Implicit Cognition in STEM Education

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

The Implicit Cognition in STEM Education project (I.C.STEM) will test specific hypotheses about the development and influence of implicit STEM cognitions in student performance, especially for girls and non-Asian minority students, members of groups known for disproportionate attrition from the STEM pipeline. Recent studies have demonstrated that implicit attitudes and stereotypes predict important STEM outcomes like self-identification with the domain, engineering test performance, and college calculus grades. The current project takes advantage of a natural experiment: It will include girls attending a single-sex, inner-city charter school in Chicago that uses a randomized lottery to select its students, girls who had applied to the lottery but were not selected, and a comparison group of students in a ethnically diverse school system in Florida. The researchers will make use of experimental, quasi-experimental, observational, and longitudinal designs and multiple measures and analytic methods so as to be able to make causal claims about the interaction of different factors, such as single-sex and coed classrooms, determining STEM attitudes, persistence, and performance.