Members in the Media
From: Education Week

Parents Are an ‘Untapped Resource’ to Push STEM, Study Says

Education Week:

Sometimes a little effort can go a long way. A new study suggests that a fairly simple intervention with parents can translate into their teenage children getting more STEM education.

The field experiment involved sending parents two glossy brochures and the link to a website, all highlighting the value of studying STEM subjects. The result? Students from those families, on average, took nearly one semester more of science and mathematics in the last two years of high school, compared with a control group of families not exposed to this intervention.

“Parents are an untapped resource for promoting STEM motivation, and the results of our study demonstrate that a modest intervention aimed at parents can produce significant changes in their children’s academic choices,” researchers write in an article published this month in the journal Psychological Science.

The research comes at a time of growing national concern about the need to prepare more students for careers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.

Read the whole story: Education Week

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