We're pleased to welcome Dr. Emily Coyle, Senior Research Associate with WestEd, to deliver her talk: "Playing like a scientist: Building young children’s interest, skills, and self-identification in STEM" on Friday the 4th from 2-3pm in Xavier 201. All are welcome to attend. 

Abstract:
For decades, scientists across the disciplines have sought to understand why certain demographic gaps in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) persist. Even as some gaps have closed, the majority of scientists and engineers working in their chosen fields continues to be mostly White, mostly men, and mostly from urban or suburban backgrounds (e.g., National Science Foundation, 2017; Carnegie Science Center, 2014). A lot of attention has been paid to supporting underrepresented groups across the STEM pipeline from schooling to the workforce. Yet, the earliest years of life may be key to supporting interest and participation in STEM, when social group membership stereotypes are being forged and before negative beliefs about one’s own group’s STEM performance emerge (Cheryan et al., 2015; Lei et al., 2019). In this talk, I will discuss examples from my own research to illustrate how children’s ideas about math and science careers are shaped subtly through play and messaging about who “does science,” including experiments that inform how we can best support children’s early self-identification and efficacy in STEM.