A multimethod examination of hope and adolescent STEM career expectancies.

INTRODUCTION: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are growing rapidly and understanding adolescent's interest and hope for pursuing a STEM career is essential for additional growth and opportunity collectively and individually. Hope is a cognitive-motivational construct that includes three components: hopeful future expectations (HFEs), intentional self-regulation (ISR), and connection, and is associated with academic achievement and career pursuit; it has not been examined in relation to STEM. This study fills a gap in the literature by taking a multimethod approach to understanding the association between adolescents' hope and STEM career interests. METHODS: Participants were 639 middle- and high-school adolescents in the southwestern United States who quantitatively reported their hope and STEM career interests and provided qualitative descriptions of reasons for wanting to pursue a STEM career. RESULTS: Quantitatively, HFEs significantly and positively predicted STEM career interest. Relations were examined by gender and school level. For middle-school girls, ISR significantly predicted STEM career interest, for middle-school boys and high-school girls, HFEs positively significantly predicted STEM career interest, but results of high-school boys were nonsignificant. Qualitatively, adolescents mentioned reasons aligning with HFEs and ISR as motivations for pursuing a STEM career, as well as prosocial motivations. Additionally, they discussed their interest in a STEM career as a way to pursue other goals such as financial stability. DISCUSSION: Findings highlight the possibility of hope as a malleable motivation for STEM career pursuit. Our findings support the components of hope as a salient associate of early STEM career interest, with adolescents who have high HFEs and ISR being particularly apt to say they would like to pursue a STEM career. Our results support the active development of hope among US adolescents as a catalyst toward personal and global success.

Hope levels across adolescence and the transition to high school: Associations with school stress and achievement.

INTRODUCTION: Feeling hopeful is an important condition for adolescents' health, well-being, and educational success and attainment, yet limited research has examined hope at different ages throughout adolescence. Information regarding hope levels across grade could help educators know when to capitalize on goal-setting behaviors, and when to intervene should hope levels be low. Additionally, hope could help with the middle to high school transition because it presents opportunities and challenges, including school-related stress, as students adjust to new environments and expectations. METHODS: To investigate hope levels across adolescence, inter- and intra-personal analyses examined hope levels across grade-level in two cohorts of southwestern U.S. students (n = 1,018, 6th-10th grade students, 47% female, 55% White/45% non-White, (predominately Latinx)). The study used online self-report surveys to collect data. Next, longitudinal regression analyses across one year investigated relations of school stress and hope, and hope and achievement across the transition to high school. RESULTS: Students in both cohorts reported relatively stable hope levels from 6th to 10th grade, except for large decreases in hope during 8th grade, which recovered during 9th grade. For longitudinal analyses across the high school transition, student stress about school performance primarily influenced 8th graders who had relatively low hope. Eighth grade hope predicted 9th grade academic achievement. CONCLUSION: Findings regarding hope across adolescence show that hope is similar across grade, except for a large decrease in hope that may occur before the transition to high school. Longitudinal analyses showed that school performance stress may contribute to this decrease but may also assist in hope recovery after the transition. Findings support educational practices and policies that target student hope before the high school transition to potentially buffer student stress and promote high school achievement.