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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 11, No. 2
Publication Date: February 25, 2024
DOI:10.14738/assrj.112.16379.
Conn, C., Cho, P. Y., & Cho, L. S. (2024). Academic Self-Concept Development for STEM College Students: An Analysis on Gender
Difference. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 570-581.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Academic Self-Concept Development for STEM College Students:
An Analysis on Gender Difference
Cameron Conn
Baptist Health Sciences University, United States
Peter Y. Cho
Cerritos High School, United States
Linda S. Cho
Whitney High School, United States
ABSTRACT
Using a nation-wide college student dataset, this study examines the gender
disparities in academic self-concept for undergraduate students in Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors and investigates college
experiences affecting academic self-concept in this population. Findings of the
current study suggest that overall college satisfaction is the strongest positive
predictor of academic self-concept for college students in STEM majors and that
institutions and their members should strive to facilitate satisfactory and
educationally meaningful college experiences for these students at the macro level.
Also, faculty members and administrators in STEM majors should be aware of the
importance of positive faculty support on students’ academic self-concept
development and should continue trying to create an environment where students
can experience more frequent and positive encounters with their faculty members.
Lastly, our findings show that the effects of some college experiences on academic
self-concept development for STEM students vary by student gender. The findings
underscore the significance of the nature or type of college experiences and the
corresponding gender inequity and suggest that STEM majors need to facilitate
departmental environments where both male and female students can equivalently
benefit from their college experiences not only for their academic development but
also for other desired college outcomes.
Keywords: Academic Self-Concept, STEM, Gender, College Students
INTRODUCTION
Many of the U.S.’s fastest growing occupations are in the STEM fields (US Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2023). Data Scientists, statisticians, information security analysists, and software
developers’ rate in the top ten. Health care providers like nurse practitioners, physician
assistants, and physical therapists also rate in top ten. All of these professions require education
in one or more STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). However,
higher education research shows that retention in the STEM fields is a challenge. As many as
60% of undergraduate students who begin in STEM majors fail to graduate with STEM-related
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Conn, C., Cho, P. Y., & Cho, L. S. (2024). Academic Self-Concept Development for STEM College Students: An Analysis on Gender Difference.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 570-581.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.112.16379
degrees (Hurtado et al., 2012). Furthermore, as many as 60% of students who do graduate with
a degree in a STEM field do not intend to work in a STEM-related occupation (Park et al., 2022a).
Further exasperating these challenges of general attrition for interest in this field, women and
underrepresented minorities continue to participate in STEM fields at a disproportionally low
rate. Data collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES, 2022), show that
despite women earning 59% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2021-2022, they continue to lag
behind men in many STEM fields. For example, females earned 41% of mathematics bachelor
degrees in 2021-2022, only 25% of engineering degrees, and 23% of computer science
bachelor’s degrees. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018)
reports that while female enrollment in graduate STEM programs have increased substantially
since 2000, women continue to earn fewer masters and doctoral degrees than men. The gender
gaps, however, vary significantly by discipline. Although men earn 60% of masters and 71% of
mathematics PhDs and over 70% of all engineering graduate degrees, women are earning 64%
of the master’s degrees and 55% of the PhDs in biological sciences (NCES, 2022).
This study seeks to further understand what women (in particular) in STEM believe about their
academic abilities when they enter college, how that may change over the course of
undergraduate education, and what factors may influence increases in academic self-concept.
Previous research has highlighted the added challenges faced by female college students in
STEM. Park and colleagues (2021) explained that “Gender can also affect the ability of students
to develop positive social ties in STEM, given the pervasiveness of exclusionary norms and
underrepresentation of women in certain disciplines” (p. 1148). Other researchers interested
in gender dynamics within the STEM field comment on the friction between male and female
students and describe an unfriendly climate for women who are often not taken seriously and
subjected to a male-dominated culture where it is difficult for women to build positive
relationships with peers and faculty members (Margolis et al., 2000; Seymour & Hewitt, 1997).
Using a nation-wide college student dataset, this study examines the gender disparities in
academic self-concept for undergraduate students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM) majors and investigates college experiences affecting academic self- concept in this population. Specifically, this study seeks to answer the following research
questions: (1) Among undergraduate students in STEM majors, how does the gender gap in
academic self-concept at college entry change during the four years of college? Is the gender
gap maintained, widened, or minimized? (2) What college experiences promote academic self- concept for undergraduate students in STEM majors? (3) Are college experiences promoting
academic self-concept different for male and female students in STEM majors?
LITERATURE REVIEW
Academic Self-Concept
Academic self-concept is a psycho-social college outcome which seeks to measure a student’s
belief about their own academic capacity (Bryne, 1984; Lent et al., 1997; Shavelson & Bolus,
1982; Wigfielf & Karpathian, 1991). For this study, the Cooperative Institutional Research
Program measures academic self-concept with a construct that combines four self-reported
survey questions that ask students to appraise their overall academic ability, their
mathematical ability, their intellectual self-confidence, and their drive to achieve (as compared
with the average person their age) on a five-point Likert scale. Higher levels of academic self-
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 11, Issue 2, February-2024
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
concept have been found to contribute to more objective academic outcomes, such has higher
GPA (Choi 2005; Lent et al. 1997; Pajares & Miller 1994; Wood & Locke 1987). Previous studies
have shown that academic self-concept generally increases during college for all populations
(Astin 1993; Hesse-Biber & Marino 1991).
The following section will summarize existing literature about academic self-concept and
studies focused on STEM students and/or gender differences in this population. Furthermore,
two substantial relational factors that have been found to influence college students’ academic
outcomes will be explored: faculty interactions with students and students’ social and peer
relationships.
Student-Faculty Interaction
Specific college experiences can contribute to gains in academic self-concept. One fundamental
college experience, student-faculty interaction, has long been recognized and validated by
hundreds of research studies as a high impact practice (Chickering & Gamson, 1987) in
undergraduate education. Previous research studies have focused on the relationship between
various types of student-faculty interaction and college outcomes among STEM students. Below
several studies are highlighted.
Kim and Sax (2014) conducted a study of the effects of student-faculty interaction on academic
self-concept using a sample of 11,202 undergraduate students across 95 colleges and
universities. For this study, they divided the sample by academic discipline to see if there were
differences in how faculty and students interacted across groups and how the differences may
have affected students’ academic self-concept differently. Twenty-one percent of their sample
was categorized as investigative majors under Holland’s framework of careers (1973; 1985:
1997), which most closely aligns with the definition of STEM fields in the current paper.
The large majority (84%) of STEM majors were satisfied or very satisfied with the amount of
faculty contact, and 75% of STEM students were satisfied or very satisfied with their ability to
find a faculty mentor. Students majoring in artistic fields (e.g., theater, music, literature,
architecture) were the only group reporting meaningfully higher rates of satisfaction. STEM
student satisfaction with faculty-student interaction was on par or better than students
majoring in social (e.g., history, religion, education, sociology) or enterprising majors (e.g.,
business, journalism, law, communications).
More specifically, Kim and Sax (2014) reported that 43% of STEM students recounted talking
to faculty members weekly during office hours, and 34% of STEM students spent one or more
hours per week talking with faculty members outside of class or office hours. Thirty percent of
STEM students frequently asked a professor for advice outside of class, and 8% of students
reported having been a guest in a professor’s home frequently. In addition to accounting for
these student-faculty interactions, the study found that students in the STEM fields less
frequently “challenged a professor’s ideas in class,” compared to students in other academic
fields.
Within the full sample, they found that all three student-faculty interaction variables (i.e.,
having been a guest in a professor’s home, asking a professor for advice outside of class, and
challenging a professor’s ideas in class) were “significantly and positively related to students’
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Conn, C., Cho, P. Y., & Cho, L. S. (2024). Academic Self-Concept Development for STEM College Students: An Analysis on Gender Difference.
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(2). 570-581.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.112.16379
academic self-concept in their senior year even after controlling for the effects of their initial
academic self-concept in their freshman year and other level-1 (student-level) variables” (p.
793). Of the three types of interactions, the positive effect of challenging a professor’s ideas in
class on academic self-concept was the strongest, double or triple the positive effect of the other
two student-faculty interaction measures.
Later, Kim and Sax (2018) conducted a follow-up study using the same CIRP data that focused
specifically on STEM students’ mathematical self-concept, one component of overall academic
self-concept, as used as the outcome variable in the current study. They found that positive
faculty support significantly improved mathematical self-concept among STEM students;
however, when the authors analyzed the results by gender, the significant positive effects only
showed up for men. In other words, positive faculty support (e.g., faculty providing advice,
feedback, emotional support, encouragement to pursue graduate study, letter of
recommendation) did not serve to impact their female students’ perceptions of their academic
ability. Kim and Sax (2018) point out that because STEM faculties at many universities tend to
be the male-dominated, “female STEM students not only lack same-gender role models but also
perceive their interactions with faculty as less supportive and less encouraging than do male
students, which in turn influences their lower mathematical self-concept compared to male
counterparts” (p. 1078).
Interestingly, women in STEM reported that they experience positive faculty interactions more
frequently than their male counterparts. In fact, women reported more frequent faculty support
on all ten items included in the factor scale, seven of which were significantly higher. For
example, 55% of female STEM students reported receiving encouragement to pursue graduate
study, but only 42% of the men reported the same. Additionally, 28% of females reported
receiving emotional support and encouragement from faculty, compared to only 16% of men.
Kim and Sax (2018) thus concluded that “despite evidence of a chilly climate for women in
STEM, women are more likely to report favorable interactions with faculty” (p. 1087).
Unfortunately, these interactions did not lead to increased self-concept in the sample they
studied.
On the other hand, Park and colleagues (2020) investigated negative student-faculty
interactions and even discrimination from faculty among STEM students to measure its effect
on retention within the STEM majors. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen
(NLSF) administered by Princeton University to 28 colleges and universities across the country,
their final sample included 562 students who were majoring in STEM fields at the first
administration of the longitudinal survey in their freshman year and who participated the in
the final (fifth) administration of the survey during their senior year. Their study measured
student-faculty interaction with a factor scale of five general questions about the frequency of
student interactions with faculty during and outside of class. They measured discrimination
from faculty member with survey items such as having heard derogatory remarks made by
professor about students’ racial or ethnic group, and having felt students were given a bad grade
by a professor because of their race or ethnicity.
Park et al.’s (2020) analysis found that men (64%) were more likely to be retained in STEM
majors than were women (55%). Asian students (72%) were retained more often than other
racial groups, with White students retained 59% of the time, Latinx 57% of the time, and Black