The effect of tutoring primary school pupils by university students on STEM interest: a pre-registered randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) play a prominent role in today’s society. At the same time, studies show that the gap in science performance between students from lower socioeconomic background and students from a more advantaged background is wide. Studies further show that role models can have a positive effect and the effect tutoring can have towards the attitudes towards subjects. In this pre-registered randomized controlled trial, we study in a real life setting the effect of tutoring on the STEM interest of Dutch primary school pupils from relatively lower socioeconomic neighborhoods (‘tutees’) by measuring the influence of the study background of 2nd to 4th study-year Dutch university students (‘tutors’) on the STEM interest of the tutees. A group of 104 tutees between 9 and 12 years old were tutored by 29 tutors. Nineteen tutors had a background in one of the STEM subjects, the others had a background in another (non-STEM) subject. Using the validated questionnaire STEM-LIT, we measured the interest of the tutees in STEM fields in a pre- and post-test and checked if the background of tutors affected the interest in STEM fields through statistical tests. While our results have found no significant differences in STEM interest between those two groups, our analysis does provide insights into the mechanisms relating to the interest in STEM fields among children from relatively lower socioeconomic neighbourhoods.