CAREER: Engineering Pathways for Appalachian Youth: Design Principles and Long-term Impacts of School-Industry Partnerships

与工程相关的行业对农村社区可能至关重要，但这些社区的许多青年通常没有教育经验，无法向他们介绍与当地相关的工程职业道路。在这个项目中，来自当地制造公司的工程师将与教育工作者合作，为来自阿巴拉契亚地区的2500多名高中青年共同设计学习创新--跨越校内和校外环境。作为这些学习创新的一部分，行业合作伙伴将向年轻人介绍他们社区中存在的许多工程应用程序。在一系列正式和非正式的空间，如学校和图书馆，青年将有机会利用工程实践和计算机编程技能来解决他们选择的当地问题。纵向研究将确定不同的农村青年群体是否以及如何在从初中到高中毕业后的一段持续时间内发展和保持对工程职业道路的兴趣。该项目将通过产生基于经验的发现来促进知识和实践，这些发现阐明了扩大农村社区青年参与工程职业的创新和响应方法的特点。该项目提交给教师早期职业发展计划(CALEAR)，将产生关于农村青年如何在正式和非正式环境中提供持续的工程活动的背景下发展、保持或转移工程兴趣途径的知识。一个由行业代表和正式和非正式教育工作者组成的指导小组将规划和实施教育创新，使农村青年有机会在整个初中和高中阶段使用工程和计算机编程技能。在这项基于纵向设计的研究中，将进行集群分析，以确定青年研究参与者如何随着时间的推移而相对于工程兴趣的方面进行集群。这项研究将通过描述对工程有不同兴趣的年轻人如何经历不同的工程兴趣途径来促进知识的发展。定性方法，例如对从每个群组中有目的地选择的青年的访谈的分析，将提供关于为什么青年的工程兴趣在沿着工程兴趣途径的轨迹的不同点上发生转移的洞察力。为了培养下一代工程教育研究人员的能力，这一职业项目还将形成工程教育博士课程核心研究方法课程的新内容模块，以及工程教育中基于设计的研究方法完整专题课程的课程材料。这些模块和新课程的内容将与其他博士项目公开分享。该项目由学生和教师创新技术体验计划(ITEST)资助，该计划支持建立对实践、计划要素、背景和过程的理解的项目，这些项目有助于提高学生对科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)以及信息和通信技术(ICT)职业的知识和兴趣。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Engineering-related industries can be vital to rural communities, yet many youth in these communities do not commonly have educational experiences that introduce them to locally relevant engineering career pathways. In this project, engineers from local manufacturing companies will partner with educators to co-design learning innovations—spanning in-school and out-of-school settings—for over 2,500 high school youth from Appalachian counties. As part of these learning innovations, industry partners will introduce youth to the many applications of engineering that are present in their communities. Across a range of formal and informal spaces, such as schools and libraries, the youth will then have opportunities to use engineering practices and computer programming skills to address local issues of their choosing. Longitudinal research will determine whether and how different groups of rural youth develop and maintain interest in engineering career pathways over a sustained duration of time, from middle school through the period after high school graduation. This project will advance knowledge and practice by generating empirically-based findings that illuminate the features of innovative and responsive approaches for broadening participation in engineering careers among youth from rural communities.This project, submitted to the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER), will generate knowledge regarding how rural youth develop, maintain, or shift engineering interest pathways in the context of sustained engineering activities provided across formal and informal settings. A steering group comprised of industry representatives and formal and informal educators will plan and implement educational innovations in which rural youth have opportunities to use engineering and computer programming skills throughout their middle and high school years. In this longitudinal design-based research, cluster analyses will be conducted to determine how the youth research participants cluster relative to aspects of engineering interest over time. This research will advance knowledge by characterizing how youth with varying levels of interest in engineering may experience different engineering interest pathways. Qualitative methods, such as analyses of interviews with purposively selected youth from each of the clusters, will provide insights as to why shifts in engineering interest occurred at different points in the youths’ trajectories along engineering interest pathways. In order to build capacity among the next generation of researchers in engineering education, this CAREER project will also result in the formation of new content modules for core research methods courses in engineering education doctoral programs as well as curriculum materials for a full special topics course on design-based research methods in engineering education. Content from these modules and the new course will be openly shared with other doctoral programs. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.