| STEM education plays a role in the development of new talents,scientific and technological innovation,and the promotion of international competitiveness,and it has gradually become an educational strategy of all countries as the demands of the employment market on the quality of talents have increased.The underrepresentation of women in this sector field has become a global phenomenon,and the problem of gender disparity in STEM education is quite significant.This undermines the advancement of STEM education.Although studies have started to concentrate on the causes of this problem,the majority of them lack a holistic perspective and ignore the concurrent effects of multiple factors.Therefore,our study of the mechanisms of gender disparity in STEM fields is therefore extremely useful in real-world settings.This study uses college students as its research subjects,develops a model of the factors influencing the gender disparity in STEM fields,explores the relationship and mechanism of multiple factors through empirical analysis,and then offers practical solutions to address the issue.The following elements are part of the main work:(1)Through literature induction and theoretical research,with configuration theory as the logical chain,combined with social cognitive career theory,stereotype threat theory and social capital theory,four dimensions of factors were determined,including individual characteristics factors(STEM identity,STEM self-efficacy and STEM learning and career expectations),family factors(social capital),school factors(teacher and peer interactions),and social factors(stereotype and same-sex role models),and build a research model map based on them.(2)Using college students as the research subject,we created an online questionnaire using a survey-based research methodology.This study explored the relationship between the factors and the complex causal mechanism through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis,descriptive statistical analysis,correlation analysis,difference analysis,fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis,and other empirical analysis methods after confirming its rationality through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.(3)According to the findings,from the three aspects,including correcting women’s self-cognition,improving the STEM teacher training system,and acting as a female role model in multiple ways,this paper puts forward suggestions to alleviate the gender disparity to promote the healthy development of STEM education.The results show that:(1)STEM learning and career expectations have significant differences between different genders and parental professions,and there is a significant positive correlation with STEM identity,STEM self-efficacy,family capital,teacherstudent interaction,stereotypes,and same-sex role models;(2)Taking STEM learning and career expectations as the outcome,it is found that the gender disparity in STEM education is jointly affected by different influencing factors;(3)There are differences between male and female students in the configurations of high and non-high STEM learning and career expectations in number and types.Eight and three configurations,respectively,can explain why male and female students have high STEM learning and career expectations,but only four and three configurations can explain why male and female students have non-high STEM learning and career expectations respectively;(4)the configurations of high and non-high STEM learning and career expectations have an asymmetric relationship;(5)In the configurations,the same factor has different effects on STEM learning and career expectations of different gender students.This study broadens the research contexts and knowledge system of STEM education,provides research tools to support STEM education research,offers recommendations to further reform STEM education and formulate policy,and supports the long-term advancement of STEM education in China. |
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