Students whose parents didn’t go to college face unique challenges to succeed in their science and math classes, and that can undermine their motivation to try hard in those subjects or even pursue a career in STEM.
One big reason these students may struggle with motivation is that their parents can’t always provide them with the support at home necessary to do well in those subjects. But there are steps teachers can take—and resources they can leverage—to help meet the unique motivational needs of these students.
Christy Starr is an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studies parental support and how it impacts students’ motivation in STEM.
It can already be challenging for STEM teachers to motivate their students, regardless of their background, because the material is difficult.
But Starr said that college-educated parents can offer their kids resources and guidance that non-college-educated parents may not be able to, like sending their kids to a STEM camp or helping them with their homework.
“This is perhaps because they have more time, they have more money and so on, compared to non-college-educated parents, and they have more social capital as well” that they can draw on to get their kids additional help or nurture their interests in STEM, Starr said.
The connection between parents’ education and students’ motivation in STEM
Isabella Schmit, an 8th grader in Corpus Christi, Texas, said she experiences this first-hand.
Schmit wants to go to college in large part because her mom did not. She plans to go into the medical field, but said it’s difficult to stay motivated in her science classes because the material is hard to understand.
“We could be doing something in the workbook or [my teacher] could be lecturing us on something and I could be sitting in my chair completely lost on the info, and they could be halfway finished with a class worksheet that we’re doing,” Schmit said.
However, she has noticed some of her peers whose parents work in STEM seem to understand the class material better.
“Some parents that do have the time or they put the time aside to help their kids, those kids are probably going to understand more because they have the help of their parents who have [a] STEM education,” Schmit said.
Some research shows that Schmit’s experience is not unique.
One recent study published in Nature found that parents’ level of education, and their involvement in their kids’ STEM schoolwork, has a positive effect on 9th grade students’ motivation in science classes.
Another study in 2020 by the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences found that students whose parents did not graduate from college are less likely to be motivated and pursue a career in STEM compared with their peers whose parents are college educated.
High schoolers were surveyed as freshmen about whether they wanted to pursue STEM careers. Of the students who said in a follow-up survey three years later that they still wanted to pursue a STEM career, 70 percent had parents who had an associate degree or more.
Jacqueline Rogers is a Jefferson City High School senior in Jefferson City, Missouri and considers herself highly motivated in STEM courses—something she credits her parents with.
“If my mom weren’t in the medical field and my dad wasn’t in computer science, I don’t think I would be as interested in some courses as I am right now,” Rogers said.
She said her parents encouraged her from a young age to pursue STEM by sending her to extracurricular STEM programs and connecting her with professionals in the field.
For Rogers’s class on biomedical innovations, a final project assignment was to shadow someone, which she was able to do at her mom’s place of work.
“I feel like [my mom] having that position and being able to get me into different types of shadowing opportunities definitely opened the door for me,” Rogers said.
Motivating students starts with supporting parents
So, what, then, can STEM teachers do to motivate kids whose parents don’t have a college degree?
A good place to start is with the parents. Research has shown that parental encouragement is important to motivating kids. But the less education parents have, the less confident they may feel in their ability to support their kids in STEM-related subjects.
They may also have less time to be involved in their child’s education because of work obligations, said Starr, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.
Starr suggests teachers send pamphlets home or reach out to parents and make them aware that simply encouraging their kids in STEM can boost their motivation.
Stephanie Westhafer is a 1st grade teacher at West Jackson Elementary School in Jackson County, Georgia, and she said communicating with parents in laymen’s terms—dropping the education jargon—is crucial.
“That hypersensitivity to accessibility—that includes language,” she said.
Another way teachers can motivate students with non-college educated parents is by providing STEM role models for them, since they might not have access to those at home, said Margie Suder, a science teacher at East Fairmont Middle School in Fairmont, West Virginia.
“Teachers need to introduce [students] to mentors or other people in the profession,” Suder said. “Giving [those students] opportunities to meet people who show them different opportunities that they wouldn’t normally see at home,” Suder said.
Teachers shouldn’t wait until middle or high school to engage parents in their kids’ STEM education. Westhafer does an informal survey where she asks her 1st graders questions about technology access at home and resources like books and STEM-related toys at the beginning of the school year.
If a kid has fewer resources at home, Westhafer can reach out to the parents and start developing that relationship to see how, as a teacher, she can help.
“I think it’s a way of making things more equitable for them,” Westhafer said. “I can make sure that they have the same kind of school supplies or have access to good reading material at home so that they’re getting the same kind of experiences as the other kids.”
She said it’s made a difference with some of her students. One student, in particular, “was more engaged and they were super excited about getting books sent home,” Westhafer said.
Teachers and schools can tap into outside resources
Teachers don’t have to tackle this issue alone. Schools can connect families with outside organizations that support parents who don’t have college degrees and need help navigating K-12 and higher education systems for their kids.
One such group is the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, a national organization based in the City of Industry, Calif. SHPE launched Equipando Padres in 2021 to support high school and college students whose parents don’t have a college degree. Equipando Padres offers virtual classes on both the benefits of a STEM education and the specific challenges students will face in pursuing STEM at both the high school and college levels.
The program also connects parents with college students to hear directly from them about how to best support their own children, like discussing the idea of imposter syndrome—the feeling that you don’t deserve the academic or professional position you’re in—and how to deal with it.
Parents and educators need to be aware of opportunities that exist for students outside of the school system, said Rose Martinez, a program manager in research and innovation at SHPE who leads the Equipando Padres program.
“Schools can give information to kids all day long but if we don’t have ... that collaboration of the schools working with families to better support the students, then we may still be missing that mark,” said Martinez.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
