Social Marketing tools for raising awareness about the STEM jobs at the schools: The Case of Baku

Abstract

The sufficiency of STEM jobs in the county leads to the improvement of innovations, creation of value-added goods as well as the economic development of the country in general. The lack of the school children’s’ awareness about the STEM jobs and improper imagination about the job responsibility are slowing down this process. The current research was carried out to investigate if social marketing tools affect student’s awareness about the STEM jobs and if social advertising contributes to the pupils’ behavior change while selecting the occupation. This descriptive-analytical study was conducted. Social marketing cases of 4 countries: Turkey, Georgia, Russia, USA was analyzed. Also the survey was conducted on 160 pupils of two high schools located first in the center, second in the on the outskirts of Baku. Both Russian and Azeri sector pupils participated in the survey. Data were collected by a valid and reliable questionnaire, consisting of two parts: at the pre-test the knowledge of Baku city pupils about the STEM professions was checked after that the social marketing in the form of presentation was conducted and the awareness of school children was tested at the second survey as a post-test. In total, the awareness of pupils about the STEM jobs in general increased by 70%. However, averaged only 12% of pupils realized the responsibilities, other that they knew, of the technology experts, engineers, mathematicians. The findings indicated that the social marketing has the impact on raising awareness, however for the achieving the behavioral of pupils’ change the other actors around them, like parents from who they are depended from, need to be analyzed and the social marketing need to be addressed to them as well.