Middle- and secondary-school students STEM career interest and its relationship to gender, grades, and family size in Kazakhstan

Balta N. Japashov N. Mansurova A. Tzafilkou K. Oliveira A.W. Lathrop R.
March 2023 John Wiley and Sons Inc

Science Education
2023 #107 Issue 2 401 - 426 pp.

Despite pervasive educational efforts, student interest in STEM careers continues to decline in many countries. The present study seeks to better understand this phenomenon by examining how internal factors (gender) and external factors (school grades, grade level, family size) relate to Kazakh students STEM career interests. To this end, a newly developed instrument (STEM Career Interest Survey) based on social cognitive career theory was used to assess interest in STEM careers among middle- and secondary students in Kazakhstan. The survey was completed by a sample of 396 Kazakh students in grades 7 to 12. Our statistical analyses revealed that (1) female students were generally less interested in STEM careers than male students; (2) students with higher grades in physics classes were significantly more interested in STEM careers than low-performing students; (3) students at higher grade levels were generally more interested in STEM careers than those in lower grade levels; (4) the number of siblings was positively associated with student interest in mathematics careers; and, (5) family support and role models were significantly correlated with student STEM career interest. Our findings suggest that student development of interest in STEM careers constitutes an epigenetic phenomenon that involves complex interactions between internal factors (e.g., self-efficacy) and external factors (e.g., gender stereotypes). Based on this, it is argued that the promotion of student interest in STEM careers is a multifaceted problem whose resolution requires, among other things, dispelling stereotypes in students sociocultural context through systematic renegotiation of traditional gender-technology relations characteristic of a countrys culture.

Kazakh students , middle and high school , STEM career and gender , STEM career interest development , STEM career family and grades

Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи

Suleyman Demirel University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Department of Solid state Physics and Nonlinear Physics, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Department of Pedagogy of Natural Sciences, Suleyman Demirel University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Department of Physics, Nazarbayev Intellectual School of Physics and Mathematics, Almaty, Kazakhstan
University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
State University of New York at Albany, Albany, United States

Suleyman Demirel University
Department of Solid state Physics and Nonlinear Physics
Department of Pedagogy of Natural Sciences
Department of Physics
University of Macedonia
State University of New York at Albany

10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель

Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026