Northern Illinois University
STEM Interest and Engagement (STEM IE)

Whether or not young people are interested in the content they are learning has important immediate and long-term consequences for their success in a given subject area. Being interested in a subject or specific content tends to lead to engagement, persistence, and the use of deep learning strategies in learning it. Learning at a level that enables a future career or avocation in a subject area often requires quite a bit of time and commitment, so persistence is a valuable outcome.

Unfortunately, interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) starts to decline sharply during the middle school years, a slide that continues during high school. As a result, many young people disengage from learning STEM and consequently do not develop competence in STEM subjects. Disengagement from STEM is more pronounced among youth in low-income communities compared with other communities.

Furthermore, disengagement from STEM during early adolescence could restrict young people’s opportunities to pursue STEM majors and STEM careers in the future. Currently, many high-paying jobs require competence in STEM, and such jobs are expected to grow in the future.

Many summer STEM programs aim to promote interest in STEM content because the value of interest in learning is well recognized by those who work with young people. Yet few studies have investigated practices that promote the interest and engagement of young adolescents who attend Informal STEM Learning (ISL) programs, especially during the summer. A central goal of this study was to identify instructional practices associated with cultivating and sustaining young people’s interest and engagement in STEM summer learning programs.

The Process of Interest Development

Although humans are thought to be hardwired to seek and attend to interesting information, interest in a particular thing is unlikely to grow and persist unless the right conditions exist. Consequently, understanding how interest develops can be very useful to activity leaders (ALs) and other educators who wish to enhance learning.

Renninger and Hidi (2015) have described four phases of interest development that make up the process of interest development:

• Phase 1, triggered situational interest,is evident when someone says “oh, wow,” “that is so cool,” or gets emotionally involved and pays attention in response to experiencing a phenomenon. Situational interest is most likely to occur when something is new and/or exciting in some way.

• Phase 2, maintained situational interest, occurs when the person (often with guidance) realizes that whatever triggered their interest is relevant to them in some way. As a result of perceiving the content as relevant, the person continues to engage with it.

• Phase 3, emerging individual interest, is characterized by a learner’s independent engagement with and enthusiasm for a topic. Providing youth with choices and a sense of ownership of their learning can help them advance an interest that they have. Young people in this phase might seek out information and experiences or work independently on a project related to a topic of emerging interest to them.

• Phase 4, well-developed interest, occurs when an individual takes personal responsibility for learning about the topic and will persevere through challenges and frustrations they may encounter in that pursuit.

It is important to note that not all youth will develop individual interest in STEM, even if they participate in high-quality STEM-oriented programs. In this sense, our goal in doing this work is to expose youth to high-quality learning environments, providing them with the opportunity to discover an interest and passion for this field that they otherwise may not have known they had.