"Where will I belong more?": The role of belonging comparisons between STEM fields in high school girls' STEM interest.

ABSTRACT: In trying to understand women's underrepresentation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), most existing research focuses on one STEM-field or collapses across all STEM-fields. However, these fields differ vastly in female representation: women tend to be most strongly underrepresented in technological and computer science university majors and to a lesser extent in mathematics and chemistry, while they are less underrepresented in biological sciences. To understand this variability, we examine how girls in the process of making higher education choices compare different STEM-fields to each other. We draw upon dimensional comparison theory, which argues that educational motivation involves intra-individual comparisons of achievement across school subjects. However, previo

SUBMITTER: Veldman J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8403818 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature