Exploring ways to use national datasets to promote broader participation of race-gender groups in STEM

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The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that will generate foundational knowledge in the field. This project will conduct an early stage exploratory study of an untested idea that will address the nation's STEM workforce needs. It will use a radically different approach to uncover barriers that impede broader participation by specific race-gender groups in STEM fields. The study will investigate whether school policies and practices regarding safety, discipline, school crime, suspensions and other such related factors, within charter and traditional public schools, contribute to the loss of large numbers of underrepresented students from the STEM pipeline. This is especially important since decades of efforts have not resulted in a stronger and more diverse 21st Century STEM workforce. To help address this condition, this study will examine the interplay of three main areas often cited as reasons the nation's human resource needs remain unmet. The study will focus on the impact of policies and practices on the STEM outcomes of race-gender groups. It will also look at how these schools differ in their mediation of the relationship of these regulations with STEM outcomes. Finally, the study will examine the impact school location and student residency have on strategies employed. There are currently no studies that have explored this approach. This study will attempt to lead the field in that regard.Through an interdisciplinary approach, student data from the National Center for Education Statistics will be merged and analyzed. With no prior efforts to guide these mergers, this novel approach is risky since it remains unknown if any viable solutions will emerge to address barriers to meeting future STEM workforce needs. Yet, the potential payoff will be significant if results show that such work is not only feasible, but capable of contributing to foundational knowledge that links school policies and practices to broadening participation in STEM. The main outcome of this work will be a longitudinal dataset of 9th graders and will contain measures of their exposure to specific barriers, type of charter or traditional public school previously attended, and residential locations. The dataset will also relate specific contextual factors to outcomes in algebra and science concepts, math and science identity, and STEM degree aspirations. Thus, the study will advance knowledge about theories of social control and intersectionality. The policy relevance of this research will also be significant and may generate knowledge about the human capital cost of policies and practices; and potentially transformative alternatives that, if adopted, could redirect students' pathways into STEM fields instead of out of the pipeline. Further, outcomes from the study will also be available for widespread use by STEM educators, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students and researchers at other institutions who may generate future research beneficial to society.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.