Understanding Young People's Science Aspirations

How students form ideas about 'becoming a scientist'

Louise Archer, Jennifer DeWitt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317644088
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Understanding Young People's Science Aspirations offers new evidence and understanding about how young people develop their aspirations for education, learning and, ultimately, careers in science. Integrating new findings from a major research study with a wide ranging review of existing international literature, it brings a distinctive sociological analytic lens to the field of science education.

The book offers an explanation of how some young people do become dedicated to follow science, and what might be done to increase and broaden this population, exploring the need for increased scientific literacy among citizens to enable them to exercise agency and lead a life underpinned by informed decisions about their own health and their environment. Key issues considered include:

• why we should study young people's science aspirations
• the role of families, social class and science capital in career choice
• the links between ethnicity, gender and science aspirations
• the implications for research, policy and practice.

Set in the context of widespread international policy concern about the urgent need to improve, increase and diversify participation in post-16 science, this key text considers how we must encourage a supply of appropriately qualified future scientists and workers in STEM industries and ensure a high level of scientific literacy in society. It is a crucial read for all training and practicing science teachers, education researchers and academics, as well as anyone invested in the desire to help fulfil young people's science aspirations.

1
Why Study Young People’s Science Aspirations?

Why is science participation an issue?

Science participation occupies a distinctive and prominent position within international policy discourse. Governments and policy-makers across Western developed nations are highly concerned that more needs to be done to improve – to increase and widen – participation in post-compulsory Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) at all levels (e.g. ACOLA, 2013; Adler-Nissen et al., 2012; CBI, 2012; HM Treasury, 2011; House of Lords, 2012; Perkins, 2013; US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010¹). This is particularly the case for the physical sciences, where participation rates remain below desired levels and the profile of a 'typical' graduate remains White, male and middle class (e.g. AAUW, 2010; Smith, 2010a, 2010b, 2011). It is a point of ongoing puzzlement and frustration that these patterns persist and that the figures largely appear to be resistant to the decades of interventions that have been undertaken to try to broaden the profile of those pursuing science at university and beyond. For instance, in the UK, initiatives aimed at increasing and/or widening the profile of STEM graduates appear to have had little lasting impact on higher education participation rates (Smith, 2010a; Smith and Gorard, 2011; see also Royal Society, 2008a, 2008b). Yet, internationally considerable energy and resource continues to be invested in improving STEM participation via a myriad of local and high-profile national programmes, coalitions and campaigns (e.g. Change the Equation in the US,² the 'Your Life' campaign in the UK,³ and the Australian government's allocation of $54.0 million in the 2012—13 Budget for the four year 'Mathematics and science—increasing participation in schools and universities' programme).⁴ In short, the question of how we might improve STEM participation remains a key national and international policy concern – although, as we discuss next, there are different, competing rationales given for why STEM participation needs to be urgently addressed.

Broadly speaking, the rationale for increasing science participation is framed as an imperative for supplying the science 'pipeline' (the future STEM professionals required by the economy) or for improving public scientific literacy for social justice ends. As we discuss later in this book, while the two rationales are often cited together as complementary reasons for the need to improve STEM participation, they do not necessarily fit easily together, either conceptually or in practice, and can conflict with one another.

Unsurprisingly, it is the economic, 'pipeline' rationale that achieves most prominence within national policy discourse. From this perspective, STEM industries are understood as being vital elements of the current and future national economy (e.g. BIS, 2009; CBI, 2010, 2012; House of Lords, 2012). For example, a report by the UK Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE, 2009) states that:

the workforce of the future will increasingly require higher-level skills as structural adjustments in the economy force businesses to move up the value chain. These jobs of the future will increasingly require people with the capabilities that a STEM qualification provides.

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES, 2012) predicts that by 2020, while many other fields are expected to shrink, there will be a 13% expansion in the demand for science, engineering and technology professionals in the UK. Some have argued that there is a lack of definitive and reliable data on the supply and demand of STEM graduates and postgraduates (e.g. House of Lords, 2012), and it is contested as to how many future scientists the economy actually needs (e.g. Lowell et al., 2009; Xie and Killewald, 2012), although it is generally agreed that predicted STEM skills gaps in key areas are a valid concern (e.g. House of Lords, 2012; Royal Academy of Engineering, 2012). The widespread fear is that a failure to produce sufficient numbers of adequately qualified/skilled STEM workers will compromise national economic competitiveness (CBI, 2010; Royal Society, 2008a, 2008b). Indeed, the Confederation of British Industry⁵ (CBI, 2012) reports that just under half of employers currently have (and expect further) difficultly recruiting employees with the STEM skills and knowledge that they require. These issues need to be understood in context: for instance, in the UK, the overall number of STEM graduates is increasing – but this is largely because the overall number of graduates is increasing. Indeed the percentage of STEM graduates decreased slightly from just over 43% in 21)02—3 to just under 42% in 2009—10 (House of Lords, 2012). Moreover, rates of participation in 'core' STEM subjects (e.g. mathematics, physics) constitute only a small proportion of overall STEM participation rates. As Smith (2010a, 2011b) explains, the problem is not that undergraduates are not studying science per se; rather, the issue lies with uneven rates of participation between different STEM subject areas.

Despite its dominance in policy discourse, the economic, 'pipeline' rationale is not the only reason that is given for trying to improve STEM participation. Indeed, some would argue that the pipeline discourse is neither the most important nor the most useful rationale for improving STEM participation. The second discourse that we would like to consider here is the 'public scientific literacy' rationale. This perspective; argues that STEM participation needs to be widened (not just increased) for reasons of social equity. In other words, science is understood as being a public good, such that achieving equitably spread, high levels of scientific literacy (Durant, 1993) across the population is vital for the creation of a 'good society' (e.g. Millar, 1996; Millar and Osborne, 1998; Osborne, 2007). From this perspective, it is a matter of social justice that all citizens should be able to understand STEM (be STEM 'literate' and be sufficiently informed about, and have the opportunity to inform, STEM developments in society). In other words, all citizens should be able to understand, participate in and shape scientific developments in society. Additionally, because analysis suggests that some STEM qualifications can carry a wage premium, enabling those who possess them to access favourable (high pay and status) jobs (e.g. Greenwood et al., 2011), it is important that everyone has an equal opportunity to access and participate in STEM, irrespective of their social background. Another important aspect of the equity rationale is that STEM education and industries need to be inclusive of, and informed/shaped by the interests, needs and talents of, a representative workforce. As we have written elsewhere (Archer et al., 2015), we believe that science is a key form of symbolic capital which can facilitate agency and the re/production of relations of subordination and/or privilege (Bourdieu, 2010). Currently the 'goods' of science participation are inequitably spread across society (Archer et al., 2012b; Gorard and See, 2009), so we consider it a social justice imperative that we try to find ways to disrupt (and make more equitable) current patterns of participation.

Who participates and who does not?

In the UK, as in many Western developed nations, participation in post-16 science, technology, engineering and mathematics varies considerably by gender, ethnicity and social class (Royal Society, 2008b). In the physical sciences, engineering and mathematics, women, working-class students and those from particular minority ethnic backgrounds (e.g. Black Caribbean and Pakistani/Bangladeshi) remain starkly under-represented at degree level (Smith, 2010a, 2010b, 2011) and in the wider workforce, with statistics suggesting that women make up around 14% of the UK STEM workforce,⁶ and around a quarter of the STEM workforce in the US.⁷ These trends are also very noticeable in physics at A level (IOP, 2012). It has also been noted that England has one of the worst gender profiles in the world in relation to participation in engineering (Perkins, 2013⁸).

Since the 1970s, there have been improvements in gender equity within science, with greater numbers of women and girls now taking STEM qualifications, entering STEM careers and contributing to the wealth of STEM knowledge and research in many Western nations (e.g. AAUW, 2010). Indeed, it has been noted that there are few, if any, gender differences in attainment in school science (Haworth et al., 2008; Royal Society, 2008b; Smith, 2011) and mathematics (Boaler and Sengupta-Irving, 2006). However, despite these advances, there are Still persistent gender inequalities in terms of students' attitudes to science/mathematics and their patterns of participation in post-16 science/mathematics.

Patterns of participation with regard to social class are similarly entrenched – although they tend to command less policy and public attention. As Gorard and See (2009) discuss, students from poorer families are less likely to study science subjects post-16 compared to many other subjects, and those who do are less likely to obtain grades high enough to enable further study of the subject.

'Race'/ethnicity also correlates with notable patterns of participation in science. For example, work by Elias et al. (2006) and Jones and Elias (2005) found that, among students eligible to study physics at degree level (i.e. those with relevant qualifications/grades to be eligible for entry to a physics degree programme), British students from Black Caribbean, Black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds were heavily under-represented, whereas British Chinese and Indian students were proportionally over-represented. Their analysis suggests that while differential attainment may play a part in producing patterns of participation, it does not fully explain the situation, as such patterns are still evident even among similarly qualified students.

As we discuss in this book, evidence from our ASPIRES study suggests that identities and inequalities of gender, social class and ethnicity play an important role in shaping the extent to which young people see science as being 'for me', or not.

Is science ‘special’?

Writing a book about science participation and young people's science aspirations inevitably raises the question: but what's so special about science? Indeed, a number of subject areas (Modern Foreign Languages, MFL, being an obvious example) might lay claim to a similar 'crisis' in participation, with uneven patterns of pre- and post-16 participation and with parallel claims from employers that there are insufficient numbers of appropriately qualified candidates to fulfil their needs and requirements (e.g. Taylor and Marsden, 2012). In this respect, Science is not particularly different or special. However, we would suggest that science is distinctive in terms of the level of policy/government and industry interest and investment in STEM participation. Moreover, while we do not necessarily believe that, intrinsically, science is any more or less valuable than any other subject, we would suggest that the current exchange value of STEM qualifications in the labour market again marks the field out as distinctive and worthy of further investigation, not least in light of our concerns with social in/equality. The distinctiveness of science is also underlined by its status as one of the 'core' subject areas; the more restrictive entry qualifications required for some science A levels (notably physics); and the relatively high social status of science subjects within society. Moreover, there is a notable strength and prevalence of concern that, compared to other school subjects, science is failing to engage young people (Jenkins and Nelson, 2005; Lyons, 2006; Osborne and Collins, 2001; Sjøberg and Schreiner, 2005), again suggesting something distinctive about science. Finally, in the UK, science is treated somewhat uniquely within the English education system in terms of how it is organised and structured at GCSE level: science is the only subject area to be stratified into core ('Double Award') and extended ('Triple Award') option routes.⁹ In all these respects, we would argue that science is distinctive and provides a particularly interesting case study for sociological examination.

Our focus on 'science', rather than 'STEM', also requires justification. In essence, our focus on science is largely pragmatic, an attempt to restrict our area of inquiry within manageable parameters. We certainly feel that the issues around participation in technology, engineering and mathematics are equally important and pressing as they are for science. Moreover, we suggest that many of the issues we raise and the processes and factors that we identify as influencing young people's aspirations will, more than likely, have parallels with young people's views and aspirations in relation to technology, engineering and mathematics. That said, where we have data relating to these other areas, these are reported.

Our use of the term 'science' also deserves some explanation and clarification. When working with our younger cohorts in particular, we deliberately used the term science for pragmatic reasons, because it is the term that most primary school students are familiar with, as these lessons tend to be called 'Science' at school. However, at secondary school level, students may be more aware of being taught separate areas of science (usually biology, chemistry and physics). Hence, with older students, but particularly among our Year 9 cohort, we did probe these distinctions in more detail. We also conducted discussions with Year 6 and Year 8 groups to inform the development of survey items and interview instruments, and to explore what the young people understood by the term 'science'. For instance, students who took part in the four Year 8 discussion groups (two groups of girls and two groups of boys) explained that, for them, 'science' generally brought to mind school science and topics within school science (e.g. space, chemicals, human body). They also thought of practicals or experiments, as well as 'explosions'. Although they could generally distinguish among biology, chemistry and physics, these distinctions were not yet clear cut and, when answering questions about 'science', they tended to blur the boundaries between the sciences, rather than to think about a particular subject area – or even topic – within Science. Similar tendencies were found in discussion groups with Year 6 students, except they were less likely to be familiar with the subject areas of biology, chemistry and physics.

Why focus on aspirations?

In this book we discuss our five-year research project, the ASPIRES study, in which we sought to better understand how young people form their science and career aspirations between the ages of 10 and 14. As we have discussed in a number of our papers and related writing (e.g. Archer, 2014; Archer et al., 2014c), we understand aspirations as expressions of people's hopes or ambitions. As Brannen and Nilsen (2007, p. 155) discuss, aspirations can range from vague and uncertain ideas about the future through to 'more concrete and achievable' plans. In other words, young people's aspirations can vary considerably:

From intensely held goals and desires to looser, more nebulous interests; from 'high' or lofty ambitions to more prosaic, mundane or realistic expectations; from 'already known' and concrete expectations to fragile dreams that are constantly mediated and shaped by external constraints.

(Archer et al., 2010b, p. 78)

However, the question might reasonably be asked – why focus on aspirations? After all, it is doubtful that many readers of this book aspired, as children, to the precise job/s that they have ended up in! So if children's aspirations do not predict their future outcomes, what value is there in studying them? We suggest there are three main reasons why a focus on aspirations is useful.

First, while not predictive, childhood aspirations can give a reasonably good approximation of the general type of career path that young people go on to take in the future (Trice, 1991b; Trice and McClellan, 1993). For instance, Croll (2008) undertook a longitudinal analysis of data from the British Household Panel Survey, finding that approximately half of those young people who expressed a particular aspiration at age 15 were actually in a similar type of occupation when they were surveyed again 10 to 15 years later. Evidence from the US further suggests that this link, between aspirations and outcomes, may be particularly salient in the case of science. Tai et al. (2006) analysed longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) of 1988, which began with a survey of 24,599 8th graders (ages 13—14 in 1988), followed by a further four follow-up surveys conducted over the subsequent 12 years. Their analysis found that a young person who aspires to a career in science at age 14 is almost three and a half times more likely to end up taking a degree in the physical sciences or engineering than a peer without such aspirations. This effect was even more pronounced for those who both aspired to a science career and attained highly in mathematics at age 14, with 51% of these students going on to take a STEM-related degree. As we discuss in Chapter 2, our ASPIRES data would also appear to suggest that children's aspirations seem to remain relatively stable, at the level of broad, general categories of aspiration, over the 10—14 age period.

Second, from a sociol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Why study young people’s science aspirations?
• 2 What do young people today aspire to?
• 3 Schools, lessons and science identities
• 4 The ‘brainy’ scientist
• 5 The role of families, social class and science capital in young people’s aspirations
• 6 Gender, girls and science aspirations
• 7 Ethnicity and science aspirations: British Asian and British Black students
• 8 Conclusions and implications for research, policy and practice
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index