Abstract
Prior research suggests that students endorsing a science identity are more likely to participate in optional science experiences and choose STEM careers. Science identity is a topical identity, which refers to an identity related to a topic rather than a social or cultural group. However, studies of topical identities typically examine them in isolation. The current study identified typically occurring combinations of topical identities as identity complexes to determine whether science identity would tend to occur within STEM-only complexes or together within larger topical identity complexes. Over 1200 urban public-school students in 6th, 7th, and 9th grades from two different regions in the USA completed surveys asking about their topical identities, choice preferences, and optional science experiences. Latent class analyses revealed that students often endorse science identities in the context of other unrelated identities like athletic and artistic identities. Further, the frequency (overall and relative to each other) of the two high-science identity complexes varied substantially by gender, ethnicity, and grade. These patterns were not simple reflects of the commonly observed overall rates of science identity by demographics. Further, students in topical complexes with high science identity still had high participation in optional science experiences despite having many topical identities that could compete for time.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Activated Learning Enables Success 2015. (Learning Activation Lab). Retrieved August 7, 2019, from http://activationlab.org/
Adams, J. D., Gupta, P., & Cotumaccio, A. (2014). Long-term participants: A museum program enhances girls’ STEM interest, motivation, and persistence. Afterschool Matters, 20, 13–20.
Akiva, T., & Horner, C. (2016). Adolescent motivation to attend youth programs: A mixed-methods investigation. Applied Developmental Science, 20(4), 278–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2015.1127162.
Akiva, T., Schunn, C., & Louw, M. (2017). What drives attendance at informal learning activities?: A study of two art programs. Curator: The Museum Journal, 60(3), 351–364.
Anderson, M. J. (2001). A new method for non‐parametric multivariate analysis of variance. Austral Ecology, 26, 32–46.
Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., & Wong, B. (2010). “Doing” science versus “being” a scientist: Examining 10/11-year-old schoolchildren’s constructions of science through the lens of identity. Science Education, 94(4), 617–639.
Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., & Wong, B. (2012). Science aspirations, capital, and family habitus: How families shape children’s engagement and identification with science. American Educational Research Journal, 49(5), 881–908.
Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., & Wong, B. (2013). ‘Not girly, not sexy, not glamorous’: Primary school girls’ and parents’ constructions of science aspirations. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(1), 171–194.
Aschbacher, P. R., Li, E., & Roth, E. J. (2010). Is science me? High school students’ identities, participation and aspirations in science, engineering, and medicine. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(5), 564. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20353.
Bagwell, C. L., Coie, J. D., Terry, R. A., & Lochman, J. E. (2000). Peer clique participation and social status in preadolescence. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 46(2), 280–305.
Barber, B. L., Eccles, J. S., & Stone, M. R. (2001). Whatever happened to the jock, the brain, and the princess? Journal of Adolescent Research, 16(5), 429–455. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558401165002.
Barton, A., & Tan, E. (2010). We be burnin’! Agency, identity, and science learning. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19(2), 187–229.
Barton, A., Kang, H., Tan, E., O’Neill, T. B., Bautista-Guerra, J., & Brecklin, C. (2013). Crafting a future in science: Tracing middle school girls’ identity work over time and space. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 37–75.
Biddulph, L. G. (1954). Athletic achievement and the personal and social adjustment of high school boys. Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 25(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/10671188.1954.10624937.
Bolck, A., Croon, M., & Hagenaars, J. (2004). Estimating latent structure models with categorical variables: One-step versus three-step estimators. Political Analysis, 12, 3–27.
Brown, B. A. (2006). “It isn't no slang that can be said about this stuff”: Language, identity, and appropriating science discourse. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43(1), 96–126.
Bucholtz, M. (1999). “Why be normal?”: Language and identity practices in a community of nerd girls. Language in Society, 28(2), 203–223.
Carlone, H. B., & Johnson, A. (2007). Understanding the science experiences of successful women of color: Science identity as an analytic lens. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(8), 1187–1218.
Celeux, G., & Soromenho, G. (1996). An entropy criterion for assessing the number of clusters in a mixture model. Journal of Classification, 13, 195–212.
Chang, M. J., Eagan, K. M., Lin, M. H., & Hurtado, S. (2011). Considering the impact of racial stigmas and science identity: Persistence among biomedical and behavioral science aspirants. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(5), 564–596.
Cochran, J. K., Maskaly, J., Jones, S., & Sellers, C. S. (2017). Using structural equations to model Akers’ social learning theory with data on intimate partner violence. Crime & Delinquency, 63(1), 39–60.
Collins, L., & Lanza, S. (2009). The relation between the latent variable and its indicators Latent class and latent transition analysis: with applications in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 49–76.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299.
Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A., Tenenbaum, H. R., & Allen, E. (2001). Parents explain more often to boys than to girls during shared scientific thinking. Psychological Science, 12(3), 258–261.
Desimone, L. M., & Le Floch, K. C. (2004). Are we asking the right questions? Using cognitive interviews to improve surveys in education research. Educational evaluation and policy analysis, 26(1), 1–22.
Diekman, A. B., Clark, E. K., Johnston, A. M., Brown, E. R., & Steinberg, M. (2011). Malleability in communal goals and beliefs influences attraction to stem careers: Evidence for a goal congruity perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(5), 902–918. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025199.
Dixon, P. (2003). VEGAN, a package of R functions for community ecology. Journal of Vegetation Science, 14(6), 927–930.
Feldman, A. F., & Matjasko, J. L. (2005). The role of school-based extracurricular activities in adolescent development: A comprehensive review and future directions. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 159–210. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543075002159.
Fordham, S., & Ogbu, J. U. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the “burden of ‘acting white’”. The Urban Review, 18(3), 176–206.
Gresalfi, M., & Cobb, P. (2006). Cultivating students’ discipline-specific dispositions as a critical goal for pedagogy and equity. Pedagogies: an International Journal, 1(1), 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15544818ped0101_8.
Guest, A., & Schneider, B. (2003). Adolescents’ extracurricular participation in context: The mediating effects of schools, communities, and identity. Sociology of Education, 76(2), 89–109.
Harrison, L., Sailes, G., Rotich, W. K., & Bimper, A. Y. (2011). Living the dream or awakening from the nightmare: Race and athletic identity. Race Ethnicity and Education, 14(1), 91–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.531982.
Hazari, Z., Sonnert, G., Sadler, P. M., & Shanahan, M. C. (2010). Connecting high school physics experiences, outcome expectations, physics identity, and physics career choice: A gender study. Journal of research in science teaching, 47(8), 978–1003.
Hughes, R. M., Nzekwe, B., & Molyneaux, K. J. (2013). The single sex debate for girls in science: A comparison between two informal science programs on middle school students’ STEM identity formation. Research in Science Education, 43(5), 1979–2007.
Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Gastil, J., Slovic, P., & Mertz, C. (2007). Culture and identity-protective cognition: Explaining the White-male effect in risk perception. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 4(3), 465–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-1461.2007.00097.x.
Kelly-McHale, J. (2013). The influence of music teacher beliefs and practices on the expression of musical identity in an elementary general music classroom. Journal of Research in Music Education, 61(2), 195–216.
Kendall, L. (2011). “White and nerdy”: Computers, race, and the nerd stereotype. The Journal of Popular Culture, 44(3), 505–524. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00846.x.
Kim, Y., & Park, N. (2012). The effect of STEAM education on elementary school student’s creativity improvement. In Computer applications for security, control and system engineering (pp. 115–121). Berlin: Springer.
Knifsend, C. A., & Graham, S. (2012). Too much of a good thing? How breadth of extracurricular participation relates to school-related affect and academic outcomes during adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41(3), 379–389.
Lakens, D. (2013). Calculating and reporting effect sizes to facilitate cumulative science: a practical primer for t-tests and ANOVAs. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 863.
Langdon, S. W., & Petracca, G. (2010). Tiny dancer: Body image and dancer identity in female modern dancers. Body Image, 7(4), 360–363.
Lanza, S. T., Collins, L. M., Lemmon, D. R., & Schafer, J. L. (2007). PROC LCA: A SAS procedure for latent class analysis. Structural equation modeling: a multidisciplinary journal, 14(4), 671–694.
Liao, C., Motter, J. L., & Patton, R. M. (2016). Tech-savvy girls: Learning 21st-century skills through STEAM digital artmaking. Art Education, 69(4), 29–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2016.1176492.
Lin, P. Y., & Schunn, C. D. (2016). The dimensions and impact of informal science learning experiences on middle schoolers’ attitudes and abilities in science. International Journal of Science Education, 38(17), 2551–2572.
Linzer, D. A., & Lewis, J. B. (2011). poLCA: An R package for polytomous variable latent class analysis. Journal of statistical software, 42(10), 1–29.
Magidson, J., & Vermunt, J. K. (2004). Latent class models. The Sage handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences, 175–198.
Meyer, J. P., Stanley, L. J., & Vandenberg, R. J. (2013). A person-centered approach to the study of commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 23(2), 190–202.
Morin, A. J. S., Morizot, J., Boudrias, J.-S., & Madore, I. (2011). A multifoci person-centered perspective on workplace affective commitment: A latent profile/factor mixture analysis. Organizational Research Methods, 14, 58–90.
Moses, R. P., & Cobb, C. E. (2001). Radical equations: Math literacy and civil rights. Boston: Beacon Press.
National Science Foundation & National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2017). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering.
Nichols, J. D., & White, J. (2014). Friendship cliques: A comparison of the motivational traits of lower/upper track algebra students. Social Psychology of Education, 17(1), 141–159.
Norman, O., Ault, C. R., Jr., Bentz, B., & Meskimen, L. (2001). The black–white “achievement gap” as a perennial challenge of urban science education: A sociocultural and historical overview with implications for research and practice. Journal of Research in Science Teaching: The Official Journal of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, 38(10), 1101–1114.
Osborne, J., Simon, S., & Collins, S. (2003). Attitudes towards science: A review of the literature and its implications. International Journal of Science Education, 25(9), 1049–1079. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950069032000032199.
Russell, S. H., Hancock, M. P., & McCullough, J. (2007). Benefits of undergraduate research experiences. Science (Washington), 316(5824), 548–549.
Sha, L., Schunn, C., Bathgate, M., & Ben‐Eliyahu, A. (2016). Families support their children's success in science learning by influencing interest and self‐efficacy. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(3), 450–472.
Sorge, C. (2007). What happens? Relationship of age and gender with science attitudes from elementary to middle school. Science Educator, 16(2), 33–37.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of personality and social psychology, 69(5), 797.
Steinke, J., Applegate, B., Lapinski, M., Ryan, L., & Long, M. (2012). Gender differences in adolescents’ wishful identification with scientist characters on television. Science Communication, 34(2), 163–199.
Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2000). Identity theory and social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(3), 224–237.
Thornberg, R. (2011). ‘She’s weird!’—the social construction of bullying in school: A review of qualitative research. Children & Society, 25(4), 258–267. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1099-0860.2011.00374.x.
Vincent-Ruz, P., & Schunn, C. D. (2018). The nature of science identity and its role as the driver of student choices. International journal of STEM education, 5(1), 48.
Veliz, P., Schulenberg, J., Patrick, M., Kloska, D., McCabe, S., & Zarrett, N. (2017). Competitive sports participation in high school and subsequent substance use in young adulthood: Assessing differences based on level of contact. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(2), 240–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690215586998.
Wiedermann, W., & von Eye, A. (2015). Direction of effects in mediation analysis. Psychological Methods, 20(2), 221.
Zeidler, D. L. (2016). STEM education: A deficit framework for the twenty first century? A sociocultural socioscientific response. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 11(1), 11–26.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vincent-Ruz, P., Schunn, C.D. Identity Complexes and Science Identity in Early Secondary: Mono-topical or in Combination with Other Topical Identities. Res Sci Educ 51 (Suppl 1), 369–390 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-09882-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-09882-0