Linking out-of-school online mentoring and in-school STEM clubs to support girls in STEM: a pretest–posttest control group study

Abstract Background Despite extensive efforts, females remain underrepresented in STEM fields. Out-of-school programs have demonstrated the potential to address this problem. However, to ensure sustainability and maximize the impact of these programs, researchers emphasize the importance of combining out-of-school offerings with school offerings and investigating the effectiveness of such combined programs and their success criteria (Dahn et al., 2023). We developed a combined program that integrates an online mentoring program for girls, which adheres to key principles of effective mentoring and has been proven effective in previous studies, with offerings at school (i.e., teacher-led STEM clubs). In planning this combined program, we incorporated essential bridging principles for collaboration between out-of-school and school settings (Fallik et al., 2013). We investigated (a) whether the positive effects of the exclusively out-of-school online mentoring program identified in previous studies could be replicated, (b) whether participation in the combined program yielded more positive effects than participation in the mentoring-only program, and (c) which variables are related to the effectiveness of the combined program. Results We employed a pretest–posttest control group design, comparing four groups: girls who exclusively participated in the out-of-school online mentoring program ( n = 212) and girls in the combined program ( n = 323) as well as a control group of girls ( n = 1234) and boys ( n = 1501) who did not participate in any of the programs. Participants were weighted using propensity score estimation based on age, school type, and baseline values of the evaluation variables (measured at pretest). Both programs positively impacted participants’ elective intentions in STEM, engagement in STEM activities, confidence in their STEM abilities, and STEM grades. The combined program did not generally demonstrate greater effectiveness than the mentoring-only program. However, the effectiveness of the combined program was related to the degree of bridging between the out-of-school and in-school offerings, the quality of the combined program, and the perceived value of STEM among the participants. Conclusion This study is the first to demonstrate that combining out-of-school online mentoring by female STEM experts and teacher-led STEM clubs can effectively promote girls in STEM. However, several success criteria must be considered to realize added benefits compared to exclusively out-of-school online mentoring.