Intervention Strategies that can Support Young Adults’ Transition into Positive Fatherhood: Implications for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education

This study sought the intervention strategies that can support young adults' transition into positive fatherhood and its implications for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education (STEME). The study was anchored on the theoretical framework of Coleman's (1988) social capital theory. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study using a sample of 300 university students in Eastern Cape-based University. A 24-item questionnaire titled “Fatherhood intervention strategies” was used for data collection. The instrument was face validated by test development experts and had a reliability index of 0.71 using the Cronbach alpha method. Mean and analysis of variance were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the intervention strategies that can support young adults' transition to positive fatherhood include: identifying all children abandoned by their fathers early, rehabilitating and providing assistance to fathers in need, offering moral lessons at government-designated centers to children abandoned by their fathers, putting in place special government agency to organize such moral lessons, Government making policy that all fathers should live with their children until they turn 18 years, among others. Further analysis showed that the race and age of the students had no significant influence on their responses. This finding implicates STEME career in that there will be an increased students' career interest in STEME when fathers are adequately supported to train their children. The researchers therefore, recommended that these strategies should be properly implemented by the South African government to engage fathers actively in the education of their children.