Gender Differences in Determinants of Students’ Interest in STEM Education

Thulani Andrew Chauke ()
Additional contact information
Thulani Andrew Chauke: Department of Adult, Community and Continuing Education, University of South Africa, Pretoria 0003, South Africa

Social Sciences, 2022, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-14

Abstract: Despite the government’s call for students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the gender gap in STEM education is still of significant concern in South Africa. This study aimed to describe different push-pull factors that influenced male and female students when choosing STEM education at the TVET college level. This study used qualitative research methods and focus-group interviews with a sample of 20 students studying at a TVET college in a rural part of the Limpopo province. In addition, a thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected. The study revealed that the following factors: lucrative salary, graduate unemployment rate, aptitude for mathematics and science, parental education and autonomy and independence, and rejecting stereotypical feminine identities were push-pull factors that influenced both male and female TVET college students to choose STEM education. The policy implication of this study is that an Afrocentric approach should be infused into the teaching and learning of STEM at TVET colleges.

Keywords: gender differences; interest; students; STEM education; 4IR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/11/534/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/11/534/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:11:y:2022:i:11:p:534-:d:979322

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().