Public Understanding of Science and K-12 STEM Education Outcomes: Effects of Idaho Parents’ Orientation Toward Science on Students’ Attitudes Toward Science

Abstract

Over the past few decades, public anxiety about how people interact with science has spawned cycles of discourse across a wide range of media, public and private initiatives, and substantial research endeavors. National and international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education initiatives and research have addressed how students interact with science and pursue careers in STEM fields. Researchers concerned with adult interaction with science have focused on factors that influence how citizens gather and interpret scientific knowledge and form positions on scientific issues, applications, and/or policy in a politicized democratic milieu. Building from research on how the public interacts with science in and outside of formal education, this study focuses on attitudes toward science among students in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades and their parents. Little research to date has paired the STEM experiences of adults with their children. We find that the extent to which parents are positively oriented toward science significantly shapes their children’s attitudes toward science. Furthermore, between 7th and 10th grades, students with parents holding positive orientations toward science are more likely to sustain positive attitudes toward science. Since the foundation for most adults’ interactions with science develops in the K-12 environment, we demonstrate that the foundation, as expressed in adulthood, may directly affect the ways the next generation of students interacts with science. We offer insights into the importance of developing student learning into the social scientific research on public understanding of science and how important scientific issues of today interplay with society.

Keywords

STEM education public understanding of science school science parent attitudes toward science

Introduction

Over the past few decades, broad public anxiety about how people interact with science has spawned cycles of discourse across a wide range of media, public and private initiatives, and substantial research endeavors. National and international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education initiatives and research projects have addressed how young people, particularly students, interact with science and pursue careers in STEM fields. Meanwhile, researchers concerned with adult interaction with science have focused on the factors that influence how citizens gather and interpret scientific knowledge and form positions on scientific issues, applications, and/or policy in a participatory and politicized democratic milieu. While not always obvious, these two largely separate bodies of research examine interdependent problems, which have at least some roots in the K-12 STEM education system. The foundation for most adults’ interactions with science develops in the K-12 environment, and, as our research uncovers, that foundation, as expressed in adulthood, may directly affect the ways the next generation of students interact with science in K-12 schools.

Building on the aforementioned research concerned with how the public interacts with science in and outside of formal education, this study focuses on attitudes toward science. In adults, researchers have found that a range of social and demographic factors shape attitudes toward science, which, in turn, affect how people interact with science and how, for instance, adults think about and form a perspective on publicly controversial scientific knowledge and applications. Ongoing research on students’ interaction with science demonstrates that students’ attitudes toward science are correlated with student outcomes such as performance, interest, and student self-concept in science education and a variety of parental influences have an effect as well (Beghetto & Baxter, 2012; Brauchle, Gokhale, & Machina, 2009; George & Kaplan, 1998; Kurtek, Sampson, & Williams, 2011; Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003). Researchers have also demonstrated that parents and family influence children’s educational success and interests (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2008; Dabney, Chakraverty, & Tai, 2013; Gilmartin, Li, & Aschbacher, 2006; Harackiewicz, Rozek, Hulleman, & Hyde, 2012; Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2012). Further, we know that STEM learning trajectories are formed in junior high school with a steady “leaking” from the “pipeline” or “pathway” during high school and continuing into college (see, e.g., Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, 2009; Cannady, Greenwald, & Harris, 2014; Dewitt et al., 2013; Fouad et al., 2010; Harackiewicz et al., 2012; Osborne et al., 2003; Renninger & Hidi, 2011). If attitudes toward science affect how both adults and students interact with science, then perhaps parents’ attitudes toward science are implicated in how their children learn science in K-12. Parents’ attitudes toward science may influence attitudes toward science in their children (George & Kaplan, 1998) and such influence may explain why some students leak from the pipeline and others do not.

Those outside the pipeline who do not pursue STEM fields and become STEM professionals form the bulk of the broader public and are pivotal for implementation of and for developing the societal supports for extending science and its capacity to solve “wicked” problems facing the world today (Sturgis, 2014, p. 38). The degree to which K-12 succeeds or the ways in which it enables and cultivates an emergent culture of science greatly affects public understanding of science. How students respond to their K-12 science education sets the foundation for how they interact with science as citizens. If, for instance, they form less positive attitudes toward science in their K-12 experience, they carry that forward to their understanding as adult citizens. Further, the degree of success feeds back on itself rapidly as those it trains quickly become the adults paying property taxes, shaping school boards and policy, and voting on local school levies. They, in turn, become parents of the next generation of students engaging science in the K-12 system. Understanding the factors that influence student attitudes, and, by extension, student outcomes, then, becomes part and parcel of understanding how adults interact with science. Understanding how adults and/or parents affect K-12 STEM education and student outcomes, in turn, becomes part of understanding K-12 STEM education. If adult attitudes toward science affects their level of support of K-12 STEM education or, for another example, affects the learning of their children, the pipeline issue is exacerbated. Our research, with focus on barriers to K-12 STEM education through understanding education in broader social context unites both lines of research in looking specifically at the potential effects of parents’ attitudes toward science on their children’s STEM learning outcomes.

The findings reported here are from a multiphase project designed to explore K-12 STEM education in a broad social context, a context that involves parents, families, local adults in school districts and larger national and political trends that affect responses toward science and, by extension, science education. One phase of the project involved a statewide survey of adults in which we demonstrated the relationship between an attitudinal measure, which we called Orientation Toward Science (OTS), and a behavioral intension measure, a tendency toward supporting local K-12 STEM education (Mihelich, Sarathchandra, Hormel, Craig, & Storrs, 2015). In the current study, we explore the relationship between Parent OTS and Student Attitudes Toward Science. We examine survey data collected from students and their parents in 12 Idaho school districts and three grades (4th, 7th, and 10th). In results presented below we mainly engage with the 7th- and 10th- grade student-parent data and use fourth-grade data to provide additional insights where applicable.

Given the objectives and design of our project, we

Test the relationship between parent’s orientation toward science and their children’s attitude toward science

Compare this relationship between 7th and 10th graders as a proxy test of the change between junior high and high school students

These questions allow us to examine whether parental orientation toward science has an effect in those students who are of the age where declining interest in STEM is well documented. While many are concerned with the lack of engagement with, understanding of, or support of science among students and adults, little research has investigated how the two issues are related. Our research design offers advantages first because parents are paired directly with their children students, each with their own survey, and second because our survey of students over the three grades gives an indication of what happens as students age. This design uniquely positions our research as an exploration of an important factor in the leaky pipeline of K-12 STEM education. In comparing the effects of parents’ orientation toward science on 7th versus 10th graders, we demonstrate that parental attitudes toward science can be part of the solution for keeping students interested through and past the 10th grade.

Relevant Literature and Background

Because we sought further understanding of the social context in which science learning takes place, we selected family influence as one topic though which to test the range and influence of context. Parental and family influences have been shown to have a positive relationship with student educational outcomes, including attitude toward science (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2008; Dabney et al., 2013; Dewitt et al., 2013; George & Kaplan, 1998; Gilmartin et al., 2006; Harackiewicz et al., 2012; Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2012). Research has shown, for instance, that parental influence and “family habitus” are related to interest and achievement in science education (Archer et al., 2012b; Aschbacher et al., 2009) and that “. . . children’s aspirations and views of science careers are formed within families” as well as influenced by wider social structures (Archer et al., 2012a; Archer et al., 2012b, p. 902). Additionally, 10th grader interest in science and engineering careers was correlated with family variables in previous research (Aschbacher et al., 2009).

The research on adult interaction with science provides an important window into the possible influence of parents’ attitudes. We know from a wide range of research that adult attitudes toward science are related to a variety of variables associated with their interaction with science (Gauchat, 2012; Groffman et al., 2010; Nisbet & Goidel, 2007; Wiederhold, 2011; Wood & Vedlitz, 2007; Zia & Todd, 2010). In linking adult attitudes to K-12 educational outcomes, we have previously demonstrated that adult attitudes toward science affect their support for local K-12 STEM education, measured through intentions to support local levies (Mihelich et al., 2015). Here, we seek to extend the link between adult attitudes and K-12 STEM education by exploring the effects of parents’ orientation toward science on their children’s attitudes toward science.

In broad scope, researchers have discovered that students’ interest, engagement, and performance in science are shaped by sociodemographic factors including race/ethnicity, social class and gender (Archer et al., 2012a; DeWitt et al., 2011; Dewitt et al., 2013), student self-concept in science, nonschool science experiences (Alexander, Johnson, & Kelley, 2012; Dierking & Falk, 2010), family cultural capital (Claussen & Osborne, 2013), teacher attitudes toward science (van Aalderen-Smeets, Walma van der Molen, & Asma, 2012), peer attitudes toward science, student beliefs about science (Beghetto & Baxter, 2012), and inquiry-based pedagogy (Houseal, Abd-El-Khalick, & Destefano, 2014). Parental and family influences, as mentioned above, are also associated with children’s STEM educational outcomes.

With particular relevance to our study, researchers have found that student attitudes toward science in general and toward school science (Buck, Cook, Quigley, Eastwood, & Lucas, 2009; Kurtek et al., 2011) affect K-12 STEM education performance. In an often-cited review of the literature, Osborne et al. (2003) reached a similar conclusion as Shrigley (1990) had many years earlier that “attitude and ability scores can be expected to correlate moderately” but much is left to learn, particularly about remedying the alienation from science so many students feel over time (Osborne et al., 2003, p. 1072). Student attitudes toward science continue to prove useful as a metric for measuring the effect of one pedagogical innovation or practice or another (e.g., Brauchle et al., 2009; Carrier, 2010; Osborne et al., 2003; Weisgram & Bigler, 2007; Welch & Huffman, 2011; Wittman, 2013). Further, researchers have continued to demonstrate the effects students’ attitudes toward science have, for instance, on their performance and self-efficacy in science education (Dabney et al., 2013; DeWitt et al., 2013; Fulmer, 2014; George & Kaplan, 1998; Gilmartin, Denson, Li, Bryant, & Aschbacher, 2007; Harackiewicz et al., 2012; Vedder-Weiss & Fortus, 2012).

Few studies, however, have directly paired parent attitudes toward science with their children’s attitudes toward science. Notable exceptions exist, though those largely have not collected data through a methodical pairing of parents and students. For example, Harackiewicz et al. (2012) combined parents with students in a longitudinal design; Gilmartin et al. (2007) used responses from students about parents; and George and Kaplan (1998) used survey questions about parents with students. Authors from the ASPIRES project working with 9,000 ten- and eleven-year-old students in England used an instrument administered to students only (for instance, DeWitt et al., 2011; Dewitt et al., 2013), though they also paired qualitative data from parents with that of students (Archer et al., 2012b). Kadlec and Friedman (2007) collected focus group and telephone survey data in Kansas City and Missouri on the topic of math, science and technology education with parents, high school students and teachers though parents and high school students were not paired.

Our research complements the aims of the ASPIRES project by expanding the quantitative reach through survey methodology. Although our survey was limited to the population of one U.S. state (Idaho), within the state the sample was comprehensive. In addition, the state of Idaho provided an ideal site because of our interest in a broad learning context, including parent variables such as political orientation and religiosity, which are known to be correlated with adult attitudes toward science. Idaho is heavily slanted toward conservatism on both of these measures. If conservatism has an effect on adult attitudes toward science, and adult attitudes toward science affect student outcomes, then this sample should highlight the relationship. Our research looks specifically at the association between parental influence and a series of student outcomes including student interest in science, student attitudes toward science in general, student attitudes toward school science, and student self-concept in science. Demonstrating the effects of parent science orientation on students’ science attitudes, and thus on student learning outcomes in the context of K-12 STEM education, we illuminate a potential link between the problem of adult interaction with science and the concern for student performance in K-12 STEM education.

Data, Methods, and Measurements

Survey, Sampling Procedure, and Data Collection

Our analysis is based on surveys conducted among students and their parents in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades, in 12 districts in the state of Idaho. For student surveys, we used a nested cluster sampling design for each school district, first randomly selecting a high school, middle school, and an elementary school from each school district, followed by selecting classrooms for each grade level within the selected schools. Surveys were typically administered during English classes. Student survey data collection was conducted during the fall of 2012. Response rates for the three grade levels in the 12 school districts ranged from 65.2% to 100%. (For a detailed description of the student survey methodology and response rates, see Appendix A, Part I.)

For parent surveys, parents’ contact information was either provided by the school district or by the students themselves. In total 2,614 parents consented to participate in the study. The parent survey used a mixed-mode methodology, where parents were first contacted by telephone if we had a working number for them. Wincati software was used to field the survey and collect survey responses. At the conclusion of the calling period, a mail survey was sent out to households with addresses that (a) did not have a working phone number, (b) had a working phone number but did not respond to the telephone calls, or (c) had requested a mail survey when first contacted by phone. After completing both modes, we had 1,559 completed surveys. The final response rate was (AAPOR) 62%. The phone and mail survey data collection was conducted between January and April 2013. (For a detailed description of the parent survey methodology and response rates, see Appendix A, Part II.)

Surveys for the 7th and 10th grades consisted of the same questions, whereas the survey for 4th grade students only consisted of questions relevant to a lower grade level (for instance, questions related to college aspirations were not included in the fourth-grade survey). As a result, for much of the analysis below, we use data from the 7th and 10th grade student and parent surveys only. (See Appendices B and C for the 7th- and 10th-grade student and parent survey questionnaires.)

Variables

Student Attitudes Toward Science Measure

The main dependent variable of our study, Student Attitudes Toward Science, is a five-item composite measure. We used the results of a principal components analysis with Promax rotation with Kaiser normalization to justify creating this measure (percentage variance accounted for by the factor is approximately 35% for 7th and 10th grades). Items were reverse coded as necessary so that higher scores indicate more trusting and proscience attitudes. Respondents chose from 4-point scales indicating their level of agreement (strongly agree to strongly disagree) for all items. Specific items in the scale include

I like science.

I think learning science will help me in my daily life in the future.

I must do well in science to get into college.

I often study science with my friends.

Science is useful for solving practical problems in life.

In developing this measure, we turned to the extant literature in education on this topic.¹ While there are several instruments developed to measure student attitudes toward science, none of these instruments were practical for our purposes. Partially because of the project’s interdisciplinary nature, our survey included many questions about math, engineering and technology, in addition to science and other partners in the project requested questions specific to the practical interests of stakeholders. Thus, the length limitations of our survey did not allow for the use of a full instrument on student attitudes toward science. More important, we wanted the student attitude measure to parallel our OTS measure (Mihelich et al., 2015), which itself is consistent with the measurements used in the literature on adult attitudes toward science.

As such, our new measure of Student Attitudes Toward Science above includes several questions consistent with key constructs for attitudes toward science in the literature, and our questions parallel the range of instruments and questions used in previous studies. For instance, like Kind, Jones, and Barmby (2007) and others, we take our attitude toward science measure “as a way of mapping students’ cognitive and emotional opinions about various aspects of science” which shape their interaction with science (p. 873). We also agree that “an attitudinal scale score serves as a proxy for the latent construct it is purported to measure” (Lovelace & Brickman, 2013, p. 607). One common construct for conceptualizing attitudes, often treated as a separate variable, is “self-concept in science” or “self-efficacy” (Dewitt et al., 2013; Houseal et al., 2014; Kind et al., 2007; Kurtek et al., 2011; Owen et al., 2008). Another common differentiation of attitudes is some distinction between attitudes toward “school science” and “science in general,” the latter which often includes a measure of the “importance of science” or the benefits/costs of science (Brauchle et al., 2009; Dewitt et al., 2013; Houseal et al., 2014; Kind et al., 2007; Weinburgh & Steele, 2000). Another area differentiated within attitudes is student perspectives on various aspects of the “nature of science” such as its uncertainty, process, or content (Abd-El-Khalick, Lederman, Bell, & Schwartz, 2001; Chen, 2006; Wittman, 2013). Finally, and often overlapping with other constructs, researchers often measure some aspect of “trust” in science, which might mean trust in individual scientists and their findings or institutional trust (Chen, 2006; Gilmartin et al., 2007). Our Student Attitudes Toward Science Scale includes questions paralleling, and often identical to, the questions used to measure this range of constructs that comprise, at least in part, student attitudes. We have questions that measure “self-concept in science” (Question 1), attitudes toward school science (Questions 2-4), and attitudes toward science in general (Question 5).

Parent Orientation Toward Science Measure

In prior research on Idaho adults’ perceptions of science, we developed a composite measure that included survey items measuring “respondents’ endorsement of science as a legitimate way of knowing, trust in science, attitudes toward science and scientists, expectations about how science should function in their schools and communities, and how respondents integrate scientific knowledge into their own worldview” (Mihelich et al., 2015, p. 169). Several of those same items were also available in the parent-student surveys, and are used in our modified Parent Orientation Toward Science measure here. As such, Parent Orientation Toward Science is a six-item composite measure of parents’ views of science, developed using the results of a principal components analysis with Promax rotation with Kaiser normalization (percentage variance accounted for by the factor is approximately 32% and 34% for 7th and 10th grades, respectively). Items were reverse coded so higher scores indicate a more trusting and proscience orientation. Respondents chose from 4-point scales indicating their level of agreement (strongly agree to strongly disagree) on Items 1 through 5. Item 6 used a 4-point scale (very informed to very uninformed). (For more details on construct validity, see Mihelich et al., 2015, p. 169.) Items in the scale include

Schools should teach students about humans’ impact on global climate change.

Students should be taught how science applies to key areas such as agriculture and medicine.

Schools should teach students about evolution.

Idaho needs more scientists to help improve things for our state.

Science is a process of collecting and explaining facts, not a matter of belief.

In the area of science, how informed would you say you are generally?

Other Predictors and Control Variables

In addition to Parent Orientation Toward Science, we took into consideration several other parent variables in our regression analysis. STEM education support is an ordinal measure of how likely parents are to support local tax levies to improve STEM education in the local schools: highly unlikely = 1 to highly likely = 4. Male and female guardian’s level of education is an ordinal measure: 8th grade or less = 1 to graduate or professional degree = 7.

We measured students’ educational aspirations by asking how far in school students expect to go: I don’t expect to finish high school = 1 to continue my education after a four-year degree by going to graduate school = 6; and by asking how far they think their parents/legal guardians expect them to go: drop out of high school = 1 to continue my education after a four-year degree by going to graduate school = 6. Student self-reported science grade is measured on an ordinal scale from A to F, reverse coded, so that higher values indicate better grades. Student effort ranges from I do as little as possible = 1 to I work as hard as I can = 3. Student confidence in scientific community ranges from hardly any =1 to a great deal = 3. Student gender is a dummy variable: female = 0 and male = 1. Race too is considered as a dummy variable: non-White =0 and White = 1. Last, student cultural capital is a four-item composite measure that includes student engagement with extracurricular activities in the last 12 months: visited a museum; borrowed books from the community library; took art, music, dance or theater classes or lessons outside of school; and read books that were not required for school.

Analytical Techniques

For our main outcome variable (Student Attitudes Toward Science) and the main predictor (Parent Orientation Toward Science), we used the results of principal components analysis with Promax rotation with Kaiser normalization, and Cronbach’s alpha scores, to justify creating these scales. After examining the descriptive statistics for each of our outcome, independent, and control variables, we conducted independent-sample t tests to check for statistically significant mean differences for variables across the 7th and 10th grades. In descriptive analysis, we found that many parents were unable to rate their agreement with the statement “Idaho needs more scientists to help improve things for our state,” and responded “I don’t know.” Rather than exclude those records (80 records in the 10th-grade parent survey, 62 records in the 7th-grade parent survey), we removed that item from their orientation score, thus, using the remaining five factors to measure their orientation.

Employing mixed effects regression analyses with districts included to account for the clustered survey design, we then examined the effects of Parent Orientation Toward Science on Student Attitudes Toward Science for 7th- and 10th-grade students separately, simultaneously taking into consideration the potential effects of parents’ education, parents’ STEM education support, and students’ efforts and aspirations. Data analysis described below was conducted using State/SE 14.0.

Results

Comparisons Between 7th- and 10th-Grade Student and Parent Attitudes

Comparisons of means for main predictors and outcome variables in our study reveal that, overall, students have more favorable attitudes toward science in the 7th grade than in the 10th grade (p < .001; Table 1). However, we did not find a statistically significant difference between parents’ orientations toward science for 7th and 10th grades. Seventh-grade parents do report more STEM education support than 10th-grade parents (p <.05). In terms of student grades, efforts, and aspirations, we find that 7th-grade students report better science grades, more effort invested in school, more confidence in the scientific community, and more cultural capital, while 10th-grade students report more educational aspirations (Table 1).

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Comparisons of Means for Variables in the Study.

Variable	Seventh grade	Tenth grade	t-Test significance (two tailed)
Student attitudes toward science	2.85 (0.46)	2.54 (0.54)	p <.001
Parent orientation toward science	3.10 (0.40)	3.08 (0.39)	ns
Parent STEM education support	3.17 (0.72)	3.08 (0.76)	p <.05
Female guardians highest level of education	4.56 (1.59)	4.53 (1.60)	ns
Male guardians highest level of education	4.42 (1.79)	4.55 (1.79)	ns
Parent political orientation	3.39 (1.57)	3.24 (1.58)	ns
Parent religiosity	3.14 (1.19)	2.95 (1.30)	p < .01
Parent income	9.96 (4.74)	10.31 (4.74)	ns
Student educational aspirations	5.31 (2.09)	5.52 (1.80)	p <.05
Student perceptions of parents’ aspirations for them	5.22 (2.01)	5.33 (1.81)	ns
Student science grade	4.37 (0.81)	3.96 (1.02)	p < .001
Student effort	2.59 (0.51)	2.37 (0.54)	p < .001
Student confidence in scientific community	2.21 (.76)	2.08 (0.74)	p < .001
Student cultural capital	0.52 (.24)	0.45 (0.25)	p < .001
Student gender (male = 1)	0.49	0.48
Student race (White = 1)	0.74	0.80

Visualizing the attitude distributions by districts reveals a strong “school” effect in seventh-grade attitudes. We found that students from certain schools had very similar attitudes toward science, relative to the distribution over the entire state (Figure 1). This effect was not seen for the tenth grade where there is much higher variation in individual attitude scores.

Overall, these differences indicate that while Parent Orientation Toward Science seems to remain constant over time, student proscience attitudes decrease as they move through 7th grade to 10th grade. In fact, when we compared several science attitude items that were available across all three of our surveys (fourth grade included), we found that proscience attitudes are highest in the fourth grade and steadily decline as students move through 7th grade to 10th grade (e.g., Mean rating for “I like science” declines from 3.49, 3.18, to 2.76, respectively, from Grades 4, 7, to 10). The pattern of decline in interest and attitudes is well known and is likely partially related to a “discontinuity” between how science is encountered in elementary school—teachers with minimal science training, simple demonstrations, and minimal time to develop factual knowledge, and how students encounter science teaching in middle and high school when they are expected to build on an understanding of the nature of science and scaffold knowledge (Losh & Nzekwe, 2011). As students move to middle and high school, their lack of science knowledge and ability to successfully master scientific inquiry processes can lead to frustration, alienation, and increased disinterest (Losh & Nzekwe, 2011; Osborne et al., 2003). Further, most of these schools will only have one science teacher, so the school effect is likely a teacher effect. The “school” effect we see in our data therefore suggests that teachers, and their pedagogical approaches, have a cohort-wide effect on science attitudes in middle school. In contrast, this effect is much less apparent in the 10th-grade cohort, where we see much higher variability within schools.

Parent Orientation Toward Science as a Predictor of Student Attitudes Toward Science

In Table 2, we report results of two mixed effect models, each investigating how Parent Orientation Toward Science affect Student Attitudes Toward Science for 7th- and 10th-grade students. For seventh-grade students, the model does not reveal a statistically significant association between parent orientation and student attitudes (b = 0.05; p = .36; confidence interval [CI] = [−0.05, 0.15]). However, students who report better science grades, more confidence in the scientific community, and more cultural capital, tend to have more proscience attitudes. Similar trends for grades, confidence in the scientific community, and cultural capital are also seen in the 10th grade.

Table 2.

Multivariate Estimates of Associations With Student Attitudes; Mixed Effects Regression Models.

Predictor	7th grade	10th grade
Predictor	β estimate [95% CI]	β estimate [95% CI]
Parents orientation toward science	0.05 [−0.05, 0.15]	0.14** [0.03, 0.24]
Parents STEM education support	−0.06* [−0.11, −0.01]	0.01 [−0.05, 0.06]
Female guardians highest level of education	0.00 [−0.03, 0.03]	0.03 [−0.00, 0.06]
Male guardians highest level of education	−0.00 [−0.03, 0.02]	−0.02 [−.05, 0.01]
Student educational aspirations	0.02 [−0.00, 0.04]	0.03** [0.01, 0.06]
Student perceptions of parents’ aspirations for them	0.01 [−0.01, 0.03]	−0.01 [−0.04, 0.01]
Student science grade	0.08** [0.02, 0.12]	0.15*** [0.10, 0.19]
Student effort	0.05 [−0.03, 0.12’	0.13*** [0.06, 0.21]
Student confidence in scientific community	0.16*** [0.11, 0.22]	0.17*** [0.12, 0.22]
Student cultural capital	0.29*** [0.13, 0.46]	0.34*** [0.18, 0.49]
Student gender	0.05 [−0.01, 0.14]	0.07 [−0.01, 0.15]
Student race	−0.00 [−0.09, 0.09]	−0.07 [−0.19, 0.06]
N	454	521

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

More specifically for our study, there is a statistically significant and positive association between Parent Orientation Toward Science and Student Attitudes Toward Science for 10th grade, which we did not observe for the 7th grade (b = 0.14; p = .009; CI = [0.03, 0.24]). When parents’ proscience orientations increase, 10th-grade students tend to exhibit more favorable attitudes toward science. This finding indicates that, while parents’ orientation toward science is not a strong predictor for younger students who tend to harbor positive attitudes toward science in general, as students’ proscience attitudes decline over time, parents’ orientation begins to matter more to sustain students’ interest in science. We turn to a discussion of this finding and the overall implications of our study below.

Discussion and Implications

Broadly, our findings show that parents’ orientation toward science emerges as an important factor influencing student attitudes toward science as student interest in science begins to wane. As such, we connected two largely separate bodies of extant literature (on adult and student attitudes toward science) to shed light on how adult attitudes lay the foundation for student engagement with K-12 STEM education and potentially shape how students think about how they engage with science in adulthood. Our research design enabled this examination through the student-parent paired data we collected across 4th, 7th, and 10th grades. We also drew from and extended the STEM education literature by developing and employing a student science attitude measure and refining the OTS measure used in our previous study described in Mihelich et al. (2015). Additionally, our student attitude measure demonstrated criterion validity in correlation analysis.²

The data for our study come from a single state, Idaho, which is distinct in its strongly conservative and religious makeup when compared to neighboring states in the Northwest region of the United States. Therefore, results cannot be directly extrapolated to other regions, and further exploration is required to understand how the social context may affect these relationships elsewhere in the United States. Additionally, the findings may be subject to common weaknesses of self-reported data from surveys, such as recall errors and social desirability bias.

The conservative, religious character of Idaho, though, does make it an interesting study considering the scholarship that has found higher levels of distrust in the scientific community over time among individuals identifying as religious and conservative (e.g., Gauchat, 2012). Contrary to our expectations arising from Idaho’s largely religious and politically conservative culture, we did not observe any statistically significant associations between parents’ religiosity and political orientation with students’ attitudes toward science. As such these variables were removed from the final regression models presented here, along with total household income, which also did not show any significant effects on student attitudes. Future research may benefit from taking into consideration these potential predictors to shed light on the sociopolitical context within which the public’s attitudes toward science is formed and sustained.

K-12 public education is one common denominator in the science experience of the vast majority of citizens. Among other things, K-12 education is responsible for helping young people, future adult citizens, understand the knowledge, practice, politics, and policy implications of science. The focus of science education and policy leaders in K-12 STEM education is often primarily concerned with better cultivating future STEM professionals forming the so-called pipeline of students who will in the future generate new knowledge, ideas, and applications of STEM fields. The pipeline is challenged by the fact that U.S. students’ average science literacy score among 15-year-olds in 2012 was lower than the average science score of all developed countries (497 vs. 511) and more students perform at or below the 10% mark for all developed countries in science (National Science Board, 2016, chap. 1, p. 32). These achievement scores are correlated with the types of science classes students take during high school. Only 20% of U.S. students took an advanced science course and those who did were more likely to have a parent who had at least a master’s degree, were more likely to expect to complete an advanced degree, and were more likely to come from higher socioeconomic status families. Advanced science courses in high school enable higher performance and success in college science courses and undergraduate success in science courses prepares students to successfully complete a science major and transition to a science career (National Science Board, 2016, chap. 1, p. 48). The pipeline continues to “leak” students during college for a variety of factors, including student success in math and science courses. For example, while nearly 45% of incoming freshmen in 2014 said they intended to major in science and engineering, about half either left college or switched their major to another field (National Science Board, 2016, chap. 2, p. 43). Despite these pipeline leaks, bachelor’s degrees awarded in science and engineering have steadily increased from 2000 to 2014 with variations by sex and race/ethnicity (National Science Board, 2016, chap. 2, p. 51).

The implications of these findings not only speak to ways we may grow the pipeline of STEM professionals but also address an equally important need for a public adept at interacting with science. While the broadly accepted assumption about a dearth of young STEM professionals has come under some scrutiny (Hill, 2007; Osborne et al., 2003), the pipeline metaphor, and to a lesser extent the pathway metaphor, neglects the vast majority of citizens educated in K-12 institutions who do not become STEM professionals. If the pipeline leads to STEM careers, perhaps the metaphor of a river, broad and meandering, represents the rest of the student body who emerge from formal education with widely ranging degrees of science knowledge and diverse attitudes toward science more generally. Those outside the pipeline become the “publics” who are the objects of the “public understanding of science.” What they think about or how they react to the politics of science as citizens in turn has effects, through political and social processes, on the knowledge generation and application within fields of science. It is the non-STEM professionals who become the political mass of democratic society. It is they who occupy the battleground for policy and practice, the target of those with the power, interest and capacity to shape others’ understanding of science toward one economic or political end or another. For these reasons, understanding the effects parents’ attitudes toward science have on student attitudes toward science is paramount.

Most notable, our findings reveal that parents’ attitudes affect children’s attitudes during a crucial period in children’s engagement with science when students’ enthusiasm and self-confidence in scientific fields tend to decline. Our statistical findings suggest that parents whose orientation was more positive toward science seem to be able to sustain their children’s interest and sense of ability in science when compared to other parents and their children. What might this mean for education possibilities to enhance STEM education?

One option is to try to address parents’ attitudes, to change them, redirect them, or other similar goals. For instance, one could encourage teachers, whom parents trust by and large, to interact with parents directly, involve them in school and teaching science or perhaps teaching science through locally relevant applied issues or topics. These kinds of initiatives have been shown to make sense or cut through the antiscience biases of people as they become more familiar with and less threatened by scientific knowledge when they see its relevant application—such as when they see how it can be used to solve practical problems in their interest (e.g., Kahan, 2015).

A second, and perhaps more practical, option is to help students understand the scientific research examining public understanding of science. If parental attitudes influence student attitudes, perhaps we can mediate that effect by identifying it and looking at the science, social science, involved in interpreting the dynamics of antiscience orientations. Antiscience orientations, and the patterns which they involve, are very peculiar in the United States, one of, if not the, most scientifically and technologically advanced countries in history with one of the most extensive public education and science programs. Further, as Nisbet and Scheufele (2009) indicate, “today’s culture of ‘anti-science’” may not be something new (p. 1768). We could develop and implement a curriculum that deals directly with how people “believe,” the patterns of what they believe and do not believe, the theories about belief, and how scientists gather, analyze, and interpret the data about how citizens interact with science. Through such a curriculum, students could learn to identify their and their families’ orientation toward science and learn to sort through how beliefs shape their relationship to science inquiry and learning.

The scientific method, especially the social science methodology, can be illuminated, and we can teach students about one of the more perplexing, challenging, and impactful issues that shape and have implications on the long-term sustainability of their world. Though this stronger implementation of social science within the K-12 curriculum would require adjustments in school resources, it is attainable to a much broader range of schools and their students than some of the innovative programs that may give students experience with direct science discovery and application but, because of their expense in time and money, are only accessible to those students most likely geared for the STEM pipeline or pathway (e.g., summer camps or outdoor school fieldtrips). The advantage of incorporating social scientific methods of inquiry into K-12 learning is its relevance across all groups of students, those bound for the STEM pipeline and those who seek other pipelines valuable to society.

One of our most pressing challenges in the 21st century revolves around the various and dire impacts brought forth through climate change. Current adult generations must find and fund a response or future generations, including youth of today, will be living in a dramatically more unstable world. These challenges require we find ways to enhance how the public interacts with science and foster students’ abilities to be citizen scientists and problem solvers, no matter what career track they pursue. These sorts of challenges are increasingly the key areas within the social sciences, with an increasing number of, for instance, sociologists grappling with how to understand and involve publics in climate change (e.g., Brulle, 2013; Dunlap & Brulle, 2015; Foster, 2015). Given recent PEW research that finds that millennials are more likely to see humans’ role in the increasing rate of climate change, it seems the possibilities for improved science orientation among future parents in United States are ripe (Pew Research Center, 2015).

The relationship between adult interaction with science, one major social issue, and student underperformance in K-12 STEM education, a second major issue, is not well articulated and understood. Both issues involve how people interact with science, but we argue that how adults interact with science shapes how their children interact with science as students, in ways that could potentially reinforce future STEM attitudes as adults. Context matters, and the “problem” of public engagement or interaction with science demonstrates that K-12 education may have an obligation to address the problem, and the key may be found among nonpipeliners.

Footnotes

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The data collection for this work was supported by the Micron Foundation. However, the analysis, findings, and arguments herein are outside the scope of that funded project.

Notes

Author Biographies

John A. Mihelich is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Dakota. His research interests include religion, culture and contempoary social issues in the U.S.

Dilshani Sarathchandra is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Idaho. Her research focuses on scientific expertise, decision-making in science, and risk analysis.

Leontina Hormel is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Idaho. Her research interests include political economy and environmental justice.

Debbie Storrs is a professor of sociology and the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Dakota.

Michelle M. Wiest is an associate professor of statistics at the University of Idaho and the director of the UI Statistical Consulting Center. Her experience and research expertise are in epidemiological and biostatistical methods.

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