The impact of high school science pedagogies on students' STEM career interest and on their ratings of teacher quality

Abstract

This study examines the often-heard assumption in science teaching that some pedagogies in science classrooms can serve a dual function—improve the student-perceived teacher quality and improve students' affinity to STEM professions. We asked 7507 freshmen from 40 colleges in the United States, selected in a stratified random procedure, to retrospectively report their experiences of a list of 32 pedagogies during high school biology, chemistry, and physics classes. Our survey also asked students to rate each teachers' quality and to report their Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics career interests at the beginning and end of high school. We found that teachers' chosen pedagogies, on the whole, had a stronger impact on how students rated them than on students' career interests. Interestingly, we also found considerable differences between the disciplines.