Preparing High Achieving Urban Students for STEM Careers: Engineers of the Future Program

为城市高成就学生做好 STEM 职业准备：未来工程师计划

• 批准号: 1657111
• 负责人: Troy Smith
• 金额: $ 108万
• 依托单位: Rand Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-02-15 至 2021-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1657111&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Preparing; Achieving; Urban; Students; STEM

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by preparing and interesting high achieving middle school students for advanced math courses in high school and eventually in engineering careers. The project by the Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) and the RAND Corporation is motivated by a clear need in the U.S. to improve the representation of African-American and Latino talent pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. The available data show that the percentage of African Americans among U.S. engineering bachelor's degree recipients has been declining for more than a decade to 3.5% in 2014. Only 1.1% of the nation's black college freshmen were enrolled in engineering programs in 2010. The project being conducted involves enrolling selected high achieving Baltimore students from schools which don't offer Algebra 1 in 8th grade. The project will offer a 6 week summer preparation program to improve their math skills and expose them to STEM careers. The students will then take a Virtual Algebra 1 class once the semester starts. Since mathematics is a key topic for STEM and lack of math skills is likely to limit some students in pursuing STEM careers, the project helps address an important need. The activities in which students will be involved include field trips and weekly seminars. In addition there is a very detailed timeline and assessment plan to measure the outcomes on all key variables. Several local school employees/teachers will be directly involved in the project. This is an advantage since it demonstrates that the project clearly has school support. These teachers will be directly developing/enabling Engineers of the Future. The criteria for selecting participants will include the following: There will be a total of 180 randomly selected, high achieving students from Baltimore City Public Schools, a lower-income urban school district with a high proportion of African-American schoolchildren. The involvement of industry professionals will provides role models for the students, giving them a look at the kind of careers they can obtain if they pursue STEM careers. The three-year project will impact 16 middle school teachers and 180 students. The summer learning is combined with virtual learning during the school year. The project will be a combination of blended classroom instruction, hands-on project-based work, and introductions to various STEM careers via field trips and seminars with professionals. Engineers of the Future will offer 3 summer and 3 academic years of support to city schools using a single K-12 adaptive diagnostic test for reading and mathematics that pinpoints student needs down to the sub-skill level. The project will specifically address gaps in knowledge and contribute to the evidence-based data on successful education programs for promoting STEM education in middle schools, especially those in lower-income, urban school districts with high proportions of African-American schoolchildren. The potential to impact a large number of students by working through Baltimore schools is a major strength of the project. Even though the project focuses on math education, a broad range of STEM careers are involved especially with industry (e.g., with Northrop Grumman). The project examines program artifacts (program materials), semi-structured interviews with program staff, observations of instruction, focus groups with students, questionnaires, surveys and school records which are the kind of data that could be used by other urban school districts. Hence, the essence of the research would provide valuable information and new knowledge of the role virtual learning has when blended with classroom instruction on improving a student's understanding of what is being taught.

该项目将推进学生和教师创新技术体验（ITEST）计划的努力，以更好地理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做法，为高中的高级数学课程和最终的工程职业做好准备。该项目由巴尔的摩城市公立学校（城市学校）和兰德公司发起，其动机是美国明确需要提高非洲裔美国人和拉丁裔人才追求科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）职业的代表性。现有数据显示，美国工程学士学位获得者中非洲裔美国人的比例十多年来一直在下降，2014年降至3.5%。2010年，全国只有1.1%的黑人大学新生就读于工程专业。正在进行的项目包括从八年级不提供代数1的学校招收成绩优秀的巴尔的摩学生。该项目将提供为期6周的暑期准备课程，以提高他们的数学技能，并让他们接触STEM职业。学生将采取虚拟代数1类一旦学期开始。由于数学是STEM的一个关键主题，缺乏数学技能可能会限制一些学生从事STEM职业，因此该项目有助于解决一个重要的需求。学生将参与的活动包括实地考察和每周研讨会。此外，还有一个非常详细的时间轴和评估计划，以衡量所有关键变量的结果。一些当地学校的雇员/教师将直接参与该项目。这是一个优势，因为它表明该项目显然得到了学校的支持。这些教师将直接开发/启用未来的工程师。选择参与者的标准将包括以下内容：总共将有180名随机选择的来自巴尔的摩市公立学校的成绩优异的学生，这是一个低收入的城市学区，非洲裔美国学生比例很高。行业专业人士的参与将为学生提供榜样，让他们看看如果他们追求STEM职业，他们可以获得什么样的职业。这个为期三年的项目将影响16名中学教师和180名学生。暑期学习与学年期间的虚拟学习相结合。该项目将是混合课堂教学，动手项目为基础的工作，并通过实地考察和研讨会与专业人士介绍各种STEM职业的组合。未来的工程师将为城市学校提供3个夏季和3个学年的支持，使用单一的K-12自适应诊断测试进行阅读和数学测试，将学生的需求精确到子技能水平。该项目将专门解决知识差距问题，并为成功的教育计划提供基于证据的数据，以促进中学的STEM教育，特别是在非洲裔美国人学生比例较高的低收入城市学区。通过巴尔的摩学校的工作来影响大量学生的潜力是该项目的一个主要优势。尽管该项目的重点是数学教育，但广泛的STEM职业涉及，特别是工业（例如，Northrop Grumman）。该项目检查程序工件（程序材料），与程序工作人员的半结构化访谈，教学观察，与学生的焦点小组，问卷调查，调查和学校记录，这些都是其他城市学区可以使用的数据。因此，研究的本质将提供有价值的信息和新的知识的角色虚拟学习时，与课堂教学相结合，提高学生的理解正在教什么。