Despite extensive efforts, females remain underrepresented in STEM fields. Out-of-school programs have demonstrated the potential to address this problem. However, to ensure sustainability and maximize the impact of these programs, researchers emphasize the importance of combining out-of-school offerings with school offerings and investigating the effectiveness of such combined programs and their success criteria (Dahn et al., 2023). We developed a combined program that integrates an online mentoring program for girls, which adheres to key principles of effective mentoring and has been proven effective in previous studies, with offerings at school (i.e., teacher-led STEM clubs). In planning this combined program, we incorporated essential bridging principles for collaboration between out-of-school and school settings (Fallik et al., 2013). We investigated (a) whether the positive effects of the exclusively out-of-school online mentoring program identified in previous studies could be replicated, (b) whether participation in the combined program yielded more positive effects than participation in the mentoring-only program, and (c) which variables are related to the effectiveness of the combined program.
International Journal of STEM Education, 13, Article 8.
Linking out-of-school online mentoring and in-school STEM clubs to support girls in STEM: a pretest–posttest control group study
Autor:in: Stoeger, H., Uebler, C., Bayer, S., Emmerdinger, K. J., & Ziegler, A. (2026) Erschienen in: Springer Veröffentlicht: 25. Februar 2026 Schlagwörter: Gender underrepresentation | Girls in STEM | Intervention study | Online mentoring | Out-of-school learning | Program effectiveness | School collaboration | STEM clubs | STEM education | Success criteria More DetailsDespite extensive efforts, females remain underrepresented in STEM fields. Out-of-school programs have demonstrated the potential to address this problem. However, to ensure sustainability and maximize the impact of these programs, researchers emphasize the importance of combining out-of-school offerings with school offerings and investigating the effectiveness of such combined programs and their success criteria (Dahn et al., 2023). We developed a combined program that integrates an online mentoring program for girls, which adheres to key principles of effective mentoring and has been proven effective in previous studies, with offerings at school (i.e., teacher-led STEM clubs). In planning this combined program, we incorporated essential bridging principles for collaboration between out-of-school and school settings (Fallik et al., 2013). We investigated (a) whether the positive effects of the exclusively out-of-school online mentoring program identified in previous studies could be replicated, (b) whether participation in the combined program yielded more positive effects than participation in the mentoring-only program, and (c) which variables are related to the effectiveness of the combined program.
International Journal of STEM Education, 13, Article 8.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-026-00600-7