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共同提交的一份合作提案，提交给学生和教师创新技术经验(ITEST)计划的成功扩展和传播链。它的目标是扩大由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3,825名3-5年级非裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人和女性学生，扩大到项目为期三年的全国累计27,000名学生。到2019年，自2007年启动以来，共有4.2万名学生受到该计划的影响。该项目将推动ITEST项目的努力，以更好地了解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学(STEM)领域追求职业生涯的动机和能力的实践，方法是让学生通过由大学导师领导的动手的、基于团队的工程设计项目来参与暑期项目。该项目将使用由汽车工程师协会开发的面向中小学生的工程课程《运动中的世界》，以及将跨地点整合的其他STEM课程。参与者将通过选定的活动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制约其实施的背景因素，以便开发一个具有在各种学习环境中使用的潜力的原型。因此，这项工作的总体假设是，组织环境能够促进、抑制和塑造学生的体验，从而影响他们的结果。这三个研究问题将是：(1)对于每个地点和所有地点，学生与STEM相关的学术和职业认同、概念知识以及人际和个人内部技能的变化是什么？(2)学生的学业动机(即赋权、有用性、成功、兴趣、关怀)与他们与STEM相关的学术和职业认同、概念知识、人际和内部技能之间的关系是什么？(3)组织背景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纳入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，调查每年各地点现有资源和实施战略的差异。通过多种数据收集方法，本研究将捕捉不同网站的影响语境因素，以及它们与学生体验和结果的关系。一个由工程教育、工程推广计划和研究领域的学者和从业者组成的顾问小组将对项目的进展进行监督，并建立一个独立的评估机制。一名外部评估员将对该项目进行形成性和总结性评价。这一努力的关键成果将是一个经过研究和实地测试的模式，以提高非裔美国人、西班牙裔和女性学生在STEM学科中的成就和参与度。

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.