The Roles of Curriculum Designers and After School STEM Teachers as Environmental Features for High School Students' STEM Career Access (Fundamental)

To promote interest and future choices around STEM careers, afterschool and other informal education programs have become key access points for students who may face greater challenges in entering STEM career pathways. Individual, environmental (including social), and behavioral factors each interact in ways that can promote interest and access to STEM learning and career opportunities, or can limit such opportunities. Teachers, programs, and curriculum are all contextual factors that are important. Using Ecological Systems Theory, this study explored the environmental structures that influenced STEM teachers and undergraduate STEM majors access to STEM and compared those influences to the environmental structures they perceived related to high school students access to STEM. We also compared the influences each group reported to one another.