarely accompanied by any professional guidance. From the point of transferring a set of knowledge about a future career in Russia, schools currently cannot cope with transferring an up-to-date picture to schoolchildren: according to a study by Savostina, Smirnova and Khasbulatova [4], of those who would like to work in the STEM field in the future (47%), 92% noted a general interest in science and technology-related issues and 74% an interest in related professions, but only 47% said they received information about such professions in school. According to surveys on choosing a career in STEM areas [4], up to half of the surveyed schoolchildren note a lack of objective information about the prospects for the profession market in Russia, and in the world, in terms of schools giving help in choosing a profession, high school students of both sexes ranked teachers 10th out of 16.

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Conclusion