Parents are the ones to inspire children towards STEM

An article from the Association for Psychological Science, Want to Get Teens Interested in Math and Science? Target Their Parents presents research into how important families are to children’s STEM interests and career development.

A controlled trial showed the influence that parents can have on high school students’ STEM education. Here is part of the APS’ article documenting the study’s structure and findings:

Experts in research and policy have examined different ways to enhance and promote STEM education, but most of these efforts are focused within the four walls of the classroom. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, goes beyond the classroom to examine the unique role that parents can play in promoting students’ STEM motivation.

“Our focus for this project was different from our previous work,” says lead author Judith Harackiewicz, of the University of Wisconsin. “In classes, we try to promote students’ motivation and performance in that class, but with families, our goal is to promote choices about which courses to take.”

Because many math and science classes are not required, especially in the last two years of high school, student enrollment may be a more fundamentally important issue than student motivation.

Harackiewicz and her colleagues Christopher Rozek and Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin, and Chris Hulleman of James Madison University, hypothesized that parents could play an instrumental role in helping to boost STEM enrollment.

The researchers decided to test this hypothesis with an intervention that involved 181 U.S. high school students and their parents who were part of the longitudinal Wisconsin Study of Families and Work. The intervention spanned the students’ 10th, 11th, and 12th grade years of high school. This longitudinal project was funded by the National Science Foundation.

In October of 10th grade, the researchers mailed some parents a glossy brochure that provided information about the importance of math and science in daily life and for various careers. In January of 11th grade, they mailed the same parents another brochure that emphasized the same overall themes and included information for a dedicated website called “Choices Ahead.” The website featured links to resources about STEM fields and careers and included interviews with college students about the importance of the math and science courses they took in high school. In spring of 11th grade, they asked the parents to complete an online questionnaire to evaluate the Choices Ahead website, which helped to ensure that the parents visited the site.

Parents in the control group did not receive any of these materials. In the summer following 12th grade, all families – adolescents and parents – completed a final questionnaire about their interactions with the brochures and the website and their perceived utility of math and science courses. Information about the STEM classes that the students took was obtained through self-report and high school transcripts.

The results suggest that the intervention had a noticeable effect on the courses that the students enrolled in: students whose parents received all the materials as part of the experimental group took more science and math classes in the last two years of high school. The effect amounted to roughly an extra semester of advanced math or science, including courses such as algebra II, trigonometry, pre-calculus, calculus, statistics, chemistry, and physics.

Parents who were focused on supporting and promoting STEM at home had noticeable impact on their children’s levels of interest. The study lays the groundwork for more study of what other parental education could foster greater STEM education among children.