The mission of STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education (STEMIE), a national center at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), is to improve access and participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities for young children with disabilities and intersecting identities. Understanding the importance of identifying disparities in STEM education, a STEMIE team recently examined the literature and published their findings, “Reporting and Analyzing Demographics in U.S.- American Early STEM Intervention Literature: A Systematic Review” in Early Childhood Education Journal in August 2024.
 
Hsiu-Wen Yang, PhD, an FPG technical assistance specialist, served as lead author on the study. Her co-authors include FPG colleagues Christine Harradine, PhD, a technical assistance specialist as well as Senior Technical Assistance Specialists and STEMIE Co-directors Chih-Ing Lim, PhD, and Megan Vinh, PhD. University of Denver professors Douglas Clements, PhD, and Julie Sarama, PhD, are also co-authors.
 
The project began after Harradine conducted a literature review to explore the research about STEM for young children, ages birth to 5, with and without disabilities. After a systematic assessment of the available research literature, Harradine found fewer articles about children younger than kindergarten age and STEM than K-12 and more information about science and math than computational thinking (technology) and engineering. Out of thousands of articles in the original review, Harradine found 31 that discussed children with disabilities.
 
This led to Harradine, Yang, and Lim collaborating to ponder what else is missing in the literature. Considering FPG’s focus on equity and disparities in STEM education, the trio decided to examine the literature with a focus on children's race, ethnicity, gender, and other identities. The review was designed to understand how the experiences of diverse children have been centered or excluded from published STEM intervention literature.
 
This re-examination of the literature focused on the following components to understand the extent to which children from diverse demographic profiles are well-represented in the scientific process:

• data collected regarding participants’ demographic characteristics;
• methods used to gather this information; and
• how researchers have used this information.

Since the term “STEM” was coined around the year 2000, the researchers began the search with that year and focused only on intervention research.
 
The authors used the following questions to guide the review:

• What are the reported demographic characteristics (i.e., gender, race, ethnicity, disabilities, family income, linguistic status) of the children participating in early STEM intervention literature?
• How do researchers of early STEM intervention studies gather and/or report data on children’s demographic characteristics data?
• How do the authors communicate, use, or discuss children’s demographic characteristics in the articles?

There is inconsistency in how researchers collect and report demographic data. Each researcher used their own method, with no best practice of how to collect or report the demographics of children. Some articles use “Asian American and Pacific Islander” (AAPI) while others use “Asian.” Similarly, some authors use “Black, white, and other,” without a specific definition of what “other” comprises. This makes it difficult to collect information and to understand what is missing from the literature.
 
The authors found that most of the intervention literature that collected information on children’s identities only used children's demographic information to describe their samples. Rarely did the researchers use demographics in methods or when discussing whether the children's characteristics played a role in the effectiveness of the intervention.

“I hope that this work also reminds everyone in the field that when we are working on improving positive outcomes for children, we need to consider the bigger context: what factors could contribute to children's learning and development; what information do we need to collect to help us understand what is really going on; and what could better inform the intervention,” said Yang.

Harradine said that she hopes that it alarms others in the field that demographic data is not being collected in a consistent way or analyzed and discussed. “Equity has come to the forefront in research and policy,” she said. “But we are basing our research on white children or children without disabilities.” She hopes that this is the beginning of a conversation in which colleagues in the field will join.
 
Yang agrees and wants to bring awareness to researchers, journal editors, grant funders and others involved in this work. “We need to have best practices that support everyone to report demographic information in a consistent way,” said Yang. She notes that the review also examined how much information is provided in each article. Some articles included gender, race, and ethnicity, but did not consider family income or language, contexts and factors that are important.
 
“I hope that this work also reminds everyone in the field that when we are working on improving positive outcomes for children, we need to consider the bigger context: what factors could contribute to children's learning and development; what information do we need to collect to help us understand what is really going on; and what could better inform the intervention,” said Yang.