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The career aspirations of females and males in a high performing STEM-based career academy vocational high school
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Rafalowski, Paul C.. The career aspirations of females and males in a high performing STEM-based career academy vocational high school. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-rsd4-4m81

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TitleThe career aspirations of females and males in a high performing STEM-based career academy vocational high school
NameRafalowski, Paul C. (author); Barnett, W. Steven (chair); Chiu, Chia (internal member); Lugg, Catherine A. (internal member); Rutgers University; Graduate School of Education
Date Created2019
Other Date2019-05 (degree)
SubjectSTEM, Educational Leadership, Science -- Vocational guidance, Science -- Study and teaching (Secondary), Women in science
Extent1 online resource (xiii, 159 pages) : illustrations
DescriptionThe relatively small number of female students who pursue a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career is a significant educational and social problem. This dissertation addresses aspects of the STEM education pipeline problem through a quantitative study of the career aspirations of students in a high performing STEM-based career academy vocational high school. This study examines students’ career aspirations in the context of a three-year change initiative that substantially addresses the absence of curricula pertaining to the high school’s intended engineering-focused vocational program. This study draws upon social cognitive career theory (SCCT) as a theoretical framework, and calculates descriptive statistics and multifactorial analysis of covariance to analyze factors such as outcome expectations, self-efficacy, background contextual supports, and personal inputs to predict gender differences in aspirations for a career in engineering.
The results of this quantitative research study were summarily categorized according to two primary research questions, which produced several key findings. First, the main effect of interests explained significant amounts of variance in goals, while grade-level and background contextual affordances explained significant amounts of variance in interests. The main effect of gender, when including grade-level and interests, explained significant amounts of variance in goals. However, this effect disappeared when outcome expectations and background contextual affordances were added to the model. Similarly, neither the main effect of semester nor any two-way interactions involving semester explained significant amounts of variance in either interests or goals.
Rather than advancing the numerous studies that explore the decisions made and persistence towards STEM careers during and after postsecondary levels, this study addresses the gap in the extant literature by virtue of its focus on the high school context. It is the hope that these findings inform the research on this issue generally and provide information that can support other high schools with similar STEM programs to develop ways to reduce the gender gap in mathematics-intensive STEM fields like engineering.
NoteEd.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-rsd4-4m81
LanguageEnglish
CollectionGraduate School of Education Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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