Community-Engaged Engineering Interventions with Appalachian Youth

该项目将推进“面向学生和教师的创新技术体验”（ITEST）项目的努力，以更好地理解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程、科学和技术领域追求职业的动机和能力的实践。通过提供实证研究结果和/或研究工具，帮助了解K-12学生和教师的哪些模型和干预措施最有可能提高未来STEM和与STEM相关的密集型劳动力的能力。本项目的重点是在三个农村和阿巴拉契亚社区的中学生中协作设计、实施和研究以经常性工程为重点的干预措施。干预措施将扩大中学生的参与和对工程是什么、工程师做什么的理解，并有助于消除这样的观念，即工程很难，需要热爱数学和科学。该项目有可能招募到未来的工程师，因为他们生活在阿巴拉契亚农村社区，所以他们不知道自己的能力和职业前景。扩大对工程的参与仍然是一个关键的国家优先事项，这个项目有可能防止工程教育和职业道路上聪明有能力的学生的流失。与学校教育工作者和行业专家的拟议合作将建立一个开源工程拓展课程（iFixit），并促进整个学年的定期课堂干预。该研究设计能够跨时间和个案地点背景对参与者和干预措施进行检查，其中在个人层面收集数据以寻找随时间的变化，同时将分析对社区层面影响的个案和跨个案检查。目标将是在两个目标上取得有意义的成果：目标1-提高青少年对和准备不同的工程相关的职业和教育途径是一个取决于协同设计的目标和促进组每月干预在课程设置和目标2 -构建学校可持续能力集成工程技能和知识的多元化工程有关的职业和教育途径,旨在与关注教师个体层面的影响力改变制造商以及在社区范围内集中关于可持续的跨部门合作。该项目将在弗吉尼亚州三个类似的农村社区每学年提供六次校内课程活动（干预）：1)贝德福德县公立学校、2)贾尔斯县公立学校和3)史密斯县公立学校。所有的案例地点都位于农村地区或靠近阿巴拉契亚地区，那里的工业有限，特别是先进的工业使学生、家长和教育工作者接触到工程职业。在这个项目中，利用当地的专业知识尤为重要，因为家庭压力、文化环境以及对当地稳定工作的偏好在阿巴拉契亚青年选择职业的过程中发挥了相当大的作用。

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 producing empirical findings and/or research tools that contribute to knowledge about which models and interventions with K-12 students and teachers are most likely to increase capacity in the STEM and STEM-cognate intensive workforce of the future. This project is focused on a collaborative design, implementation, and study of recurrent engineering-focused interventions with middle school youth in three rural and Appalachian communities. The intervention efforts will broaden middle schoolers' participation and understanding of what engineering is, what engineers do, and help dispel the notion that it is hard and requires a love of mathematics and science. The project has the potential for recruiting future engineers who are unaware of their abilities and career possibilities because of the rural Appalachian communities in which they live. Broadening participation in engineering remains a critical national priority and this project has the potential to prevent the loss of smart capable students from engineering education and career pathways. The proposed partnership with school educators and industry experts will established an open-source engineering outreach curriculum (iFixit) and facilitate regular in-class interventions throughout the academic year. The study design enables the examination of the participants and interventions across time and case-site contexts, where the data are collected at individual-level to look for changes over time while within-case and cross-case examination of the community-level impacts will be analyzed. The objective will be to achieve meaningful results of the two goals: Goal 1- to increase youth awareness of, interest in, and readiness for diverse engineering related careers and educational pathways which is a goal that hinges on a collaboratively designed and facilitated set of monthly interventions in a curricular setting and Goal 2- to build capacity for schools to sustainably integrate engineering skills and knowledge of diverse engineering-related careers and educational pathways aimed at both the individual-level with a focus on teachers as influential change makers as well as at the community-level focused on sustainable cross-sector collaborations. The project will offer in-school curriculum activities (interventions) six times per academic year in three similar rural communities in Virginia: 1) Bedford County Public Schools 2) Giles County Public Schools, and 3) Smyth County Public Schools. All case sites are located in rural areas or near Appalachia where there is limited industry, particularly advanced industry exposes students, parents, and educators to engineering careers. Leveraging local expertise is especially critical in this project because family pressures, cultural milieu, and preference for local, stable jobs play considerable roles in how Appalachian youth choose possible careers.