Reliability and Validity of a Chinese Version of the STEM Attitude Scale for Primary and Secondary School Students

In recent years, STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education has received widespread attention from all over the world, and there are not many studies on STEM attitudes in China. One of the reasons is the lack of measurement tools that have been tested for reliability and validity. The Chinese version STEM attitudes scale for primary and secondary schools is a multidimensional scale that measures the STEM attitudes of primary and secondary school students. It consists of three subscales: STEM interest, 21st-century skills confidence, and STEM career interest. In order to test the reliability and validity of the scale application, as well as understand and improve the STEM attitudes of primary and secondary school students, the research team surveyed and collected 566 responses from primary and secondary school students in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Shandong, Liaoning, and other places. After exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and a reliability and validity test, the scale finally retained 48 items. The scale supports a hypothetical five-factor model with good reliability and validity and can be used to assess STEM attitudes in Chinese primary and secondary schools. This research also shows that students’ STEM interests and STEM career interests showed clear variation among different genders, grades, and parental education levels.

High-Revenue Athletics Institutional Policies and Practices Aligned with Key Resources for STEM Career Development

This study sought to explore the ways in which athletics departments within high-revenue National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I universities established institutional policies and practices aligned with providing key science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career development resources. These resources were derived from an earlier study focused on Black male student-athletes in high-revenue Division I athletics. The athletics department websites of a sample of high-revenue Atlantic Coast Conference institutions were reviewed seeking evidence of such policy and practice alignment with STEM career development. The resources identified from this review included explicit programming and student-athlete experiences for career, personal, and cultural identity development; designated institutional support personnel, including academic advisers, career counselors, and learning specialists, with the potential to provide personalized social support and academic support; and tutoring and study hall as additional academic support practices. The need for equity and student-centeredness is discussed in light of the implementation of each of these resources, as well as considerations of the impact of athletics departments demonstrating leadership and accountability in administering these resources, as compared to university-wide departments of academic and student affairs.