The influence of students’ personality traits and their parents’ parenting style on Romanian students’ performance in science subjects from secondary to doctoral level

With the exponential growth of technological innovation, new positions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are emerging. Employees face new job demands, requiring more technical and mathematical capabilities than before. Educating the population in science subjects is becoming increasingly important, as is making science subjects available to students and identifying factors influencing the development of logical thinking, the basis of STEM subjects. This paper focuses on identifying significant relationships between students’ personality traits, their parents’ parenting style and students’ performance in STEM subjects in high school and college, within Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems framework. Using a questionnaire with standardized constructs, we surveyed Romanian students from a technical university and found that certain personality traits and parenting styles are significant mainly for the student’s performance in STEM subjects in high school, and these significant relationships differ for female students, compared to male students, possibly as a result of local cultural gender views. Our society aims to increase the participation of general public and female students in STEM majors and jobs, and our study informs the audience on how a student’s microsystem can nurture or hinder the development of logical thinking, as the basis of cognitive skills and performance in STEM fields.