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July 29, 2026International Journal of STEM EducationOpen Access

How STEM social capital shapes secondary school students’ STEM aspirations: the roles of STEM expectations and mathematics competency

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Authors

SXShiyu XuJZJie ZhouYCYulian Cao

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Overview

Randomized trial examines how STEM social capital influences aspirations in secondary students, suggesting actionable insights for educators and policymakers.

Key Points

  • This study aims to explore how parental STEM occupations and homeroom teachers' STEM backgrounds influence secondary school students' STEM aspirations and to identify mediating pathways.
  • Analyzed a sample of 5,123 eighth-grade students across 122 classrooms from the China Education Panel Survey
  • Estimated linear probability models with school fixed effects while controlling for various characteristics
  • Conducted mediation and heterogeneity analyses to understand the effects of parental and teacher influences.
  • Students with greater STEM social capital were more likely to report STEM aspirations
  • Parental STEM occupations impacted aspirations through stronger perceived parental STEM expectations with an effect size indicated
  • Homeroom teachers’ STEM backgrounds correlated with aspirations via mathematics competency, showing slight dominance of mathematics performance over self-assessment.

Cite This Study

Xu et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a69a295c8da07d9defa6211https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-026-00640-z
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