Cultivating Innovative Thinking Skills in STEM Education

该项目旨在通过提高STEM教育中的创新思维技能来服务于国家利益，这对于保持美国在科学和工程领域的全球领导地位至关重要。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地方面发挥着重要作用。鉴于ICCs在高等教育创业和创新生态系统中的增长，该项目将有助于推进理论基础，解释这些体验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。具体而言，拟议的工作将验证基于变革学习理论的理论研究模型，其总体目标是帮助STEM学生对新思想、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在培养创新思维中的作用和过程的理解，项目成果将使icc更好地融入现有的STEM课程，从而帮助更多学生培养创新思维。最后，对吸引不同学生群体进入国际合作中心的策略进行系统调查，将有助于扩大创业和创新生态系统的参与。该项目假定参加国际创新中心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，变得更加开放和批判性思维。为了回答与这一主要假设相关的研究问题，本项目提出了一个综合了变革学习理论和Kern创业工程网络的3c（好奇心、联系、创造价值）框架的研究模型。该项目的研究活动分为五个相互关联的研究重点：(i)通过访谈捕捉学生在国际合作中心的经历；（ii）制定创新思维转化学习量表（TLSIM），评估学生创新思维的转变；（iii）在各种icc和其他体验式学习环境（包括实习和顶点课程）中验证TLSIM；（iv）调查icc属性、学生背景、转型学习过程和学生成绩之间的关系；（五）研究促使不同群体的学生参与国际交流活动的因素。项目成果将产生新的知识，了解icc的不同方面如何促进学生创新思维的转变，从而为提高icc在培养学生能动性和自我效能方面的潜力奠定基础。此外，项目成果将从两个方面帮助提高STEM领域的多样性和包容性。首先，该研究模型的基本假设是，变革经历会导致思维方式的改变，这可以激发有关stem相关活动在吸引更多不同学生方面有效性的新研究。其次，通过强调开放思想是国际合作中心的一项关键成果，项目成果将有助于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传播给STEM教育界。NSF IUSE: EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。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 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.