Cultivating Innovative Thinking Skills in STEM Education

该项目旨在通过提高STEM教育中的创新思维能力来服务于国家利益，这对保持国家在科学和工程领域的全球领导地位非常重要。学生创新竞赛和挑战(ICCs)在激励、教育和为下一代创新者提供培训场所方面发挥着重要作用。鉴于ICC在高等教育创业和创新生态系统中的成长，该项目将有助于推进理论基础，解释这些体验式机会如何培养学生的创新能力和自信，并帮助他们发现自己的局限性和能力。具体地说，拟议的工作将验证基于转型学习理论的理论研究模型，总体目标是帮助STEM学生对新想法、不同身份、社会态度和价值观更加开放，同时使他们能够使用决策工具来评估不同的观点。通过促进STEM教育界对ICC在培养创新思维方面的作用和过程的理解，项目成果将导致ICC更好地整合到现有的STEM课程中，从而帮助更多的学生发展创新思维。最后，对ICC吸引不同学生群体的策略进行系统调查，将有助于扩大对创业和创新生态系统的参与。该项目假设，参与ICC对学生来说是一次变革性的经历，因为他们对自己的创新能力有了更深的自我意识，并变得更加开放和批判性。为了回答与这一主要假设相关的研究问题，该项目提出了一个综合了变革性学习理论和Kern创业工程网络3Cs(好奇心、联系、创造价值)框架的研究模型。该项目的研究活动被组织在五个相互关联的研究主题中：(I)通过访谈获取学生在ICC中的经历；(Ii)开发创新思维变革性学习量表(TLSIM)，以评估学生对创新思维的转变；(Iii)在各种ICC和其他体验式学习环境中验证TLSIM，包括实习和顶峰课程；(Iv)调查ICC属性、学生背景、变革性学习过程和学生结果之间的关系；以及(V)研究激励不同群体学生参与ICC的因素。项目成果将产生关于ICC的不同方面如何促进学生创新思维转变的新知识，从而为提高ICC在建立学生代理能力和自我效能方面的潜力奠定基础。此外，项目成果将通过两种方式帮助增加STEM领域的多样性和包容性。首先，该研究模型的基本假设假设，变革性经历会导致心态变化，这可能会激发关于STEM相关活动在吸引更多不同学生方面的有效性的新研究。第二，通过强调开放心态是ICC的一个关键成果，项目成果将支持增强创业生态系统的多样性、公平性和包容性。项目成果将通过技术会议、工程教育期刊和学术社交网络向STEM教育界传播。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing innovative thinking skills in STEM education, which is important for sustaining the nation’s global leadership in science and engineering. Student innovation competitions and challenges (ICCs) play an important role in motivating, educating, and providing training grounds for the next generation of innovators. Given the growth of ICCs in higher education entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems, this project will help advance the theoretical basis for explaining how these experiential opportunities build students’ competence and self-confidence in innovation and help them discover their limitations and capabilities. Specifically, the proposed work will validate a theoretical research model based on Transformative Learning Theory with the overarching goal of helping STEM students become more open to new ideas, different identities, social attitudes, and values while also enabling them with decision-making tools to evaluate alternative viewpoints. By advancing the STEM education community’s understanding of the roles and processes of ICCs in cultivating an innovation mindset, the project outcomes will lead to better integration of ICCs within existing STEM curricula, thereby helping more students to develop an innovative mindset. Finally, a systematic investigation of strategies to attract a diverse group of students to ICCs will facilitate broadening participation in entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems.The project postulates that participating in ICCs is a transformative experience for students as they gain deeper self-awareness of their capabilities in innovation and become more open and critically minded. To answer research questions related to this main hypothesis, the project puts forward a research model that synthesizes the Transformative Learning Theory and Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network’s 3Cs (Curiosity, Connections, Creating Value) Framework. The project’s research activities are organized in five interconnected research thrusts: (i) capturing students’ experiences in ICCs through interviews; (ii) developing the Transformative Learning Scale for the Innovation Mindset (TLSIM) to assess transformations in students’ mindset toward innovation; (iii) validating TLSIM in various ICCs and other experiential learning settings including internships and capstone courses; (iv) investigating the relationships among attributes of ICCs, student backgrounds, transformative learning processes, and student outcomes; and (v) studying the factors that motivate diverse groups of students to participate in ICCs. The project outcomes will generate new knowledge about how different aspects of ICCs can facilitate transformations in students’ mindsets toward innovation, thereby laying the groundwork to improve ICCs’ potential for building student agency and self-efficacy. In addition, the project outcomes will help to increase diversity and inclusion in STEM fields in two ways. First, the research model’s underlying hypothesis, which posits that transformative experiences lead to mindset changes, can stimulate new research on the effectiveness of STEM-related activities in attracting more diverse students. Second, by emphasizing open‐mindedness as a key outcome of ICCs, the project outcomes will support enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Project results will be disseminated to the STEM education community through technical conferences, engineering education journals, and academic social networks. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.