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Climate change has not been well understood by high school students in the US and the topic is often connected to misconceptions, which is especially damaging since accurate understandings of the concepts are strongly predictive of intent to do something about it. We use data from a national (US) survey of first year college students to identify high school experiences which correlate with the belief that climate change is caused by human activities. In-class coverage of climate change is less predictive of belief than time spent on science homework or science-themed extracurricular activities. These correlations suggest that simply covering climate change in class may not necessarily lead to greater belief in the scientific consensus. While deeper understanding is a worthy goal, the results indicate that, when it comes to high school science education, social factors such as the process and culture of education are also important for belief in climate change. These finding aligns with previous research about college students, which suggest student activities are more strongly correlated with student viewpoints than professor beliefs. Given the potential for curricula to become politicized these finding suggests an alternative route to achieve climate change education goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophical foundations of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)—phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography—guide its practice and use. However, this foundation is often at odds with cultural practices of disciplines that value post-positivist perspectives emphasizing that reality can be objectively known. The conflict between the philosophical underpinnings of the methodology and the cultural practices of particular disciplines can serve to limit the use and acceptance of IPA. This article highlights ways researchers can use IPA even when the underlying tenets of that methodological approach may be in conflict with disciplinary norms. As such, we have set out to explore the tensions that accompany the choice to use IPA in the context of engineering education research within the United States. As a group of engineering education researchers, we drew upon collaborative inquiry to systematically examine our use of IPA. Our exploration of using IPA, as connected to everyday practice in a discipline that takes a postpositivist stance toward knowledge generation, provides examples for the use of IPA in tension with these disciplinary norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the intersectionality of students’ race, ethnicity, and gender, to learn more about how various groups pursue sustainability goals through engineering. The lack of diversity in engineering is a persistent issue which hinders the development of more sustainable engineering solutions. Therefore, this paper investigates sustainability-related beliefs and career outcome expectations among engineering students who identify with groups underrepresented in the field. These topics are investigated using data from a national (United States) survey of students in introductory college courses. The survey sample was stratified by institution type and the number of enrolled students. Responses came from 6,772 individuals enrolled at 50 institutions. Data was analyzed, ethnicity, and gender using descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic and linear regression. The intersectional approach to analyzing the data reveal opportunities to tailor teaching and messaging for greater diversity in engineering. For example, black females are more likely than other groups to want to address food issues in their careers while white females are no different than other groups. Results like these suggest ways to excite various populations about engineering careers, which could help attract much-needed diversity of thought to engineering for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to increase the number of underrepresented groups in engineering is a moral as well as socioeconomic imperative. Women have been traditionally underrepresented in engineering in the U.S.; understanding how women identify with engineering and see a career in engineering as a means to positively impact the world may begin to address this persistent gap. This work reports on a qualitative study which gathered open-ended survey responses from 46 women enrolled in college engineering. Using the previously-developed Critical Engineering Agency (CEA) framework to understand how women identify with physics, math, and engineering, we provide insight into the ways in which women can feel they belong in engineering. Fostering this belongingness may begin to create lasting ties between women and their engineering majors and may help to retain more women in the first few years of college, when they are more prone to leave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on peers' interest in high school biology, chemistry, and physics classes on students' STEM-related career intentions and course achievement in the U.S. Students perceive a high level of interest for the subject matter from their classmates in an interest quorum. Students are more likely to choose STEM careers who experience such an interest quorum.

Higher education institutions collect information about students for countless reasons: analyzing demographics, evaluating programs, recruiting top students, and measuring learning outcomes, among others. As sustainability concerns are an increasingly central issue in many students' college selection process (Grummon 2008), there is a need to better understand students who exhibit prosustainability attitudes and behaviors-those students most interested in sustainability (MIS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]