Strategies: Catalyzing Inclusive STEM Experiences All Year Round (CISTEME365)

该项目将推进“面向学生和教师的创新技术体验”（ITEST）项目的工作，更好地理解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学（STEM）领域追求职业的动机和能力的实践，为中学生准备高等科学和数学课程以及工程职业做好准备。该项目旨在促进STEM领域的包容性、多样性、公平性以及学习经验和职业机会。它为初高中学生提供了全年沉浸在STEM活动中的机会和资源。该项目已经确定辅导员是一种尚未开发的资源。辅导员作为非正式学习机会和STEM职业教育路径的看门人，发挥着关键作用。该项目还使多个学校利益相关者能够有效地为学生准备STEM专业/职业。这一努力将拓宽通往高要求、高工资、高技能STEM工作的道路，从而改善我国技术劳动力的多样性，从而造福社会。该项目是一个三支柱干预策略，24所合作学校参加了一个为期10天（80小时）的综合暑期学院，为团队（每个团队由一名辅导员、一名教师和第三名学校利益相关者组成）提供知识、态度、行为和资源，使其成为有效的STEM倡导者。该项目将促进学年网络改进社区（NIC），在进行研究以更好地理解和解决STEM中潜在的包容性、多样性、公平性和准入问题时，将学校内部和学校之间的团队联系起来。NIC流程将允许pi与团队合作，实施校外STEM俱乐部，为整个学年的1,000名学生提供独特的工程设计，基于项目和其他实践经验。战略项目将处理下列问题。哪些涉及新兴技术的学习经验能有效地使不同的学生群体获得对这些技术的熟悉和相关能力，哪些因素影响学习经验的结果？哪些因素和关键经历有效地提高了STEM职业的意识，追求STEM职业的动机，以及坚持接受通往这些职业的教育途径，特别是在代表性不足的人群中？有哪些策略可以让校长、指导顾问和其他学校系统行政领导有效地促进学生和教师采用和有效使用支持STEM学习和职业意识的实践和技术？哪些因素影响这些策略的结果？该项目的基本目标是使女性、未被充分代表的少数族裔和/或低收入的初高中学生能够参与持续、密集、动手的STEM学习体验，从而建立技术知识和能力，并为不同的STEM职业提供见解。该项目将使学生能够参与其中，使这种经历的影响持续下去，将其与学校的其他努力相结合，并有意吸引代表性不足的学生。项目团队为夏令营提供了重要的基础设施，并建立了广泛的合作学校、地区、职业和技术教育联盟网络，以协助实施和制度化战略。采用混合方法，项目团队将检查项目在学生技术技能和自我效能的发展以及辅导员和其他团队成员的实践方面的有效性。每个课外时间的STEM俱乐部都将配备设备、软件，并使用已出版的课程材料来做具有挑战性但适合年龄的项目，这些项目教授实验设计、模拟和数字电路、信号、电磁学、通信、控制、电力和能源、显微镜、纳米技术、光子学、算法和编程等基本概念。奖学金将提供228名学生参加伊利诺伊大学现有的STEM夏令营，学生可以在高科技教学实验室的大学教师的指导下探索不同的STEM专业并发展技术技能。项目团队将调查学年STEM俱乐部、大学主办的夏令营和包括辅导员和教师在内的NIC的协同效应。这项研究具有潜在的变革性，因为它为提高学生对STEM的兴趣、自我效能感、能力和途径创造了一个新的范例。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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 middle school students for advanced science and math courses, and for engineering careers. The project seeks to promote inclusion, diversity, equity, and access for learning experiences and careers in STEM. It provides middle and high school students opportunities and resources to immerse themselves in STEM activities throughout the year. The project has identified guidance counselors as an untapped resource. Counselors play a pivotal role as gatekeepers to informal learning opportunities and to educational paths into STEM careers. The project also enables multiple school stakeholders to effectively prepare students for a STEM major/career. This effort will benefit society by widening the path to high-demand, high-wage, high-skill STEM jobs and thereby improve the diversity of our nation's technical workforce. The project is a 3-pillar intervention strategy with 24 partner schools participating in a comprehensive 10-day (80 hour) summer institute to equip teams (each consisting of a counselor, a teacher, and a third school stakeholder) with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and resources to act as effective STEM advocates. The project will facilitate a school-year networked improvement community (NIC) that connects teams within and across schools as research is being conducted to better understand and address underlying inclusion, diversity, equity, and access issues in STEM. The NIC process will allow the PIs to work with the teams to implement out-of-school-time STEM clubs to provide unique engineering design, project-based, and other hands-on experiences to 1,000 students throughout the school year. The Strategies project will address the following questions. What learning experiences involving emerging technologies effectively enable diverse populations of students gain familiarity and relevant competencies with these technologies, and what factors influence the outcomes of the learning experiences? What factors and key experiences effectively promote awareness of STEM careers, motivation to pursue a STEM career, and persistence in undertaking education pathways to those careers, particularly among students from underrepresented populations? What strategies to engage principals, guidance counselors, and other school system administrative leaders effectively promote student and teacher adoption and effective use of practices and technologies that support STEM learning and career awareness, and what factors influence the outcomes of those strategies? The fundamental project goal is to enable female, underrepresented minority, and/or low-income middle and high school students to participate in sustained, intensive, hands-on STEM learning experiences that build technical knowledge and ability and that offer insights into different STEM careers. The project will enable students access to participate, make the impact of such experiences endure, integrate them with other school efforts, and purposely engage underrepresented students. The project team has significant infrastructure for the summer camps and an extensive network of partner schools, districts, and career and technical education consortia to assist in implementing and institutionalizing the strategies. Using a mixed-methods approach, the project team will examine program effectiveness on the development of technical skills and self-efficacy in students and on the practices of counselors and other team members. Each out-of-school-time STEM club will be outfitted with equipment, software, and using published curriculum materials to do challenging yet age-appropriate projects that teach basic concepts in design of experiment, analog and digital circuits, signals, electromagnetics, communications, controls, power and energy, microscopy, nanotechnology, photonics, algorithms, and programming. Scholarships will be provided to 228 students to attend existing STEM summer camps at the University of Illinois, where the students can explore different STEM majors and develop technical skills under the guidance of university faculty in high-tech instructional labs. The project team will investigate the synergistic effects of school year STEM clubs, university-hosted summer camps, and a NIC that includes counselors and teachers. The research is potentially transformative because it creates a new paradigm for advancing students' interest, self-efficacy, abilities, and pathways in STEM.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.