Financial Impediments, Academic Challenges and Pipeline Intervention Efficacy: A Role Strain and Adaptation Approach to Successful STEM Outcomes for Underrepresented Students.

STEM;Underrepresented Students;Role Strain and Adaptation;Summer Research Opportunity Program;Intervention Efficacy;Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics;Education;Social Sciences;Higher Education

Williams, Krystal L.St John, Edward P. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: STEM;    Underrepresented Students;    Role Strain and Adaptation;    Summer Research Opportunity Program;    Intervention Efficacy;    Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics;    Education;    Social Sciences;    Higher Education;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/107119/klwms_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

A growing number of studies highlight how exemplary pipeline interventions can promote college and career success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, it is also important to understand how the challenges and strengths that underrepresented students bring to intervention settings can influence their successful STEM outcomes. Guided by role strain and adaptation theory, this study seeks to better explain how intervention participation combines with other pivotal factors to influence students’ plans to pursue research careers in STEM fields. This theory-driven study makes unique contributions to the higher education pipeline intervention literature by further clarifying social psychological mechanisms through which financial and academic challenges impede successful STEM outcomes among underrepresented students within intervention settings. Analyses of longitudinal survey data from 376 underrepresented students who applied to an exemplary Summer Research Opportunity Program at 12 major research universities in the Midwest provided support for several hypotheses. Multivariate analyses found that STEM research career plans appear to be enhanced by intervention participation, but impeded by financial and academic challenges (both objective barriers and subjective threats). Study findings also suggest that personal resiliency, a measure of adaptive cultural strength, can also promote successful STEM outcomes. Study findings support the importance of students’ role strains and strengths in better understanding STEM-related intervention outcomes for underrepresented students. The theory-driven findings can help program administrators and policy-makers better determine not only if, but how, higher education pipeline interventions promote successful STEM outcomes for underserved groups.