Strengthening the STEM Pipeline for Elementary School African Americans, Hispanics, and Girls by Scaling Up Summer Engineering Experiences

这是全国黑人工程师协会（NSBE）、弗吉尼亚理工大学和普渡大学之间的一项合作提案，提交给学生和教师创新技术经验成功项目扩展和传播链（ITEST）计划。它旨在扩大nsbe支持的项目“儿童暑期工程体验”的实施范围，从2016年的14个地点扩大到2019年的31个地点；从2015年的3825名三年级到五年级的非裔美国人、西班牙裔和女学生，增加到三年内全国累计27000名。自2007年该项目启动以来，到2019年，将有4.2万名学生受益。该项目将推动ITEST项目的努力，更好地理解和促进实践，提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学（STEM）领域追求职业的动机和能力，让他们参与暑期项目，由大学导师和教师领导，以团队为基础的工程设计项目。该项目将使用“A World in Motion”，这是一门由汽车工程师协会（Society of Automotive Engineers）开发的面向中小学生的工程课程，此外还有其他将在各个站点整合的STEM课程。参与者将体验应用工程和计算机编程的学习机会，包括工程原理和相关的数学和科学概念和实践。在扩大该项目的同时，合作伙伴关系中的研究人员将调查促进或限制其实施的背景因素，以开发出具有在各种学习环境中使用潜力的原型。因此，这项工作的总体假设将是组织环境能够、抑制和塑造学生的经历，并因此影响他们的结果。这三个研究问题将是：(1)对于每个站点和所有站点，学生在stem相关的学术和职业认同、概念知识、人际关系和人际交往技能方面的变化是什么？(2)学生的学业动机（即授权、有用、成功、兴趣、关怀）与其stem相关的学术和职业认同、概念知识、人际交往和人际交往技能之间的关系是什么？(3)组织情境因素如何影响学生的经历和结果？为了解决第一个问题，结果测量将以前测后测的形式进行，以确定学生在项目过程中与stem相关的结果的变化。为了解决第二个研究问题，该项目将使用多层建模来合并特定地点的上下文变量。为了解决第三个研究问题，该项目将采用多案例研究方法来调查每年各地点可用资源和实施策略的变化。通过多种数据收集方法，本研究将捕捉不同地点的影响因素及其与学生经历和结果的关系。一个由工程教育、工程推广计划和研究领域的学者和实践者组成的咨询小组将监督项目的进展和独立的评估机制。外部评估人员将对项目进行形成性和总结性评估。这一努力的关键成果将是一个以研究为基础、经过实地测试的模式，以提高非裔美国人、西班牙裔和女性学生在STEM学科方面的成就和参与度。

This is a collaborative proposal among the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Virginia Tech, and Purdue University, submitted to the Successful Project Expansion and Dissemination strand of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. It aims to expand the implementation of a NSBE-supported program, "Summer Engineering Experiences for Kids", from 14 sites in 2016, to 31 by 2019; from 3,825 3rd-5th grade African American, Hispanic, and female students in 2015, to cumulatively 27,000 across the nation over the three-year duration of the project. By 2019, a total of 42,000 students will have been impacted by the program since its inception in 2007. The project will advance efforts of the ITEST program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging them in a summer program through hands-on, team-based engineering design projects led by collegiate mentor-teachers. The project will use "A World in Motion"--an engineering curriculum for elementary and middle school children developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers, in addition to other STEM curricula to be incorporated across sites. Participants will experience applied engineering and computer programming learning opportunities, including engineering principles and related mathematics and science concepts and practices through selected activities. While expanding the program, researchers in the partnership will investigate the contextual factors that facilitate or constrain its implementation in order to develop a prototype with a potential to be used in various learning environments. Thus, the overall hypothesis of the work will be that organizational contexts enable, inhibit, and shape the experiences that students have, and consequently influence their outcomes. The three research questions will be: (1) For each site and across all sites, what is the change in students' STEM-related academic and career identity, conceptual knowledge, and interpersonal and intrapersonal skills?; (2) What is the relationship between students' academic motivation (i.e., empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, caring) and their STEM-related academic and career identity, conceptual knowledge, and interpersonal and intrapersonal skills?; and (3) How do organizational context factors influence students' experiences and outcomes? To address the first question, outcome measures will be administered in a pretest-posttest format to identify changes in students' STEM-related outcomes over the course of the program. To address the second research question, the project will use multilevel modeling to incorporate site-specific contextual variables. To address the third research question, the project will employ a multi-case study approach to investigate variation in available resources and implementation strategies across sites each year. Through multiple data collection methods, the research will capture the influential contextual factors of different sites and their relationship with students' experiences and outcomes. An advisory panel comprising scholars and practitioners in engineering education, engineering outreach programs, and research will provide oversight of the project's progress and an independent mechanism for evaluation. An external evaluator will conduct both formative and summative aspects of the project. The key outcome of the effort will be a research-informed and field-tested model to increase African American, Hispanic, and female students' achievement and engagement in STEM disciplines.