Research On The Impact Of Middle School Physics Education Environment On High School Students' STEM Career Expectations

Although Chinese students have achieved excellent results in the PISA2015,the proportion of them who expect to pursue STEM careers in the future is far lower than countries from OECD.It shows the phenomenon that high school students’ expectation rate of STEM occupation is insufficient in China.Individuals’ early STEM career expectation has a positive predictive effect on their future STEM related careers.In high school,the study of physics is closely related to the formation of students’ STEM career expectations.Therefore,it is of great practical significance to study the influence mechanism between middle school physics education environment and high school students’ STEM career expectation to improve students’ overall STEM career expectation rate.Based on relevant theories,literature review and relevant empirical studies,this research summarizes five dimensions influencing high school students’ STEM career expectation under the factors of school education environment and two important mediating variables.Based on the hypothesis,a model influencing high school students’ STEM career expectation was established and verified by structural equation modeling.In this study,458 students from 6 schools were investigated through questionnaires.The data were statistically analyzed to reach the corresponding conclusions by SPSS19.0 and Amos23.0 and recommendations are given.According to the data analysis results,among the five dimensions of middle school physics education environment,the three dimensions of“resource level”,“vocational information”and “teaching environment” have significant positive influence on high school students’ STEM career expectations.In addition,this study found that the two variables,individual interest and self-efficacy,play a partial mediating role between the educational environment and students’ STEM career expectations,and further explained the reasons for the mediating effect.In the end,this paper makes a prospect and reflection and explains the shortcomings of the study.