“Switching” and “Persistence” Redefined: The Complexity of STEM Persistence -- The Significance of Interest and Choice -- High School to College: Student Preparation and Transition -- Learning Experiences in Gateway Courses and their Consequences -- Learning Experiences throughout STEM Majors -- Teaching Practices: Observed and Evaluated -- The Processes of Switching and Relocation -- Factors Beyond College that Shape Career Choices -- What Enables Persistence? -- Summary and Conclusions.

Talking about Leaving Revisited discusses findings from a five-year study that explores the extent, nature, and contributory causes of field-switching both from and among “STEM” majors, and what enables persistence to graduation. The book reflects on what has and has not changed since publication of Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences (Elaine Seymour & Nancy M. Hewitt, Westview Press, 1997). With the editors’ guidance, the authors of each chapter collaborate to address key questions, drawing on findings from each related study source: national and institutional data, interviews with faculty and students, structured observations and student assessments of teaching methods in STEM gateway courses. Pitched to a wide audience, engaging in style, and richly illustrated in the interviewees’ own words, this book affords the most comprehensive explanatory account to date of persistence, relocation and loss in undergraduate sciences. Comprehensively addresses the causes of loss from undergraduate STEM majors—an issue of ongoing national concern. Presents critical research relevant for nationwide STEM education reform efforts. Explores the reasons why talented undergraduates abandon STEM majors. Dispels popular causal myths about why students choose to leave STEM majors.