Earlier this year I wrote about an interesting finding in relation to attracting more women into STEM subjects and careers.  A study found that when science was framed as a communal endeavor, it tended to become more attractive to women than when it was framed as something lone genii do.

Now, a second study, from researchers at the University of Washington, reveals that this is not true only of adults but of children too.

“At 4 and 5 years of age, social groups start to matter more to children and begin to influence who they are and what they’re interested in,” the authors say.

“If we can get children interested in STEM when they’re young, it has the potential to carry through their education and increase the number of students pursuing STEM careers,” they continue.

Group science

The study saw a group of 4 year old kids given a couple of STEM related activities to perform, one involving maths and the other a spatial challenge.

Before they began each task, the children were told whether they’d be working in a group or on their own, with each child getting to perform once in each condition.

The catch was that the group task wasn’t really a group task, in that the children would work and be tested individually, and indeed there was no competition between the groups.  Despite this, the ‘group’ task was performed in an environment complete with a number of clear, visual cues to remind the children that they were part of a team.  So they’d wear the team t-shirt and the team flag would be resplendent on their desk.

When the performances were analyzed, both in terms of how well and how long they performed, but also how they felt about the tasks, it emerged that the children fared better when ostensibly in a team environment.

“When told that they were part of a group, the children persisted longer, did better, enjoyed the task more, thought they were better at it, and chose that task over a task they did as an individual,” the researchers say.

A note of caution

Suffice to say, groups should not be regarded as a panacea, and there is a risk that children are excluded from the team, and thus disinclined to enjoy the activity.

To avoid these pitfalls, the authors suggest a number of possibilities, from making the whole class part of a single team to the use of more collective language to emphasize that the tasks are collaborative in nature.

Encouraging young people to take STEM subjects is an ongoing issue for educators around the world, so these findings should be considerable food for thought.