A multimethod examination of hope and adolescent STEM career expectancies

Abstract

Introduction: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are growing rapidly and understanding adolescent's interest and hope for pursuing a STEM career is essential for additional growth and opportunity collectively and individually. Hope is a cognitive-motivational construct that includes three components: hopeful future expectations (HFEs), intentional self-regulation (ISR), and connection, and is associated with academic achievement and career pursuit; it has not been examined in relation to STEM. This study fills a gap in the literature by taking a multimethod approach to understanding the association between adolescents' hope and STEM career interests. Methods: Participants were 639 middle-and high-school adolescents in the southwestern United States who quantitatively reported their hope and STEM career interests and provided qualitative descriptions of reasons for wanting to pursue a STEM career. Results: Quantitatively, HFEs significantly and positively predicted STEM career interest. Relations were examined by gender and school level. For middle-school girls, ISR significantly predicted STEM career interest, for middle-school boys and highschool girls, HFEs positively significantly predicted STEM career interest, but results of high-school boys were nonsignificant. Qualitatively, adolescents mentioned reasons aligning with HFEs and ISR as motivations for pursuing a STEM career, as well as prosocial motivations. Additionally, they discussed their interest in a STEM career as a way to pursue other goals such as financial stability. Discussion: Findings highlight the possibility of hope as a malleable motivation for STEM career pursuit. Our findings support the components of hope as a salient associate of early STEM career interest, with adolescents who have high HFEs and ISR being particularly apt to say they would like to pursue a STEM career. Our results support the active development of hope among US adolescents as a catalyst toward personal and global success.

Understanding Turkish Students’ STEM Career Aspirations, STEM Hopes and Goals, Parental Perception, and Cultural Capital: A Path Analysis

“…Previous literature has reported that those who have hopes for STEM elds have higher motivation (Eccles & Wang, 2016). Alexander et al (2022) concluded that STEM hope is effective in uncovering students' full potential in STEM elds. Therefore, it seems obvious that STEM hope predicts STEM career aspirations.…”