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High-achieving students in economically disadvantaged, rural schools lack access to advanced coursework necessary to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational and employment goals at the highest levels, contributing to the excellence gap. Out-of-school STEM programming offers one pathway to students’ talent development. Using a concurrent triangulation mixed-methods research design, this study was conducted to evaluate the experiences of 78 high-achieving students and their 32 teachers, participating in an extracurricular, school-based, STEM talent development program for rural students from economically disadvantaged communities. Findings suggest that students and teachers expressed satisfaction with program participation and that they thought more creatively and critically about their work. Results also showed that students’ perceptions of the mathematics and science activities were significantly different, which informs ways to improve programming for future high-achieving, rural students. These findings expand the literature supporting the use of informal STEM education environments for underserved gifted populations to increase engagement in and access to challenging curricula.
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A theoretically based STEM talent development program that bridges excellence gaps
Abstract The pipeline of highly trained STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals has narrowed in recent decades, forcing society to re‐examine how schools are discovering and developing STEM talent. Of particular concern is the finding that rural students attend post‐secondary schools at lower rates than their urban counterparts, and when they do attend, they are less likely to graduate from STEM programs. One reason may be that they are not prepared for advanced STEM coursework because they lack access to essential STEM talent‐development programs in middle or high school. This creates excellence gaps, which exacerbate the narrowing STEM pipeline to the workforce. To address this, we formed a university–school partnership to develop an outside‐of‐school STEM talent development program, called STEM Excellence, for rural middle‐school students who attend under‐resourced schools. The aim of STEM Excellence was to increase students’ achievement and aspirations while empowering their teachers to develop local STEM programs grounded in developmental psychology theories. STEM Excellence integrated the Talent Development Megamodel Principles of ability, domains of talent, opportunity, and psychosocial variables. STEM Excellence also recognized the interplay of multiple person–environment systems as presented in the Bioecological Systems Model.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1713123
- PAR ID:
- 10401422
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 1522
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0077-8923
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 109-116
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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