Starting with the No Child Left Behind Act, countless efforts have been directed towards closing the achievement gap between students from different ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Most recently the interest has shifted more towards the reduction of the achievement gap on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the STEM disciplines. It 's introduced as a compound discipline where these fields are deeply intertwined in the real world and in how students learn most effectively.
Male students are more inclined to take advanced courses in mathematics and science at all levels in high school and beyond. A survey conducted by the American Association of University Women suggested a high degree of correlation between the
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Our independent variable would be the external factors that affect a student’s commitment to a degree program in their first year of college. The dependent variable would be the lack of gender equity in the number of men and women who choose to study a STEM field.
Although female students make up 54% of all university students, only a small percentage of these females study the STEM courses compared to the males. Female students account for the larger number of students enrolling into higher institutions, but there is still a very low entry into STEM courses, and this is going to bring about a decline in the total number of students entering into STEM courses in the future. According to the report Online Learning Platform Finds What It Calls a "Gender Confidence Gap" in STEM Fields women tend to suffer from low self-esteem which contributes to their lack of equal presence in the job market, lack of pay equity, and lower
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Personal variables are age, race, prior achievements, and self-conception. Environmental variables are related to home, teacher/classroom, peers, and media exposure. I highly recommend that researchers evaluate if faculty, at high school and at a university, strongly impacts students ' interest and studying habits in the undergraduate STEM field. In all fields with low gender equity the role of mentors is crucial. The lack of women in STEM fields creates a scarcity of female mentors for young women in STEM fields and therefore a lack of encouragement. An important study addressed differential teacher attention to boys and girls in the classroom.* This exhibited that a more inclusive teaching environment characterized by positive teacher interactions, is to be applied for testing higher levels of class engagement, which in turn may lead to greater gain in academic achievement for students of both