A Case Study of Garden-Based STEAM Curriculum on Students’ STEM Career Interests

The number of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers available is increasing faster than the number of students who are majoring in STEM fields. Many female students feel they do not belong in STEM careers, even though they have just as much ability as their male counterparts. One way to help female students feel like they belong in these careers is to increase their interest in pursuing STEM pathways. Currently, the individual STEM subjects (i.e., science, mathematics) are taught in a siloed way, which does not allow students to connect the subjects and see how these fields work together in the real world. The purpose of this mixed-methods case study was to describe how middle school students, with a focus on female students, engaged in and experienced a 7-week STEAM garden-based intervention and how the intervention changed their mathematics and science identities and STEM career interests. Students engaged in integrated garden-based STEAM lessons designed to be interdisciplinary and engaging, occurring partly outside and partly in the classroom with the aim of increasing all students’ mathematics and science identities, and interests in STEM careers. In this case study, I used qualitative data results to describe all the students’ experiences while participating in the garden-based STEAM lessons taught by the researcher. I used both quantitative and qualitative data types to triangulate results and the effects on students’ mathematics and science identities and STEM career interests, pre- and post-garden-based lessons. The coded data showed themes of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, enjoyment, and connection to real life while participating in the garden-based STEAM lessons. The students’ mathematics identities remained high from pre- to post-garden-based STEAM lessons. The students’ science identities increased, female students remained high, and the male students increased statistically significantly. There was a statistically significant increase in female STEM career interest from pre- to post-garden-based STEAM lessons intervention. In conclusion, this study showed that students participating in garden-based STEAM lessons enjoyed it, made connections to real-life, and maintained or increased their mathematics and science identities, which in turn led to increased female STEM career interests.