Science Trigger | A Gender-based Study

As you know, the various reforms within our education system have been targeted towards STEM (acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Education as United States plays “catch up” with many other developed and developing nations based on global student achievement indexes.

Scientific American has released an interesting infographic based on their research in collaboration with Adam Maltese of Indiana University. The data, which was collected through randomized surveys of men and women throughout colleges as well as online, offers a glimpse of the trigger-points identified by today’s young men and women of science as those that influenced their ultimate and continued pursuit of science, technology, engineering, etc. Based on the data collected, the researchers found strong gender-based differences: women are much more likely than men to credit a teacher or a parent with sparking their scientific interests, while men credit their own tinkering and curiosity. (Although, in my view, the greatest influences upon a person are often those that do so without any conscious sensation or that “aha!” moment, especially in men, who are just so fond of asking for directions and instructions.) A takeaway: buy your sons LEGO and other self discovery science and tech kits and show your daughters inspirational science videos or connect them with exciting mentors and teachers. Perhaps that’s taking the study a bit too literally, but you get the idea. The point here, really, is to inspire. How, in what way, is totally dependent upon the person being inspired.

What we notice here is that passion and early (as early as elementary school) attraction to the fields of STEM are the primary carriers of the these individuals through the long and sometimes bumpy road of the scientific career.