Intergenerational Transfers of Preferences for Science Careers in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Using data from 24 countries, which participated in the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), we examine the relationship between parental science employment and students' career expectations. In contrast to prior PISA-based studies, we find that the link between parental employment and adolescent plans to work in science is non-trivial and merits attention. In this context, we consider three versions of the gender socialisation hypothesis. The strong variant posits that girls' plans are shaped solely by their mothers' career pathways while boys model their expectations exclusively on fathers’ occupations. The weaker version of this hypothesis expects children to be influenced more by the same-sex than by the opposite-sex parent. Finally, the third possibility is that, as egalitarian ideologies prevail, parents inspire adolescent occupational plans regardless of gender. These hypotheses are assessed separately for student career plans related to biology, agriculture and health (BAH) in contrast to computing, engineering and mathematics (CEM), because the involvement in these fields of science is known to be segregated by gender. Using two-level multinomial logit modelling, we find some support for the weak version of the gender socialisation hypothesis. Although within-family transfers of preferences for science careers vary considerably across countries, we note certain regularities. In many nations, relevant paternal employment enhances sons' interest in science careers regardless of their field. In contrast, maternal employment inspires daughters in fewer countries and this influence tends to be limited to careers in BAH. We discuss the possible implications of these findings for science educators.

Keywords:

• Science career plans
• Gender segregation
• Parental influence

Notes

There is no established and accepted terminology to denote this distinction, although its existence is well known to science educators. Some authors refer to it as the contrast between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ sciences (Kjrnsli & Lie, 2011), or between ‘life’ and ‘quantitative’ sciences (Charles, 2011; Kessel & Nelson, 2011), while we rely on listings of science fields in which women and men are concentrated (Sikora & Pokropek, 2012).

Such conclusions might have been reached because science was conceptualised as one relatively homogeneous category. Moreover, the measures of association examined in prior studies might have been more suitable for continuous rather than dichotomous variables.

Israel, which meets this criterion was left out due to very high level of missing data on students’ occupational expectations. See Sikora & Pokropek (2011) for proportions of students expecting CEM and BAH careers in all PISA-participating countries.

Although we do not use any school level variables, two-level models are appropriate due to PISA's clustered sample design.

The details of the variables used in the imputation model are available upon request.

Plausible values are in fact a special case of multiple imputations.

In Figures 1 and 2, asterisks by country names show where paternal or maternal effect is different for boys and girls.

One way to think about status transfer is to conceptualise it as a desire to have any kind of professional job rather than an interest in a specific science career.

It is plausible to assume that most teenagers live with both parents. As our own analysis show, among Australian participants of the longitudinal extension of PISA 2006, 92% lived with mothers in 1997 while 75% resided with their fathers. Thus, assuming that Australia is not greatly different from other Western developed countries, it is possible to argue that residence, or frequent contact, with both parents is the most typical arrangement.