August 2009 • Volume 13 • Number 1 • Pages 28-29

Opening the Door to STEM Careers

Sarita Pillai, and Kimberly Lightle

Imagine a seventh grader in a rural middle school looking for ways to combine his love of art with his curiosity about computers.

Imagine a young Latina girl from East Texas thinking she might like to work at a crime lab.

Imagine an African American adolescent in an urban neighborhood wanting to be a sound engineer.

Sadly, for most students, the link between their interests and possibilities for future careers remains tenuous or altogether absent. Yet, each of these scenarios offers a starting point for engaging students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career exploration and development.

When we see these glimmers of interest, how can we nurture them? What will draw students to the next interesting idea, hands-on experience, role model, or the next question for their teacher or counselor? Where do students find the information they want? How can we provide engaging and widely available resources that challenge them to see and explore ways to link their interests to a future career? And how can they identify and learn about the knowledge and skills needed to get them there?

The STEM Pipeline

The continuing global technology leadership of the United States depends on the development of the scientific talent of all its citizens. The nation must educate engineers and scientists who are efficient users and innovative producers of the emerging cyber-infrastructure. These STEM professionals must come from diverse backgrounds and be generative and creative, able to understand business issues, fluent in software use, efficient in networked collaborative design, comfortable with foreign languages and working on culturally diverse teams, and able to manage global projects with geographically dispersed teams.

However, our nation is experiencing an ever-widening STEM "skills gap." Not enough young people are taking the science and mathematics courses that will prepare them for STEM careers and, of those who do complete the requisite course work, too few are entering STEM professions upon graduation.

Young people cannot imagine themselves pursuing specific STEM careers or fields of study if they do not know what opportunities exist. Studies show that students have a limited understanding of the variety of STEM work available and the qualifications needed to do that work.

Planning for a Career

Children make choices and develop preferences early in life. And while these early choices seem inconsequential—food, toys, entertainment, and clothing—they represent larger, more significant decisions that can be influential well into adulthood. It follows, then, that learning the skills for effective career planning must begin early. Researchers in this field have described career development as a lifelong process, and when viewed as a life skill, career development encompasses competencies such as awareness, exploration, and skill building.

Middle school is a time when career development education is crucial to the formation of career vision, particularly for groups under-represented in STEM. Career awareness must be integrated with academic content, because teachers can guide students to potential career possibilities and connections between their school work and adult living.

A recent article in Science revealed that young people who held science and engineering career aspirations in eighth grade were almost twice as likely to earn a life science baccalaureate degree as those who did not plan a science-related career. Estimated probabilities for enrollment in life sciences degree programs nearly doubled for students who were interested in science-related career expectations.

Strategies for the Middle Level

Young adolescents need more opportunities for productive career exploration in formal and informal learning environments. Programs that incorporate a teaching strategy that combines classroom curriculum with community service to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities are important for a systemic, integrated, and comprehensive experience. Programs designed for middle grades students must be structured to widen students' concepts of future possibilities and allow them to explore multiple careers.

An effective middle gradescareer exploration program includes concrete activities (interviews, job shadowing, and projects) and ties current academic work to future career success. It also addresses students' very real concerns about how their personal and familial values inform career choices.

STEM-specific career guidance can broaden students' awareness of STEM career opportunities and help them see how their talents and interests make them suited to pursue those opportunities. Capturing their imaginations by linking school work to "real" work can lead them to make positive choices about education and STEM careers.

One study that uses this approach compared students scoring in the highest- and lowest-performing quartiles of a standardized test. The highest-performing students reported receiving guidance about careers and high school course selection from classroom teachers. "Students who have teacher-mentors are more likely to have educational goals and educational plans for high school and beyond," the study's author concluded.

Informal learning strategies, such as inquiry-based learning, are an effective approach in getting young people interested in STEM activities. Girls seem to favor this approach. Studies have demonstrated that girls learn best when they are able to make meaningful connections between what they are learning and their own lived experiences.

For example, research found that applications of STEM to real-world problems help sustain girls' interest and engagement in STEM coursework, and ultimately their persistence in post-secondary STEM study. Indeed, one longitudinal study of urban females who had participated in an informal science education program found that the effects of the program persisted into adulthood.

Learning More About STEM Careers

The FunWorks (www.thefunworks.org) provides an engaging, safe, and well-designed site to draw middle school students into the world of STEM careers. Created for young adolescents, The FunWorks puts particular emphasis on engaging currently under-represented populations in STEM education and careers—females, minority populations, students of low socioeconomic status, and students with disabilities—using an array of strategies that promote experiential learning to both encourage and challenge students. Close to 300 middle school students were involved in the design, development, and deployment of this project.

The overall concept of The FunWorks is to provide real-world experiences and use young people's current interests and passions, such as music and sports, to help them explore careers in STEM and to inspire them to consider STEM careers they might never have considered.

Students will develop a new curiosity about their world and begin to "see" connections with their own futures. This early guided exploration will encourage them to consider STEM careers and help them make more informed decisions as they pursue education and the career of their dreams.

Sarita Pillai is a senior project director with the Gender, Diversities & Technology Institute at the Education Development Center, Inc. E-mail: spillai@edc.org

Kimberly Lightle is the director of digital libraries in the School of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Ecology at the Ohio State University. E-mail: klightle@msteacher.org

The Middle School Portal, from the National Science Digital Library, is a resource that provides free access to digital resources for middle school math and science teachers.

The Middle School Portal offers an in-depth look at standards-based math and science concepts. Visit the portal at www.msteacher.org