Integration of Engineering Design and Life Science: Investigating the influence of an Intervention on Student Interest and Motivation in STEM Fields

本项目将探索将工程设计、实践和思考融入中学生命科学课程，同时为学生提供培养对生命和生物科学的知识和兴趣的机会。该项目将具体满足创建、实施和评估一种模式干预的需要，该模式干预将促进在STEM领域建立和保留代表人数不足的少数群体的知识库。具体地说，该项目将与来自当地两家学校公司的中学科学教师、STEM大学教职员工和本科生，以及来自少数族裔工程项目、未来工程师办公室和工程项目中的女性的大学外展协调员合作。通过这一联合努力，这两家为农村社区服务不足、文化多样化和社会经济困难的学生提供服务的学校组织将获得广泛的支持，让36名教师和3000名学生参与将生命科学与工程设计相结合的课程。探索研究K-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具(RMT)，显著提高K-12学龄前学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)方面的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供理论和经验证明。该项目将采用混合方法研究设计，结合定性和定量方法进行数据收集和分析。研究小组将通过使用分层线性建模进行量化分析，以确定将生命科学与工程设计和思维相结合对学生学习生命科学概念和对生命和生物科学的兴趣的影响程度。定性的方法，包括话语分析，将被用来更深入地挖掘学生对目标生命科学概念的学习。通过这项研究，该项目将推进基于证据的学习理解，增强学生生命科学学习的理论模型，并利用教师在K-12科学课堂工程整合的有效方法方面的专业知识，融合和扩展以往研究的成功。具体来说，概念评估、兴趣调查、课堂话语录音、学生人工制品(例如，设计报告)、访谈和课堂观察将被用作数据来源。该项目的成果将推动建立和留住STEM领域任职人数不足的少数群体的知识基础。LIFE STEM重点设计任务将通过在线同行评议的数字图书馆进行传播，可在美国和其他地区使用。除了本网站上基于设计的任务；干预模式的结果将通过电子和印刷媒体传播，向在提高学生对STEM的学习和兴趣方面发挥关键作用的研究人员、教育工作者、管理人员和政策制定者介绍扩大STEM参与的途径。

This project will investigate the integration of engineering design, practices, and thinking into middle school life science curriculum while providing opportunities for students to foster knowledge of and increase interest in life and biosciences. The project will specifically respond to the need to create, implement, and evaluate a model intervention that will advance the knowledge base for establishing and retaining underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. Specifically, the project will partner with middle school science teachers from two local school corporations, STEM university faculty members and undergraduate engineering students, and university-based outreach coordinators from a minorities engineering program, the office of future engineers, and women in engineering program. Through this combined effort, both school corporations that serve underserved, culturally diverse, and socioeconomically disadvantaged students in rural communities; will have broad-based support for engaging 36 teachers and 3000 students in integrated life science with engineering design. The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.The project will employ a mixed methods research design incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches for data collection and analyses. The research team will conduct quantitative analyses by using Hierarchical Linear Modeling to determine the extent to which integrating life science with engineering design and thinking impact student learning of life science concepts and interest in life and biosciences. Qualitative approaches, including discourse analysis, will be used to delve deeper into student learning of the targeted life science concepts. Through this research, the project will advance evidence-based understanding of learning, enhance the theoretical models of student life science learning, and merge and extend the successes of previous studies by using the faculty expertise in effective approaches in engineering integration in K-12 science classrooms. Specifically, concept assessments, interest surveys, recordings of classroom discourse, student artifacts (e.g., design reports), interviews, and classroom observations will be used as data sources. Outcomes from the project will advance the knowledge base for establishing and retaining underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The life STEM focused design tasks will be disseminated through an online peer-reviewed digital library available for use across the U.S. and beyond. Along with the design-based tasks on this website; results from the intervention model will be disseminated through electronic and print media to inform researchers, educators, administrators, and policy makers who play critical roles in enhancing student learning of and interest in STEM, about pathways to broadening participation in STEM.