STEM Learning Opportunities Before & After COVID-19 School Closures

Teacher explains math equation to student at blackboard

Problem

COVID-19’s effect on high school students’ STEM learning is unclear.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close their doors and abruptly shift to online instruction. Research shows that this change disproportionately affected poor, minority, and underserved students and exacerbated existing racial and economic inequities. What is yet unknown is how the pandemic shaped high school students’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) course-taking trajectories.

In particular, the National Science Foundation (NSF) wishes to measure the pandemic’s differential effects on students by looking specifically at the intersections of student characteristics such as race and gender. They also want to identify potentially critical periods in students’ STEM trajectories and the types of interventions and supports that work best for diverse groups of students.

Solution

NORC is using a novel methodological approach to assess the pandemic’s differential effects on students.

NSF tasked us with exploring the pandemic’s differential effects on specific demographic groups. We chose a unique methodological approach known as “effects coding.” Unlike traditional methods, which analyze simple and interaction effects for social categories like race and gender, the effects coding approach groups study participants into distinct intersectional categories. This allows for the comparison of differences across intersectional groups.

Research shows that this type of grouping better reflects participants’ lived experiences by acknowledging their intersecting social identities. It also shows that grouping individuals into discrete race-gender categories provides more specific and detailed information about between-group differences than studies on simple and interaction effects.

Result

Our study will help education leaders develop demographic-specific STEM learning support.

Results from our study will help districts and state education departments understand potentially critical periods in students’ STEM trajectories, how to address any interruption in schooling, and what types of interventions and supports work best for different types of students.

This work builds on prior NORC studies for NSF.