Single-sex schooling, gender and STEM career aspiration in Hong Kong

The current study aims to examine the relationship between single-sex schooling, gender and STEM career aspiration in Hong Kong, and investigate the possible mediating mechanisms. In 2017, we conducted a representative student survey in Hong Kong to collect students' perceptions about STEM education and their intention to study and work in STEM-related fields. The target population of this study are all Secondary 5 (11th Grade) students from government, subsidized, or direct-subsidy scheme secondary schools who are enrolled in the mainstream curriculum (HKDSE). A two-stage stratified sampling strategy was adopted for the survey. In total, 2,807 students from 43 secondary schools completed the interviews. We structured our data in two levels: individual-level and school-level. We ran a series of random-intercepts linear models to estimate the association between single-sex schooling and STEM career aspiration for male and female students. Results of the multilevel models show that girls in all-girls schools are more into STEM fields, while boy-schools hurt boys STEM job aspiration. Some intervening variables such as gender essentialist ideology and math self-concepts, can predict the STEM job aspirations. Copyright © 2018 Hong Kong Sociological Association 20th Annual Conference.