-level skills that are fostered in test-driven curricula and expand to multi-leveled solutions and organized collections of facts andrelations among concepts 7, 13.Our engineering design based approach to teaching content and developing problem solving skilldictates a new role for the teacher as well. Teachers must shift from an evaluative perspective toan interpretive one as they move away from guiding students to correct answers and towardemphasizing student exploration and engagement 15. The teachers’ focus should targetencouragement of students’ own reflections on their reasoning and interpretations of problemsituations 7. Contrary to current practices of warning students when they take a wrong step intheir solution efforts, teachers need to
require them to organize a local fair. We expected this toresult in 34 mentored students participating in the 2014-2015 program. This goal was met: in thespring, project teachers (N=17) reported between 0 to 58 students (Med. = 9) participating inS&E fairs at their school. Teachers reported mentoring between 0 to 47 students (most rangedfrom 2-4, Med. = 3). Excluding the teacher who reported 47 mentees, this leads to a total numberof 51 students who were mentored this year. Although this result was encouraging, the studentsmentored did not reflect school diversity to the extent that the program had hoped. Table 2 shows the characteristics of students in the class, who completed fair projects,and who were mentored. Underrepresented
75.7 81.1 70.3 78.4 64.9 Results show that engineering disciplines which were covered during the program recordedhigher numbers of mentions after the program. Prior to the program, only three out of thirty-seven students made mention about industrial engineering, but that number increased to twenty-six at the end of the program. The results reflect the increase in student exposure to otherengineering disciplines beyond any existing prior knowledge. To better assess students’ understanding of each engineering discipline that was covered andtheir ability to distinguish between them, a rating based on a Likert scale was applied to eachstudent response on the same questionnaire based on the following scale definition: • 0 – Student did
Students 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Number of Days Attended Figure 1. Number of days attended by students for the 2015 Engineering Days program.Students’ Perceptions of Disciplines Prior to SessionsIn a written survey, students were asked to reflect on their level of knowledge and
: Harvard University Press. Schön, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner, London: Temple-Smith. Blikstein, P. (2008). Travels in Troy with Freire: Technology as an Agent for Emancipation. In Noguera, P. andTorres, C. A. (Eds.), Paulo Freire: the possible dream. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense.18 Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Herder & Herder. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American EducationResearch Journal, 35, 465-491. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using aqualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-141. B Blikstein, P. (2008). Travels in
ofengineering knowledge available in different communities. This could help substantiate ourclaims. With respect to analyzing specific pre-test questions, future work might include an itemanalysis to examine student responses. The sole focus on pre-test scores prevented aninvestigation on the curriculums ability to overcome or address the negative impacts of studentsand school level factors.AcknowledgementThis work was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation DLR 0822261.Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are thoseof the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Wealso acknowledge Dr. Yukiko Maeda, Dr. Monica Cardella, and Dr. Heidi Diefes
of the teacherworkshops and corresponding student Discovery Weekends is that these teachers, with assistancefrom the university project team, will guide their students through the same content during theacademic year. The culminating event for the academic year project will be a design competition..Acknowledgement and DisclaimerSupport for this work was partially provided by the National Science Foundation under AwardNumber IIA-1348314. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressedin this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.Bibliography1. National Academy of Engineering. Rising Above the Gathering Storm, The National Academies Press, 20072. National Academy of
requirements.ConclusionIn conclusion, public educational institutions are responsible for educating students in a safe andeffective environment. Across the US, the number of female students engaging in PLTW doesnot reflect the population as a whole. Therefore, women will continue to be underrepresented inthese programs unless measures are taken. Offering all-female PLTW cohorts have proven theirsuccess to attract and retain more female students. Though the evidence is clear, all-femalePLTW cohorts are slow to be adopted. There is a fear that single-sex education in a mixedsetting gives preferential treatment and an unfair advantage to some students. However, withoutthese interventions, the representation of women in PLTW and engineering programs willincrease
demographics, features of thelearning environment, nature of the learning activity, and the manner in which researchersindexed their findings. After one last read-through, we further refined the thematic headings tomost accurately reflect their respective studies, in addition to combining redundant themes—ultimately leading to the maturation and finalization of the six themes that constitute the basis ofour review.6(The forthcoming subsections present specific exemplary studies that are representative of theirrespective theme. For summaries of the cited articles and additional exemplary studies, refer toAppendix B).Theme 1: Substantiating the General Benefits of Educational Robots (N=17) To understand research pertaining to educational robots
pursue engineering. Figure 4 details the responses students provided. Somestudents selected multiple categories, and Figure 4 depicts the percentage each category wasselected by 37 participants. Here, it is again clear that altruistic tendencies are a majorcontributing factor to the female students’ desire to pursue engineering, in agreement withprevious literature. It also appears that students’ interests played a major role in their decision topursue engineering. This finding may reflect students’ desire to choose careers that arepersonally meaningful, which has also been demonstrated in literature as a relevant factor infemale students’ career decisions.14 Figure 4: Percentage of participants’ motivation to become
their experience.Summary and “Next STEPS”The reconstruction of the STEPS program was essential to recruit underrepresented students. Thenew format was well received and shows great promise. Key lessons learned in delivering thenew curriculum and key lessons learned in extending the population participating in the informalengineering outreach program will be incorporated in successive offerings of the program. Therevamped 2015 STEPS offering follows a 2014 STEPS offering in which the content anddelivery of STEPS was significantly updated to reflect current pre-college science andengineering education research. Specifically, engineering design, engineering practices,engineering habits of mind, and best practices for engineering career exploration
, adjustments were made to the questionnaires and later to the learningoutcomes to reflect the content of each camp theme..The structure and basic nature of the questions used in our questionnaires were initially based onour learning outcomes, feedback offered by our experts, and the research literature. Prior to the2013 camp, initial (pre-) and concluding (post-) questionnaires were piloted among a focus groupof five youths representing the age range of camp participants. The two goals of this focus groupwere to ensure that questions were not too easy or too challenging for the intended age group andto determine whether the students understood what was being asked of them. The focus grouprevealed valuable information regarding survey instructions
-reporting in the categories of “not at all” and “not verywell”. These observed differences reflect existing findings in the fear of failure literature. Table 4. Chi-Square Analysis of Fear of Failure Test: How well can you cope with doing poorly on a test? Column Very Row Not at all Not very well Neutral Somewhat Well Male Obs 25 138 194 295 210 Exp 30.3 145.9 196.2 287.9 201.7 Column % 2.90