Relationships between High School Chemistry Students’ Perceptions of a Constructivist Learning Environment and their STEM Career Expectations

Abstract

Considerable attention has been devoted to factors affecting the persistence of women and historically underrepresented ethnic groups in their science education trajectories. The literature has focused more on structural factors that affect longitudinal outcomes rather than classroom experiences. This exploratory survey study described relationships among high school chemistry students’ perceptions of a constructivist learning environment (CLE) and STEM career expectations. The sample included 693 students from 7 public high schools within the San Francisco Bay Area. Students’ perceptions of a CLE predicted their expectations of entering a science career, but not engineering, computer, health, or mathematics-related careers. When all groups of students perceived the learning environment as more constructivist, they were more likely to expect science careers.

Keywords:

• Social constructivism
• K-12
• Learning environment

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the teachers and students who participated in this study. I am also grateful to Bryan Brown for his guidance and to Jonathan Osborne, K. C. Busch, Brian Donovan, Michelle Friend, Rachelle Gould, Claude Goldenberg, Rachel Lotan, Jeannie Lythcott, and Lindred Greer for their valuable feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.