The roles of socializers in career choice decisions for high school students in rural central Appalachia: “Who's doing what?”

Students from low social economic status (SES) groups remain underrepresented in higher education and particularly in STEM fields. From existing literature, we know some of the barriers in promoting STEM careers among people in low SES groups include a lack of role models, understanding or misconceptions of STEM careers, and knowing about STEM career opportunities. The purpose of our research is to explore the potential influence of socializers on students as they make career choice decisions (primarily in science and engineering) from student's and educator's perspectives. We focused on students from Appalachia because they typically come from lower SES, are often first generation college (FGC) students, and are underrepresented in STEM fields, making their college and career choices particularly important to understand. We framed our research in Eccles' Expectancy Value Theory using data from an on-line informational questionnaire with educational stakeholders and in-person interviews with high school students from rural central Appalachia. Consistent with EVT, our findings reveal that students consider their parents and their educators as valuable socializers. Educators, however, value outreach activities provided by professionals to help students explore engineering career choices. This is consistent with a reported lack of confidence in ability to talk with students regarding engineering careers. By comparing the perspectives of students and educators, we begin to address the potential gaps of “who's doing what” with respect to assisting students as they navigate career choice decision making in high school.