Developing eminence in STEMM: An interview study with talent development and STEMM experts

In the present day, we need outstanding scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and medical science researchers more than ever to solve the world's most pressing issues, such as climate change, water contamination, and cyber security. Naturally, we ask the question: What does it take to develop eminence in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical science (STEMM)? To answer this question, we interviewed two relevant groups of experts: 14 talent development researchers and 14 STEMM experts. The interview questions were developed based on the theoretical framework of the Actiotope Model of Giftedness and the related educational and learning capital approach that differentiates five types of exogenous resources (educational capital) and five types of endogenous resources (learning capital) that feed into talent development toward eminence. The results show that all types of capital were regarded as important by the experts for developing eminence in STEMM. However, there were also differences. We describe the educational and learning capital that talent development researchers and STEMM experts considered to be important for talent development in STEMM, as well as the similarities and differences between the two groups

Do Implicit Theories About Ability Predict Self-Reports and Behavior-Proximal Measures of Primary School Students’ In-Class Cognitive and Metacognitive Learning Strategy Use?

Although studies show relations between implicit theories about ability (ITs) and cognitive as well as metacognitive learning strategy use, existing studies suffer from an overreliance on broad-brush self-report measures of strategy use and limited ecological validity. Moreover, studies rarely examine younger students, and research on ITs and how much students benefit from interventions on learning strategies is lacking. Therefore, we investigated in ecologically valid settings (regular classroom instruction) whether primary school students’ ITs are related to their use of cognitive strategies (text reduction strategies based on identifying a text’s main ideas) and metacognitive strategies, assessed with (a) typical self-report scales and (b) more behavior-proximal measures. We also investigated whether students’ ITs predict how much they benefit from a previously evaluated 4-week intervention on cognitive and metacognitive strategies during regular classroom instruction (i.e., how much self-report scales and behavior-proximal measures for strategy use increase over the course of the intervention). Participants were 436 German primary school students (third and fourth graders). The data were analyzed using mixed linear regression analyses. Strength of students’ incremental theory was positively related to metacognitive strategy use, but not cognitive strategy use, when measured with self-report scales. For behavior-proximal measures, strength of incremental theory was positively related to the effectiveness of students’ cognitive strategy use and their extent of strategy monitoring (one of the two metacognitive strategies examined), but not to the quality of their goal setting (the second metacognitive strategy). Unexpectedly, students with a stronger incremental theory did not benefit more from the intervention

How Mentors Think About the Attainability of Mentoring Goals: The Impact of Mentoring Type and Mentoring Context on the Anticipated Regulatory Network and Regulatory Resources of Potential Mentors for School Mentoring Programs

Research shows that trained mentors achieve better results than untrained ones. Their training should particularly address their expectations for their future mentoring. Our study involved 190 preservice teachers, potential mentors of ongoing school mentoring for primary and secondary school students of all grades. They were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2-x-2 between-subjects design of mentoring type (traditional mentoring versus e-mentoring) and mentoring context (non-pandemic versus COVID-19 pandemic). Participants assessed mentoring conducted under these four conditions in terms of its appropriateness for achieving four mentoring program targets: learning, key skills, social targets, and problem coping. Participants were also asked to assess the resources available to achieve each program target. Overall, the potential mentors considered the various conditions to be suitable for achieving the four program targets. They were particularly favorable in their assessment of the possibility for the realization of learning targets. Likewise, they assumed that sufficient resources were available to achieve the targets. However, a repeated-measures MANOVA showed that the potential mentors considered more ambitious targets to be possible in traditional mentoring than in e-mentoring and normal (i.e., pre-pandemic) contextual conditions than during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, they estimated the resources available to achieve the targets to be about the same in the four conditions. This indicates a decoupling of mentoring targets from the consideration of the resources needed to achieve them. This assumption was confirmed in correlation analyses and has implications for mentor training.This research has been funded by the Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Distinguished Academic Performance

Domain-Specificity of Educational and Learning Capital: A Study With Musical Talents

Copyright 2020 Reutlinger, Pfeiffer, Stoeger, Vialle and Ziegler. The Education and Learning Capital Approach (ELCA) has been widely used to investigate talent development. A research gap is the implicit consideration of the domain specificity of educational and learning capital. In an empirical study with 365 school students we investigated the domain specificity of the approach for the domains of school learning and learning to play a musical instrument. At the beginning of the school year, students filled out a version of the Questionnaire for Educational and Learning Capital (QELC) for both domains and also responded to other domain-related measures (self-efficacy, grades). Six weeks later, students filled out a learning diary for 1 week in which they reported their activities on an hourly basis and responded to questions concerning these activities. Based on the Sociotope Approach this procedure helped to identify times in which students actually practiced their musical instrument, times that students could potentially practice their musical instrument (objective action space), and times that students would be expected to practice their musical instrument (normative action space). Three hypotheses were tested and could be supported. First, the availability of educational and learning capital for school learning and learning an instrument differed. Second, a confirmatory factor analysis supported the factorial validity of the domain-specific capital measurements. Third, domain-congruent correlations were mostly higher than domain-incongruent correlations, i.e., the availability of educational and learning capital for school learning correlated more closely with variables related to school learning than with variables related to learning a musical instrument. Similarly, the availability of the capitals for learning a musical instrument correlated more closely with variables related to learning a musical instrument

The gender representation of women and men in the occupational areas of STEM and care work in German textbooks

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations and care work occupations are highly segregated by gender. School textbooks play an essential socializing role in determining which occupations are perceived as typically male or female. Existing research on the gender representation of STEM and care work occupations in textbooks is limited in scope. Therefore, we used quantitative text analyses in a large sample of 202 current German textbooks to examine the gender representation of STEM and care work occupations. We used collocation analysis to explore the nature of the occupational representations, focusing on agency and communion. Men were portrayed significantly more frequently than women in STEM and care work occupations. Adjectives of agency and communion occurred rarely in the collocations. Further research is required to test our findings in other cultures and to take a more differentiated look into the use of agency and communion in textbooks

Attracting and developing STEMM talent toward excellence and innovation

This article provides an overview of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical sciences (STEMM) talent development from first exposure to a STEMM domain to achieving eminence and innovation. To this end, a resource-oriented model of STEMM talent development is proposed as a framework. It includes a three-stage phase model based on Bloom (1985), with the main focus on interest development in the first stage, skill acquisition toward expertise and excellence in the second stage, and style formation toward eminence and innovation in the final stage. A literature review shows that from an educational perspective, each phase is mainly characterized by the focus that Bloom postulated. However, it is important that all three stages (i.e., interest development, skill acquisition, and style formation) occur in a stage-typical manner. To explain how these primary objectives of STEMM development can be supported through STEMM talent education, Ziegler and Stoeger's (2011) educational and learning capital framework is used in the proposed resource-based model. A literature review shows that consistent provisioning of the resources specified in the model is necessary for individuals to complete a learning pathway to STEMM eminence and innovation

Correspondence Heuristic and Filter-Empowerment Heuristic: Investigating the Reversed Gender Achievement Gap in a Sample of Secondary School Students in Saudi Arabia within the Framework of Educational and Learning Capital

The reversed gender achievement gap in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in favor of girls developed in a societal environment that still predominantly favors men. The finding illustrates how equity gaps at higher systemic levels may not translate seamlessly to lower systemic levels. We propose that this lack of correspondence between systemic levels regarding equity gaps can be explained by the fact that more exogenous learning resources (educational capital) selectively reach girls’ actiotopes, enabling them to build more effective endogenous learning resources (learning capital) and, in particular, effective action repertoires. To investigate this assumption, we introduce a filter-empowerment heuristic and contrast it with a simpler correspondence heuristic. We employ the filter-empowerment heuristic and the education and learning capital approach to investigate the reversed gender achievement gap in a sample of secondary school students in the KSA. We test four hypotheses: (a) Girls have higher academic achievement than boys. (b) Girls have more educational capital and (c) more learning capital than boys. (d) Educational and learning capital mediate the relationship between gender and academic achievement. The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 2541 ninth-grade students from 55 KSA schools. The four hypotheses were confirmed and support a filter-empowerment heuristic rather than a correspondence heuristic

Identifying the causes of underachievement: A plea for the inclusion of fine motor skills

Abstract Underachievers are children who show academic performance that is lower than what would be expected for their IQ. Previous research has investigated a number of variables that might explain underachievement and recently fine motor skills (FMS) have been implicated as playing an important role. We extend this work by exploring the influence of FMS and attention on underachievement and achievement. Fourth-grade children in Germany (n = 357, age = 10.8) were tested on measures of intelligence, attention, and FMS, and teachers were asked to report grades in mathematics. Amongst other findings, analyses indicated that underachievers had lower attention and FMS and that attention mediated the relation between FMS and maths achievement. Overall, the current findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that FMS play an important role in underachievement and are, therefore, a candidate for inclusion in the identification processes

The influences of social agents in completing a STEM degree: an examination of female graduates of selective science high schools

Background Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professions. Even the most promising female students’ interest in STEM subjects often decreases during secondary school. Using the framework of the Social Cognitive Career Theory, the present study examined the influences of social agents in female students’ persistence in STEM. Specifically, the present study used a retrospective survey investigating the influence of parental education, teachers as mentors, and peer belonging for female students’ attainment of an undergraduate degree in a STEM field for a special population—female graduates of selective science high schools (n = 1425). Furthermore, the study examined the influences of these social-agent variables on female students’ STEM choices when mediated by high school research experiences. Finally, the present study also explored the influences of these social-agent variables on female students when it came to choosing math-intensive STEM fields (n = 723). Results Findings showed that parental educational level and having STEM teachers as mentors are positively related to female students’ later attainment of a STEM degree. In addition to the direct relationship, parental educational level and having STEM teachers as mentors are also positively related to female students’ high school research participation, which is associated with a greater likelihood of their completing a STEM degree. Female students’ sense of belonging to a peer group did not correlate with their attainment of a STEM degree. When it came to choosing math-intensive STEM fields, a higher sense of peer belonging was negatively associated with obtaining a math-intensive STEM degree. Conclusions Parental education and having STEM teachers as mentors play an important role for female students’ persistence in STEM and obtaining a STEM undergraduate degree for female students in selective science high schools. However, among the female students who graduated with a STEM degree, it is less clear whether social-agent variables influenced their math-intensive vs. less-math-intensive choices. Educational implications for promoting female students’ STEM interests and careers in STEM fields are provided

Fine Motor Skills and Lexical Processing in Children and Adults

Children’s fine motor skills (FMS) link to cognitive development, however, research on their involvement in language processing, also with adults, is scarce. Lexical items are processed differently depending on the degree of sensorimotor information inherent in the words’ meanings, such as whether these imply a body-object interaction (BOI) or a body-part association (i.e., hand, arm, mouth, foot). Accordingly, three studies examined whether lexical processing was affected by FMS, BOIness, and body-part associations in children (study 1, n = 77) and adults (study 2, n = 80; study 3, n = 71). Analyses showed a differential link between FMS and lexical processing as a function of age. Whereas response latencies indicated that children’s FMS were associated with “hand” words, adults’ FMS linked to the broader concept of BOI. Findings have implications for shared activation theories positing that FMS support lexical processing