Attracting students to STEM: Obstructors and facilitators

This paper aims to measure students' level of interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the main focus is on students in grades 9 to 12. Essentially, the goal is to understand the factors behind students' choice of STEM or non-STEM academic tracks. Public and private school students in STEM and non-STEM academic programs participated in the research through responding to surveys gauging students' outlooks on what influenced their choices of going to, or away from, STEM. The data collected revealed a number of reasons that make students like, or dislike, scientific majors. These reasons include the presence or absence of capable teachers, the choice of the teaching language and the impact of professional STEM role models. This paper also focuses on the differences in results between public and private institutions, male and female students, as well as nationals and non-nationals. Furthermore, it compares the findings to similar research done in other countries, within the Arab region and beyond. We show that several factors remain valid in most countries and education systems whereas others are specific to each of them. Finally, the paper makes recommendations on how to build upon the perceived successes and downfalls of the research's methodology and it suggests methods on how to increase successful STEM enrollment and competency.