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Perceived Difficulty of School Science and Cost Appraisals: a Valuable Relationship for the STEM Pipeline?

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Abstract

The lack of students interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related careers calls for studies that identify variables affecting their career decisions. By drawing on recent conceptualizations of the cost domain first introduced in the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivations, this study investigated whether the perceived difficulty of school science predicted and affected elementary school students (N = 245) task effort and loss of valued alternatives experienced while engaging in a science-related course. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that students’ perceived difficulty significantly predicted levels of cost experienced when studying science. Likewise, multi-factor ANOVAs revealed that students perceiving school science as a difficult subject reported significantly higher levels of task effort and loss of valued alternatives related to studying science. These findings suggest that the attitudinal dimensions of perceived difficulty play a promising role in the development of cost in science, which has valuable implications for repairing the leaky STEM pipeline.

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Data Availability

Raw data will be shared on reasonable request to the author of this study.

Notes

  1. The “leaky STEM pipeline” is a metaphor generally used to describe the progressive loss of talent in STEM disciplines. See Cannady et al. (2014) for a discussion about this metaphor.

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Funding

This investigation was conducted under the Ph.D. research fellowship Resolución de 19 de mayo de 2017 del Vicerrector de Investigación y Transferencia del Conocimiento para financiar contratos predoctorales de la Universidad de Burgos [Resolution of 19 May 2017 of the Vice-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer to finance Ph.D. research fellowships at the University of Burgos], granted to the author of this study.

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  1. Faculty of Education, Department of Specific Didactics, University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain

    Radu Bogdan Toma

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Correspondence to Radu Bogdan Toma.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were approved by the Vice-rectorate of Research and the Doctorate Program of the University of Burgos. All study participants provided informed consent signed by their parents or their legally authorized representatives.

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Toma, R.B. Perceived Difficulty of School Science and Cost Appraisals: a Valuable Relationship for the STEM Pipeline?. Res Sci Educ 52, 553–565 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-020-09963-5

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