Increasing Students' Interest in STEM through the Science of Music

为了满足美国的产业和战略需求，美国教育系统需要让更多的年轻人参与STEM职业道路。特别是，有必要吸纳低收入和少数族裔学生，他们在STEM劳动力中的代表性不足。让学生参与科学技术的一个基本战略是创造与学生的文化和激情相联系的教育体验。青少年对音乐有广泛的兴趣，音乐和STEM之间有着广泛的联系，特别是音乐声音、波的物理和信号处理技术之间的关系。为了提高青少年对STEM的兴趣，该项目的团队一直在利用这些联系开展外联活动，并为学生创建了一套流行的网络应用程序来分析和创造声音。事实证明，参与包括网络应用程序在内的体验可以提高学生对STEM的兴趣和从事STEM职业的意向。通过这一项目，该小组寻求将这些外展活动正式化为可由教师独立实施的课程。为此，该团队将与圣地亚哥县教育办公室合作，开发以网络应用为中心的课程，并解决8年级的科学标准。此外，该团队将为教师提供深入的专业发展，并分析课程对教师和学生的影响。与老师和学生合作将帮助团队改进课程，最大限度地提高学生的参与度。其他合作伙伴包括圣地亚哥联合学区、康普顿联合学区和斯威特沃特联合高中区，教师将从那里招聘，以及劳伦斯科学堂，它将在研究设计和分析方面与团队合作。该项目的目标是增加学生对波浪物理的知识和对科学的参与，特别是，该项目寻求1)开发和反复改进将音乐物理与科学标准联系起来的课程，2)创建教师专业发展计划和支持课程的机制，以便为低收入和代表性不足的学生服务的教师成功实施该课程，3)调查项目参与对学生和教师的影响。为了实现这些目标，该团队将着手一项基于设计的研究计划，分析教师如何实施这些活动，通过调查、焦点小组和观察收集数据，并进行统计分析。教师参与在STEM中的作用在文献中很少受到关注，特别是教师对STEM学科的参与如何传递到学生参与中。通过将音乐科学作为教师和学生的一门引人入胜的学科，这个项目将有助于更好地理解教师参与与学生参与的关系。在更广泛的层面上，这个项目将有助于理解音乐整合的潜力，以培养对STEM的兴趣。深入的专业发展将惠及80名在主要低收入和代表性不足的社区工作的教师，以可持续的方式每年为大约8000名学生提供服务；该计划有可能对从事STEM职业生涯的代表性不足的学生人数产生重大影响。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。

To fulfill the country’s industrial and strategic needs, the US education system needs to engage more youth in STEM professional paths. In particular, there is a need to engage low-income and minority students, who are underrepresented in the STEM workforce. A fundamental strategy for engaging students in science and technology is to create educational experiences that connect to the students’ culture and passions. Music is of widespread interest among adolescents, and the connections between music and STEM are vast, in particular, the relationships between musical sound, the physics of waves, and signal processing technology. With the goal of increasing adolescent interest in STEM, the projects’ team has been carrying out outreach activities leveraging those connections, and has created a set of popular web applications for students to analyze and create sound. Participating in an experience including the web applications has been shown to increase students’ interest in STEM and intention to pursue a STEM career. Through this project, the team seeks to formalize these outreach activities into a curriculum that can be implemented independently by teachers. For this, the team will partner with the San Diego County Office of Education to develop a curriculum centered on the web applications and addressing the science standards for 8th grade. Further, the team will offer in-depth professional development to teachers and analyze the impact of the curriculum on teachers and students. Working with teachers and students will help the team improve the curriculum to maximize the students’ engagement. Additional partners include the San Diego Unified School District, Compton Unified School District, and Sweetwater Unified High School District, from where teachers will be recruited, and the Lawrence Hall of Science, which will be collaborating with the team on the research design and analysis.The goal of this project is to increase students’ knowledge of the physics of waves and engagement with science, in particular, the project seeks to 1) develop and iteratively improve curriculum connecting the physics of music with science standards, 2) create a teacher professional development program and mechanisms of support for the curriculum to be successfully implemented by teachers serving low-income and underrepresented students, and 3) investigate the effect of program participation in students and teachers. To achieve these objectives, the team will embark on a design-based research program, analyzing how the activities are being implemented by teachers, collecting data through surveys, focus groups, and observations, and performing statistical analyses. The role of teacher engagement in STEM has received little attention in the literature, in particular how teacher engagement with a STEM subject can be transmitted to student engagement. By using the science of music as an engaging subject for both teachers and students, this project will contribute to a better understanding of how teacher engagement relates to student engagement. On a more general level, this project will contribute to understanding the potential of music integration to foster interest in STEM. The in-depth professional development will reach 80 teachers working in predominantly low-income and underrepresented communities, serving approximately 8000 students per year in a sustainable manner; this program has the potential of making a large impact on the number of underrepresented students pursuing a STEM career. 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.