How Much Should You Study for Stem Classes Compared to Humanities and Arts

• Research
• Open Access
• Published: thirteen December 2019

Students' reasons for Stalk choices and the relationship of mathematics choice to university admission

• Jouni Pursiainenⁱ,
• Mirkka Hakola^one,
• Jarmo Rusanenⁱ &
• Hanni Muukkonenⁱ

International Journal of Stem Education volume 6, Commodity number:43 (2019) Cite this commodity

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Abstruse

Groundwork

Despite the increasing need for STEM skills, to date, the connection betwixt Stem subject choices and their touch on on students' educational pathways has not been widely studied. Focusing on the mathematics choice (basic/advanced/no mathematics), a large register dataset that covered students admitted to Finnish universities during 2013–2015 (N = 46,281) was combined with upper-secondary school matriculation examination data (Due north = 93,955) to observe out how this choice influenced the students' university admissions. This big dataset was also examined to plant the current gender distributions in unlike university degree programs from the perspective of mathematics choices. Farther, to detect out the students' reasons behind their mathematics choices, a cohort sample of 802 student responses was collected from upper-secondary schools. We also investigated the students' interests in different fields of report to establish whatsoever gender differences in them.

Results

The register information analysis suggested that in Republic of finland, students' mathematics choices had a strong influence on the university admission outcomes. For case, simply 33% of the upper-secondary school graduates took the advanced mathematics ME test in 2013–2015, nevertheless the number of those admitted to universities who had taken the advanced mathematics ME exam was 55%. Almost of the university degree programs were female dominated, yet the academy students with avant-garde mathematics were mostly male, and especially the STEM fields in the Finnish universities were male person dominated. As for the reasons behind the mathematics choices, students who chose avant-garde mathematics believed in its usefulness for their futurity studies and careers. We besides establish pregnant gender-based educational differences regarding all the study fields, with Stalk careers attracting more males than females.

Conclusion

Advanced mathematics was highly valued in Finnish universities, and many students chose advanced mathematics believing in its usefulness for their hereafter studies or careers. Yet, their further written report interests and career plans were segregated past gender. As in that location is a rising need for Stem skills, we must seek effective means to evangelize the evolving possibilities of Stem fields to students, specially girls, during the earlier years of their educations.

Introduction

Reasons for the gender gap in Stalk (science, technology, engineering, and mathematic) fields have been sought in several studies (eastward.g., Allen & Eisenhart, 2017; Chow, Eccles, & Salmela-Aro, 2012; Perez, Cromley, & Kaplan, 2014). In the The states, Wang and Degol (2016) plant half-dozen explanations for women'south underrepresentation in STEM fields: (a) cognitive ability, (b) relative cerebral strengths, (c) occupational interests or preferences, (d) lifestyle values or piece of work/family unit residuum preferences, (e) field-specific ability beliefs, and (f) gender-related stereotypes and biases. As the size and composition of the STEM workforce continuously fails to run across the need (Jang 2016; Wang & Degol, 2016), it is of import to understand the barriers and factors that influence individual education and career choices (Blotnicky, Franz-Odendaal, French & Joy, 2018).

Individual differences in cocky-efficacy beliefs can impact career choices. Social cerebral career theory (SCCT) suggests that career involvement, selection, and personal goals form a complex homo agency process that includes performance, cocky-efficacy, and result expectations (Bandura, 1986; Lent, Dark-brown, & Hackett, 1994). Further, Wang, Eccles, and Kenny (2013) suggested that the pattern of gender differences in math and exact power may result in females having a wider choice of careers in both STEM and non-Stem fields compared with males. Thus, mathematically capable individuals, who too had loftier verbal skills, were less likely to pursue STEM careers than individuals who had high math skills but moderate verbal skills. Wang et al. (2013) found that that the group with high math skills and high exact ability included more than females than males. Their study provided testify that it is non a lack of ability that causes women to pursue non-Stalk careers but rather the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also had high exact ability and thus could consider a wider range of occupations than their male peers with high math ability who were more probable to take moderate verbal power.

Students with higher mathematics self-efficacy and STEM career knowledge are more than likely to cull a Stalk career (Blotnicky et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2013). In addition, students' ain beliefs that success in science depends on exceptional talent can negatively affect their motivation to learn equally well as a lack of enjoyment and confidence (Lin-Siegler, Ahn, Chen, Fang, & Luna-Lucero, 2016; Wu, Deshler, & Fuller, 2018). Without encouragement or acceptable cognition near the educational and career opportunities that Stem skills enhance, there is a risk that students will dismiss a Stem-based career path as a potential pick for their future (Blotnicky et al. 2018). Although the gender gap in studying Stalk subjects (eastward.g., number of courses taken and performance in those courses) has narrowed in recent decades (Välijärvi & Sulkunen, 2016; Wang & Degol, 2013), females go on to exist less likely to pursue Stem careers than their male counterparts (Ceci & Williams, 2007; Hübner, Wille, Cambria, Oschatz, Nagengast, & Trautwein, 2017; Stage & Maple, 1996).

This study deals with these internationally recognized challenges to observe out how subject choices influence subsequently educational paths and careers and how 16- and 17-year-sometime students in the Oulu area define their ain choices in terms of Stalk subjects, study plans, and careers. Finland has an outstanding digital infrastructure, and its ICT sector is bigger than that of its European peers (European Committee, 2019). Especially in the Oulu area, the ICT sector has but existed for about thirty years simply has grown chop-chop, providing an increasing number of career opportunities particularly for those with STEM competencies.

In Finland, the importance of upper-secondary school subject choices is currently increasing, every bit student choice to the universities will be more heavily based on the results of the matriculation examination in the future. Past agreement the reasons behind those choices, we can discover the existing gaps in our educational activity organisation and develop ways for education to assist youngsters in seeing the new, growing STEM opportunities and to encounter the demands of the hereafter.

Gender gap in studying Stem narrows, yet remains in Stem work fields

Dasgupta and Stout (2014) investigated why the shortage of women in Stem careers remains stark. Their research points to different obstacles particularly relating to three developmental periods: (a) childhood and boyhood, (b) emerging machismo, and (c) young-to-centre machismo. In their article, Dasgupta and Stout describe how specific learning environments, peer relations, and family characteristics become obstacles to Stalk interest, accomplishment, and persistence in each period. They discovered some key obstacles: (one) in childhood and adolescence, masculine stereotypes most Stalk, parents' expectations of daughters, peer norms, and a lack of fit with personal goals brand girls movement abroad from STEM fields; (2) in emerging adulthood, feeling like a misfit in Stem classes, being vastly outnumbered past male person peers, and lacking female role models brand women avoid STEM majors or leave prematurely; and (iii) in early to mid-machismo, subtle gender bias in hiring and promotion, biased evaluation of scientific work, non-inclusive department climates, juggling work/family responsibilities, and difficulty returning afterward a family-related intermission undermine the retention of women in STEM. To remove these obstacles, Dasgupta and Stout (2014) recommend prove-based programs and policies be implemented during each of these developmental periods.

The scale and variability of gender differences in vocational interests have been examined, e.g., by Kingdom of the netherlands's (1997) RIASEC (realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional) theory of careers that explain what personal and environmental characteristics pb to satisfying career decisions, what personal and environmental characteristics lead to stability and change in the kind and level of work a person performs over time, and what are the well-nigh constructive methods for providing aid to people with career problems. His theory allows us to predict the outcome of person-environment interactions and provides explanations for those previous key questions (Holland, 1997). Su, Rounds, and Armstrong (2009) studied vocational interests and advise that men adopt working with things and women prefer working with people. Indeed, to be engaged in studying STEM subjects, students need to have high levels of involvement, skills, and want for challenges (Wang & Degol, 2017, Linnansaari et al., 2015). Students' situational interest in science lessons is not as uniform as in other lessons, and Linnansaari et al. (2015) suggest that girls tended to be interested in life scientific discipline lessons and uninterested in physical science lessons, and in dissimilarity, boys are highly interested in physical science topics just not life sciences. For example, in previous studies, physics was considered uninteresting because it was considered as difficult, irrelevant, and deadening past some students, especially girls (Williams, Stanisstrect, Spall, Boyes, & Dickson, 2003).

Science and STEM identity has a complex differential part in supporting students' optional science choices by gender, and Stalk identity may be associated with academic performance and flourishing in undergraduate physics courses at the end of the term, especially for women (Seyranian et al., 2018; Vincent-Ruz & Schunn, 2018). In mathematical problem solving, the role of cocky-efficacy beliefs and the nature of science identity has besides been widely investigated (Pajares & Miller, 1994; Pajares & Urdan, 2006; Vincent-Ruz & Schunn 2018; Zeldin & Pajares, 2000). In their longitudinal study, Parker, Marsh, Ciarrochi, Marshall, and Abduljabbar (2014) found (a) a stiff human relationship between achievement, self-efficacy, and self-concept in mathematics at age xv; (b) both cocky-concept and self-efficacy being independent and similarly strong predictors of tertiary archway ranks at the terminate of high school; (c) math self-efficacy as a significant predictor of academy entry simply math cocky-concept was non; and (d) math cocky-concept as a significant predictor of undertaking post-school studies in science, engineering science, engineering, or math, but math cocky-efficacy was non.

The impact of teaching STEM subjects has been studied, e.one thousand., past Bottia, Stearns, Mickelson, Moller, and Valentino (2015). They suggest that although the proportion of female math and scientific discipline teachers at school had no impact on male students, it had a powerful upshot on female person students' likelihood of declaring and graduating with a STEM degree, and the effects were largest for female students with the highest math skills (Bottia et al., 2015).

Factors impacting students' decisions in subject field option

There are many factors that have an touch on on the subject area choices that students make. Palmer, Burke, and Aubusson (2017) used a best-worst scaling (BWS) survey to investigate the relative importance of factors idea to touch on students' field of study selection decisions. According to their findings, students ranked enjoyment, interest and ability, and perceived need in their future report or career plans every bit the nearly important factors in both choosing and rejecting subjects. They considered advice from teachers, parents, or peers to be relatively less important. Co-ordinate to several studies, enhancing students' enjoyment, involvement, and perceptions of their ability in science, and their attitude towards information technology, equally well as increasing student perceptions of the value of scientific discipline in a future career may outcome in more students studying scientific discipline at school (Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003; Palmer et al., 2017).

Another important consequence is the quality of STEM didactics where the instructor's role is essential. Slavit, Nelson, and Lesseig (2016) suggest that a teacher's role is a complex mixture of learner, risk-taker, inquirer, curriculum designer, negotiator, collaborator, and teacher. It is of import to sympathize teachers' own behavior and perceptions related to Stalk talent development. According to Margot and Kettler (2019), teachers with increased confidence in teaching Stalk would likely exist more effective at integrating STEM activities, and increased confidence leads to better performance during instruction, which leads to gains in student learning.

Case Finland

The Program for International Pupil Assessments (PISA) conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-performance and Development (OECD) has kept Finland among the highest-ranking countries in the globe in pedagogy since 2001. Nevertheless, recent PISA scores present an ambivalent message. On the one hand, Finland is withal a peak-ranking country in education. On the other, a subtract in learning outcomes, observed for more than x years, has leveled off in reading literacy and slowed down in mathematical literacy just all the same remains a concern. These concerns extend to the future of basic didactics, as the boilerplate trend in all three domains has been failing since 2009 (Välijärvi & Sulkunen, 2016). The PISA 2015 survey showed that the number of poor performers in science was growing, and the number of top performers was failing in Finland, especially among boys, and that regional equity was deteriorating. The number of Finnish students who performed poorly in science had nearly tripled, and the number of top performers had dropped by most i tertiary. Altogether, 65 percent of the students who performed poorly in science too did poorly in mathematics and reading. Of these, two thirds were boys (Ministry of Didactics and Civilization, 2016).

According to the new regime program in Finland, a national goal is to increment the number of highly educated people in the youth population to attain more than 50% (Finnish Regime, 2019). Higher STEM identification may be associated with college academic achievement (Seyranian et al., 2018), yet STEM subjects or fields such as ICT (Castaño & Webster 2011) are not attracting enough students, and the decreasing number of students in science learning has been recognized equally a national problem (Linnansaari, Viljaranta, Lavonen, Schneider, & Salmela-Aro, 2015). Republic of finland provides many career opportunities especially for people with Stem competencies. Equally an example, in 2014, The World Economic Forum in their Global Information technology Report (GITR) ranked Finland as number one for its outstanding digital infrastructure for the second consecutive yr (Bilbao-Osorio, Dutta, & Lanvin, 2014). The successes in the digital fields were largely based on STEM competencies, but every bit in many other countries, Republic of finland is barely getting enough students with sufficient skills in mathematics and scientific discipline.

Electric current study

Research questions

To determine how mathematics option related to the students' academy admissions, we combined two large national datasets. Based on the combined register dataset, we examined:

1. 1)

   How students' mathematics choices related to the university admissions and to the student distribution in dissimilar degree programs?

2. 2)

   From the perspective of mathematics choices, what was the gender distribution among bachelor'southward degree graduates in different degree programs?

Based on a accomplice sample of one metropolis'due south first-year upper-secondary school students' responses, we as well investigated:

1. 3)

   What were the reasons that students chose bones or advanced mathematics during the first year of their studies?

2. iv)

   Which further study fields were students interested in during the beginning year of their upper-secondary school studies and what gender-based differences were found in the interest?

Methods

Setting of the study: education organization in Finland

In Finland, there are five.v million inhabitants, of which ii.8 million are female. Approximately two million are wage and bacon earners, and 1.iii million children and youngsters are students. The number of high educational qualifications achieved in 2015 from universities of engineering science was 26,175 and from research universities was 32,718 degrees (Statistics Finland, 2017). Education is complimentary of charge for all, providing an equal basis for education. The Finnish educational activity system consists of:

1. 1)

   Early babyhood pedagogy and care before compulsory pedagogy begins.

2. two)

   Pre-primary instruction for children in the year preceding the beginning of compulsory education.

3. 3)

   Nine-year compulsory bones education (comprehensive school).

4. 4)

   Upper-secondary instruction (general upper-secondary education or vocational teaching).

5. 5)

   Higher didactics (universities or universities of practical sciences).

6. half dozen)

   Furthermore, adult education is available at all levels. (Ministry of Education and Culture 2017; Finnish Ministry building of Education and Culture 2017).

General upper-secondary education

After the 9-year compulsory basic education, schoolhouse-leavers opt for full general or vocational upper-secondary education. Both forms unremarkably accept 3 years and provide eligibility for college education. More than than 90 percent of the relevant historic period group starts general or vocational upper-secondary studies immediately later basic education. There are no national tests in the bones education stage (ages 7–xv), and if students decide to continue their studies in upper-secondary teaching, a national exam, the Matriculation Examination (ME), takes place at the end of their studies (age 19). The tests are assessed first by the upper-secondary school teachers and and so past assessors, who are members or associate members of the Matriculation Examination Board. Every year, approximately 30,000 candidates take the exam, with 6% of the candidates failing the exam. The examination consists of four compulsory tests and additional optional tests. The compulsory tests are the candidate's mother tongue, together with 3 other tests selected from four options, which are the second national language (advanced/intermediate level), a foreign language (advanced/basic level), mathematics (avant-garde/bones level), and i test in the general studies battery of tests, sciences and humanities (Britschgi, 2014).

The Finnish National Cadre Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools was renewed in 2016, and within the new curriculum, in that location were some changes regarding mathematics studies. Previously, students had to choose between bones or advanced mathematics before entering upper-secondary school, but at present the selection is made during the first year. The purpose of this renewal was to raise students' interest in advanced mathematics by giving some insights during the offset yr of their studies about advanced mathematics advantages.

Participants

This written report used combined register data, including (ane) students who were admitted to Finnish universities during 2013–2015 (N = 46,281) and (2) data of students who took the upper-secondary school Matriculation Examination (ME) (North = 93,955) during the same years, 2013–2015. This dataset had 46,281 entries representing 43,639 private persons, of which 55% were female. Upper-secondary school graduates are usually 19 years old, but university applicants tin can be older. Their ages were, however, not available in the register data.

In addition, the participants of this study included students who completed the questionnaire. The questionnaire data was nerveless with an online survey of showtime-twelvemonth upper-secondary schoolhouse students. This data represented a total of 1,539 offset-yr upper-secondary schoolhouse students from the Oulu area (age xvi). Of them, 802 students responded to the online survey, providing a response rate of 52.1%. The gender distribution of the participants was 40% male and lx% female.

Data collection

The original register data , including all the students admitted to Finnish universities during 2006–2016, was collected from the Finnish universities past CSC, the IT Eye for Science Ltd. This written report used the data regarding the years 2013–2015 (Northward = 46,281). The Matriculation Examination data (N = 93,955) was nerveless past the Matriculation Exam Lath of Finland.

The questionnaire data (N = 802) was collected with the Webropol online survey tool, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data about students' bailiwick choices, future study aspirations, and career plans. The survey was carried out in the spring semester 2017 during school course hours under teacher supervision. In total, the questionnaire included several question points, and this research focused on those questions regarding mathematics choices and study aspirations. These questions were presented in the questionnaire equally follows:

1. 1)

   Please go on the applicable sentences that concern your own choice of mathematics: (open-concluded questions)

   I chose advanced mathematics, because…

   I did not choose advanced mathematics, considering …

   I did not cull basic mathematics, because …

   I chose basic mathematics, because…

2. ii)

   I am interested in the following study fields:

(Likert scale, i–5, from one = not interested to 5 = very interested)

Arts and Culture

Humanities

Social Sciences

Economics, Administration, Constabulary

Natural Sciences

Information Applied science, IT Communication

Engineering

Agriculture, Forestry

Medicine

Health and wellbeing

Service Sector

Education

Data analysis

Register data

Regarding the first and 2nd research questions, the combined register information was examined and the research units concerning students with no corresponding ME results (altogether eight,073 research units) were removed. One part of this missing data stems from upper-secondary school graduates from the years earlier 2006, when the structure of the examination was different. The data, however, did not comprise information on the year when the ME was taken. Students admitted by entrance exam and without completing the ME (e.g., with a background in vocational schools) also belonged to this group.

Altogether 2,563 duplicates (having the aforementioned personal ID) were removed from the annals information. However, multiple entries on the same student indicating different degree programs were not removed. Since the focus of this report was on educatee admission, it was important to count every entry to a caste program, regardless of any previous or later on choices of the applicant.

Questionnaire information

Regarding the third and fourth enquiry questions, the questionnaire data (N = 802) was based on a accomplice sample of sixteen-year-old upper-secondary school pupil responses. Nosotros investigated what kinds of reasons students gave for choosing bones or advanced mathematics and if there were gender differences in students' mathematics choices.

The analysis of students' reasons began by studying the students' responses given to the open-ended question. After this, thematic categories were formed, and each response was individually placed into one of these reason categories, post-obit the Palmer et al. (2017) all-time-worst Likert scaling (BWS) system. In their study, Palmer et al. used BWS-Choose and BWS-Refuse subject selection aspect argument pairs that were grouped equally "Advice, Enjoyment and Interest, Logistics, Power (marks), Subject characteristics, Instruction, and Usefulness." This grouping was adaptable for our analysis, since the original researchers similarly examined the reasons why school students chose and rejected science. In this study, the themes plant among students' answers to open-ended questions were thematically categorized into five reason categories: (one) Usefulness (two) Enjoyment and Interest (3) Logistics, (4) Self-efficacy, Ability, and Competence, and (v) Advice, Didactics, and Other. The "subject field characteristics" was left out, every bit we focused only on one subject choice. Within one open up-ended response, a student frequently gave multiple reasons behind his or her mathematics option, therefore, one response had to be divided into multiple units of assay. The mutually sectional reason categories are described in Table 1, forth with examples of the students' reasons for choosing or rejecting advanced or basic mathematics.

Table 1 Examples of students' reasons for choosing or rejecting mathematics

Total size table

To examine inter-coder reliability, two independent raters categorized ten% of the qualitative data. The kappa coefficient of 0.753 (Cohen'south kappa) was statistically different from 0, suggesting that the two independent ratings were largely similar. The reason categories are described in Table 1.

To examine the differences between females and males in reasons for choosing or rejecting advanced and basic mathematics, we used Fisher's verbal test, which is similar to the chi-squared (χ2) examination only performs amend for imbalanced distributions and distributions with minor expected values. Regarding the question about students' involvement towards the study fields, the Likert-calibration responses were analyzed with a t-test to examine similarities of female and male interests.

Results

The results showed that the student admission process of Finnish universities significantly appreciates advanced mathematics. Simply 33% of the upper-secondary school graduates took the advanced mathematics test in the ME in 2013–2015. The per centum of all students admitted to the universities who took the avant-garde mathematics examination in the ME was 55%. Furthermore, our data suggests that more than 80% of the upper-secondary school students/university applicants with avant-garde mathematics gain admission to the universities. In fact, the showtime-yr university students in our information with avant-garde mathematics (25,738) represented as much as 83% of the upper-secondary schoolhouse graduates with avant-garde mathematics (30,905) during the same 3-yr menstruation, 2013–2015.

The significance of avant-garde mathematics in the different university degree programs tin can be seen in Fig. i and Table 2. Most of the degree programs had higher percentages in advanced mathematics than the overall pct in the ME (33%), and all were higher than 23%. This reflects a state of affairs where the needs of the Finnish universities can inappreciably exist met by mathematically skilled upper-secondary school graduates. Every bit seen in Table two, Medicine, Dentistry, and Veterinary Medicine attracted high numbers of applicants and received loftier percentages of students with advanced mathematics (90%, 83%, and 83%). Even so, Technology (seven,095) and Natural Sciences (half-dozen,324) dominated the student numbers, having also high percentages for advanced mathematics. Either of these numbers was higher than the corresponding numbers for the remaining 18 degree-offering programs. Humanities and Education take relatively loftier numbers of students with advanced mathematics, fifty-fifty though the percentages were low, 24% and 28%, respectively, compared with their totals.

Fig. 1

Academy students in different degree programs with advanced, basic or no mathematics in ME test

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Table 2 Mathematics and gender distribution in unlike academy degree programs 2013–2015

Total size table

About of the degree programs were female dominated (Table 2) and so as well was the matriculation test itself, with 59% females in 2013–2015. While 56% of all academy students were female person, university students with advanced mathematics were mostly male with simply 44% being female students. Bones (63%) and No mathematics (79%) were clearly female dominated. In the unlike academy degree programs, Technology had only 22% female person students, Economical Sciences 41%, and Natural Sciences 45%, whereas most of the other programs were conspicuously (> 60%) female dominated.

In Fig. one, Visual Arts, Theatre, Arts, Musicology, and Trip the light fantastic toe have been merged into Arts Combined. Of the upper-secondary school graduates, 46% had taken the bones mathematics examination in the ME exam, but in the universities, their percentage was as depression as 30%. The highest numbers (Fig. 1) can be seen in Economic Sciences, Instruction, and Humanities (2,758, 2,572, and 2,396, respectively), which as well had loftier percentages for Basic Math (in Tabular array 2, 40–49%). Only in Education and Administrative Sciences (49% and 47%) were the percentages of Bones Math higher than in the ME test (46%). Technology and Medicine were dominated by Avant-garde Math, and the Bones Math student numbers were very low. Basic Math was female-dominated (64% female), only in Technology (32% female), Economic Sciences (42% female), Scientific discipline (47% female), and Physical Teaching (48% female person), the students with Basic Math in the ME exam were in a bulk.

Most 21% of the upper-secondary school graduates in the ME information had not taken a mathematics test at all. The weight of this No Math group was 15% among the admitted students. This group was 79% female person dominated, which was also reflected in different disciplines (Tabular array 2). Understandably, there were some degree programs, similar Engineering science (31 out of 7,321), where the number of No Math students was very depression. The No Math students were relatively abundant in Education (24%), which was too a highly female-dominated caste program (84%). This may reverberate low motivation or even a dislike for mathematics amidst education students, well-nigh of whom become teachers at unlike school and early on childhood education levels. There is no axiomatic reason for high No Math numbers in Political Science (30%), Social Scientific discipline (29%), and Administrative Scientific discipline (25%).

The third inquiry question addresses what kinds of reasons students gave for choosing basic or avant-garde mathematics based on the qualitative data from the survey. In full, 1,601 answers were given to the open-ended questions. Their distribution in the reason categories based on choosing or rejecting advanced or basic mathematics is presented in Table 3.

Table 3 The upper-secondary school students' reasons for choosing or rejecting mathematics

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Co-ordinate to the students' responses, the main reason for choosing advanced mathematics was its usefulness (N = 359). Many students replied that they believed Advanced Math opens more options for their future professions or places of study, although during the first semester of upper-secondary school, many did not have a clear view of their future studies or career plans. Those who had a clear career programme towards fields that demand avant-garde mathematics skills were clearly aware of the usefulness of the discipline. For example, "I assume that by studying it [Advanced Math] I volition take a ameliorate chance to enter the professions that are improve paid. I too know that I demand information technology to enter medical school" and "I don't know my hereafter profession, then I chose advanced mathematics as I don't want to dominion out whatsoever options." Another reason for choosing advanced math was enjoyment and involvement (N = 119). Those who enjoyed mathematics wanted to practice more. Many students reported that they wanted to challenge themselves and that solving problems was enjoyable. For example, "I enjoy mathematics and want to challenge myself with it" and "I want to learn more mathematics and accept new challenges, and I enjoy solving problems." The third most named reason for choosing advanced mathematics was self-efficacy, ability, and competence (North = 54). Many found that they had skills and competences in mathematics, and during their previous studies, they had received good marks in mathematics. For example, "I want to learn mathematics as much as possible, as I am skilled in information technology" and "I have previously received good marks in mathematics."

Among the upper-secondary school students in Oulu, merely a very few students mentioned communication from parents or peers or instruction style or quality as important factors when choosing advanced mathematics.

Some students described rejecting advanced mathematics (N = 58) because they did not find the discipline necessary or useful for their future field of written report or work. Specially, females (Due north = 93) versus males (Northward = 45) responded that they rejected advanced mathematics for a lack of interest and competence. The almost reported reason for choosing basic mathematics (N = 111) was self-efficacy, ability, and competence, and many of these respondents reported they did not feel they were "able to brand it" in the avant-garde mathematics form.

Students often explained rejecting basic mathematics (N = 231) with reasons similar to those for choosing advanced mathematics; they wanted to proceed more than written report and career options open by selecting advanced mathematics.

When nosotros compared female and male responses, at that place were evident differences in between the ii. Females reported more reasons (N = 127) than males (N = 4) related to enjoyment and interest for rejecting avant-garde mathematics and cocky-efficacy, ability, and competence (females, North = 93; males, North = 45). The aforementioned pattern was also axiomatic in the responses for choosing basic mathematics.

Regarding the reasons for upper-secondary school students choosing or rejecting mathematics, we used Fisher's exact test for finding out if there were gender-related differences. Fisher's verbal exam (2-manner) indicated that there were no significant gender-related differences in reasons for choosing advanced mathematics (p = 0.153). However, regarding rejecting avant-garde mathematics (p < 0.001), choosing basic mathematics (p < 0.01), and rejecting bones mathematics (p < 0.05), the Fisher's test indicated that there were significant gender-related differences in the reasons students provided for their choices.

Finally, students rated their interest in the provided study fields (come across Table 4). In the questionnaire, students were asked to rate their interest towards the study fields of college education on a scale of ane–5. Health and wellbeing, Humanities Service Sector, Education, and Arts and Culture attracted more females than males. Assessing with the t-examination, we found statistically meaning differences regarding every field of report. Peculiarly, in terms of It/It Advice and Engineering, females indicated significantly less interest towards these fields compared to males. Vice versa, towards Health and wellbeing and Education study fields, males had significantly less interest.

Table 4 Students' involvement towards study fields

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Give-and-take

Regarding the question of how students' mathematics option affects their admission to university caste programs, information technology is evident that the pick of mathematics appears as a meaning divider of Finnish students' educational pathways. Secondary school graduates who completed the advanced mathematics exam had very practiced chances to be admitted to the universities. About 83% of the secondary school graduates who completed the advanced mathematics test were eventually admitted to the universities in 2013–2015. This can be ended past direct comparison of the numbers of avant-garde mathematics in the register data (an annual average of 8,926) and the matriculation examination information (an annual average 10,302). Finer, 83% was very shut to all, since our data did not represent all the new students in the universities during those years, and many secondary school graduates were besides aiming to study at the universities of applied sciences. All the degree programs appreciated mathematical skills, and some of them had problems with pupil admissions. These bug were especially related to Applied science and Science, where the need for mathematical skills was very loftier.

Regarding the students' reasons behind their mathematics choices between basic or advanced, there were some differences between female and male respondents and their given reasons. Compared to males, females often reported lack of self-efficacy, power, and competence towards mathematics studies as reasons for non selecting advanced mathematics, respective to the findings of several prior studies (Ceci & Williams, 2007; Dasgupta & Stout, 2014; Hübner et al., 2017; Phase & Maple, 1996). Nonetheless, the majority of both genders acknowledged the value of the subject at the age of sixteen, during their first twelvemonth of studies in upper-secondary school. Withal, many of these students tended to move to basic mathematics studies during the ensuing two–iii years. Amid students taking function in the online survey, every bit many every bit 65% selected advanced mathematics during the first years but were already hesitating: "I desire to try information technology [advanced mathematics] out first" and "It is possible to drop out from advanced and go to basic mathematics." Indeed, moving from challenging, time-consuming advanced mathematics (14 courses) to nuts (9 courses) was more than likely than the other way effectually.

This study shows that gender differences were especially significant in students' interest towards different fields of report. In the cohort sample, males were interested in It, It Communication, and Engineering merely showed less interest towards Health and Wellbeing and Education than their female counterparts. This result is in line with a previous study (Su et al., 2009) that found men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, also raising questions well-nigh Stalk identity as studied past Seyranian et al. (2018).

On the limitations of this written report, from the annals data, we were able to investigate only the bug regarding students' gender. The qualitative information might be somewhat influenced by respondents' gender; males tended to provide shorter responses compared to the females. In time to come studies, these factors may need to be too considered.

Conclusions

The current study investigated the connection betwixt Stem field of study choice, specially the pick of mathematics, conducted in upper-secondary school and their relation to academy admissions. Further, nosotros examined the gender distribution in different university degree programs from the perspective of the mathematics choice for finding out in which programs students with advanced, basic, or no mathematics finish up within the universities. Next, we analyzed the big dataset to explore what is the gender distribution in different academy degree programs covering all the universities in Finland. Finally, for finding out the students' reasons behind the mathematics choices, nosotros collected a cohort sample of 802 students from upper-secondary schools to investigate the students' involvement in different fields of written report to establish the existing gender differences in them.

These results evidence that advanced mathematics was highly valued in Finnish universities. Co-ordinate to our accomplice sample, the bulk of students that chose studies in advanced mathematics believed in its usefulness for their future studies or career. Yet, although the Finnish girls were the topmost mathematics performers in the world (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016), we found that their further study interests were significantly segregated by gender, neglecting the vast possibilities of Stalk careers. Adding to the Stalk identity and gender study findings of Seyranian et al. (2018), careful attention must be paid to students' physical and social learning environments which may send cues about who belongs in or may succeed in STEM fields.

The foundation for mathematics and involvement towards Stalk is congenital during the early on years of education. Blotnicky, Franz-Odendaal, French, and Joy (2018) have recognized a demand to improve admission to noesis which facilitates students' understanding of STEM careers and the nature of Stem piece of work. Co-ordinate to Cannady et al. (2017), one-size-fits-all policies for broadening participation in the STEM workforce are unlikely to be successful, just programs that are designed to generate wonder and fascination with Stalk content may exist successful in alluring more girls (Cannady et al., 2017).

Recently, research has focused on identifying the biological and sociocultural factors for the divergence in gender abilities, interests, and career choices. Wang and Degol (2016) concluded that for reducing the gender gap in STEM, attention should be given to address the contributory cognitive, motivational, and sociocultural factors, primarily by maximizing the number of career options that women perceive every bit attainable and compatible with their abilities, preferences, and goals. Otherwise, large numbers of mathematically talented females volition continue to slip through the cracks when their choices are restricted by cultural barriers, gender stereotypes, or misinformation.

In Finland, students make bailiwick choices that tin can decisively touch their futures at the age of 16 or even earlier. Therefore, it would be essential to seek new, more effective means and means to deliver information during their early on years most relatively new careers such as ICT (Information and advice technologies). Equally social cognitive career theory (Lent et al., 1994) suggests, career involvement, option, and personal goals class a complex human agency procedure that includes performance, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations. Further, Seyranian et al. (2018) studied interventions that strengthen Stalk identification for women and suggested that these interventions may bespeak one promising approach to reduce gender disparities. Currently, in Oulu, new STEM learning environments are evolving in close cooperation with educators and ICT companies. It is important to notice if these types of new learning environments, out-of-school time science activities (Dabney et al. 2012), or advisedly structured Stalk interventions can actually aid girls' STEM identities to flourish and spark boys' interests towards Stem subjects. We advise farther inquiry to find out if such deportment can provide effective means to motivate youth towards Stem pathways and subjects and also to help them see the constantly evolving possibilities of future STEM careers.

Availability of data and materials

The questionnaire information were collected mostly from minor aged (16–17-year-erstwhile) students with consent of confidentiality and therefore cannot be shared. The register datasets were provided to the University of Oulu for research purposes under strict status of not sharing them without permission from the CSC, the other Finnish Universities involved, as well every bit the Matriculation Examination Board. For further information almost the availability of the register data, delight contact the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

BWS:

All-time-worst scaling

ICT

Information and communication technology

ME

Matriculation test

OECD

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

PISA

The Program for International Student Assessment

STEM

Scientific discipline, technology, engineering science, and mathematics

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Acknowledgements

The authors give thanks the students, student counselors, teachers, and principals of Oulu upper secondary schools, likewise the staff of the Department of Education and civilization of Oulu, for giving their time and back up for this study. We are grateful to the Matriculation Examination Lath and the CSC for opening their educatee registers for this enquiry. We also owe a debt of gratitude to every Finnish enquiry university that kindly supported our research by giving the states their student selection information for research purposes.

Funding

The authors are grateful for receiving funding for this research from the Academy of Oulu, the Adult Education Allowance of Republic of finland, and from the Oulu Academy project regarding student admissions, funded by the Ministry building of Education and Culture .

Author information

Affiliations

1. Faculty of Didactics, Academy of Oulu, FI-90014, Oulu, Republic of finland

   Satu Kaleva, Jouni Pursiainen, Mirkka Hakola, Jarmo Rusanen & Hanni Muukkonen

Contributions

Satu Kaleva nerveless the cohort sample, carried out the analysis and drafted the manuscript together with Hanni Muukkonen and Jouni Pursiainen. Jouni Pursiainen and Jarmo Rusanen nerveless the annals datasets, Mirkka Hakola and Jouni Pursiainen analyzed the data and Jouni Pursiainen contributed on writing the data analysis of the quantitative information. Hanni Muukkonen and Jouni Pursiainen provided feedback on the full manuscript and participated in the study'south conceptualization, design, and coordination conducted by Satu Kaleva. All writers have approved the final manuscript.

Authors' information

Satu Kaleva is a doctoral pupil at the University of Oulu in the Section of Education. She has worked for several years in the development projects of education, and her inquiry interest is on developing educational pathways for improving gender and socio-economic disinterestedness in Stalk fields, and in schoolhouse and piece of work life cooperation for enhancing students' futurity skills.

Jouni Pursiainen is professor in Chemistry in Oulu Academy also leads the STEM eye of Oulu University. He is interested in the written report paths from upper secondary school to the universities, particularly the effect of subject field choices in the matriculation examination.

Mirkka Hakola is a full time Release Managing director at Empower IM but also a graduate student at the Academy of Oulu in the Department of Chemistry. Her master theses research concentrated in finding the background factors that are influencing student acceptance process. She has participated in the development projects of education.

Jarmo Rusanen is a professor emeritus, geoinformatics, at the Geography Research Unit, University of Oulu. His enquiry has been focused always on register based data, like matriculation test in this report.

Hanni Muukkonen is Professor in Educational Psychology at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her inquiry areas include collaborative learning, knowledge creation, learning analytics and methodological evolution. To study learning processes and pedagogical pattern, she has been involved in and atomic number 82 several large scale international educational technology development projects carried out in multidisciplinary collaboration.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Satu Kaleva.

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This enquiry was canonical by the City of Oulu Department of Education and Culture. All students in this study provided consent prior to written report participation.

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The authors had no competing interests.

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Kaleva, South., Pursiainen, J., Hakola, K. et al. Students' reasons for STEM choices and the relationship of mathematics pick to university admission. IJ STEM Ed 6, 43 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-019-0196-x

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• Received: 20 June 2019

• Accustomed: 14 Nov 2019

• Published: 13 December 2019

• DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-019-0196-x

Keywords

• Upper-secondary school students' mathematical option
• Stalk subjects
• STEM fields
• Stem careers
• Gender segregation in disciplines
• Mathematics pick
• Academy admissions
• Gender gap in STEM

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