Career and Technical Education as a Foundation to Support Postsecondary Transitions in STEM for Students with Disabilities

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The "Career and Technical Education as a Foundation to Support Postsecondary Transitions in STEM for Students with Disabilities" award is a Broadening Participation Research project designed to investigate non-traditional and less formal educational pathways, specifically career and technical education (CTE) experiences, for high school students with disabilities pursuing postsecondary STEM degrees and careers.The research team will examine three forms of CTE in high school, specifically those identified by the 2006 Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, considered critical in supporting the school-to-postsecondary transition of students moving toward STEM college majors and, ultimately, STEM careers: (1) STEM course-taking, (2) school-based employment programs, and (3) labor force participation. STEM course-taking includes both traditional and applied STEM courses that impart quantitative concepts, logic, and problem solving skills to students in a structured classroom setting. School-based employment experiences include activities organized and sponsored by schools that promote career development, such as cooperative education, internships, and career mentoring. Labor force participation includes paid work done for an employer.There are five specific research questions.1. What CTE experiences are provided to students with disabilities during high school?2. Do CTE experiences in high school improve the odds of students with disabilities transitioning into a STEM field of study in college? If so, which experiences are most beneficial?3. Conditional on having attended college, do CTE experiences in high school improve the odds of students with disabilities transitioning into a STEM profession after college? If so, which experiences are most beneficial?4. Do answers to the preceding four questions differ by specific disability classification of the individual student?5. Are these results generalizable to multiple nationally-representative datasets?To address these research questions, the research will conduct secondary data analyses of two existing national datasets: the NCES Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97).This project will be evaluated by an independent evaluator, Dr. Vi-Nhuan Le, and will include formative and summative assessments. Results are expected to advance the field's knowledge about the future CTE experiences of students with disabilities pursuing STEM at the postsecondary level.