American Museum of Natural History reposted this
Why do we use the term PATHWAYS instead of ‘pipeline’ in our longitudinal study of youth persistence in STEM careers? Many researchers, including our team, have raised concerns about the “pipeline” metaphor: it implies a single linear path and not the heterogeneity of #pathways. The #pipeline framing ignores the systemic inequities of science learning contexts that have posed disruptions and obstacles to youth’s #STEM pursuits; and masks the cultural and contextual features of youth’s lived experiences that serve as assets and resources. In a NEW paper out in Teachers College Record last week, we describe our study’s methodological and conceptual approach to these concerns. We offer alternative ways to measure and understand pathways through our NSF-funded #longitudinal study which is mixed methods and relies on survey, social network and interview data. Dr Anna MacPherson, the first author, explained: “To collect information about where youth and new adults were located along their professional pathway and measure constructs we hypothesized might be related to their chosen pathways, we had to design a new survey instrument in the first year of the study. In our paper, we describe the way we selected published scales that measure key constructs of interest (e.g., belonging, science identity, flourishing) and summarize our first year of data collection. In this project, we challenge the typical "pipeline" metaphor by interrogating what is meant by a “STEM” pathway, measuring constructs not typically measured in STEM pipeline research, endeavoring to make our measures intersectional, and imagining alternative outcomes in addition to “staying in STEM." We hope that these methods and alternative conceptions will help other researchers who are also studying youth pathways! https://lnkd.in/e8gVx6RM Staying in Science Research team: Preeti Gupta, Rachel Chaffee, Jennifer Adams, Anna MacPherson, Alan Daly, Peter Bjorklund Jr., Ph.D., Lois Wu, Jahneal Francis, MPH, CPH, Lucie Lagodich, Priya-Syrina H., Coral Braverman, Mahmoud Abouelkheir #informal #learning #STEM #pathways #youth #museums #research