Youth Motivation

Apr | 2016

Youth Motivation 2.0

Since its inception, the ITEST program has funded projects developing strategies, tools, and models focused on increasing students' awareness of STEM and STEM careers and motivating students to pursue the appropriate education pathways for those fields. ITEST projects often have a focus on social learning outcomes and on learning environment conditions that enhance learners' motivation, mindset, identity and interest in STEM learning and careers. Recently, resilience, persistence, or "grit" have been associated with students' continued motivation to pursue STEM majors and careers. To learn more, browse the recent events, instruments, and publications below on the topic of Youth Motivation in ITEST projects.

RESOURCES

STELAR Webinar: Youth Motivation Webinar - Findings from ITEST

(Event) This webinar focused on current findings from the ITEST program related to youth motivation and STEM career development. Participants heard from ITEST projects working across the U.S. to learn specific strategies for as well as successes and challenges with fostering and assessing youth motivation and STEM career interest.

ITEST Webinar: Youth Motivation, Interest, and Identity and STEM Career Development

(Event) During this webinar, participants heard from ITEST projects working across the U.S. to learn specific frameworks for fostering and assessing youth motivation and STEM career interest. This webinar discussed recent developments in theory and measurement of youth interest in STEM careers. The purpose of the webinar was to share Principal Investigator knowledge of measurement techniques, analysis problems, and theories of youth motivation.

Attitudes, Skills & GRIT, Oh My!: A Research Evaluation Working Group Conversation

(Event) Take a quick tour through the scales and items that have worked (and not worked) for a recent ITEST evaluation conducted with middle and high school students. Then look ahead to instruments we are considering for a new ITEST project that begins data collection with elementary school students this fall.

Fostering youth motivation and persistence: A presentation from the 2014 Masschusetts STEM Summit

(Blog) The STELAR center organized a panel at the Summit to highlight findings from the ITEST program related to motivating students to pursue and persist in STEM education and career pathways.

Grit Scale

(Instruments) The Grit Scale is a set of measures designed to measure trait-level perseverance and passion for long-term goals. The Grit Scale comes in a 12-item form and an 8-item form (the Short Grit Scale, or Grit-S), and the 8-item form has been modified for use with children as well. All items are measured on a 5-point Likert scale.

Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)

(Instruments) The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was developed to measure the types of learning strategies and academic motivation used by college students.

Advancing Research on Youth Motivation in STEM: A Report on the NSF ITEST Convening

(Publications) This report outlines the discussions and outcomes of the Advancing Research on Youth Motivation in STEM Convening held at Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA) in September 2011.

Interest-Driven Learning Among Middle School Youth in an Out-of-School STEM Studio

(Publications) The concept of connected learning proposes that youth leverage individual interest and social media to drive learning with an academic focus.

Longitudinal analysis of cognitive constructs fostered by STEM activities for middle school students

(Publications) The purpose of this study was to determine whether the changes found to occur pre- to post intervention in students' cognitive structures continued to persist two years later.

Motivation and Culturally Responsive Technology for COMPUGIRLS

(Publications) Insights from the COMPUGIRLS project have provided significant evidence that lack of motivation is a misrepresentation of our girls’ lived experience.

Youth STEM Motivation: Immersive Technologies to Engage and Empower Underrepresented Students

(Publications) In this white paper we describe a project underway at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in which we are designing innovative technological environments that draw from theories of motivation to support and augment the engagement and motivation of students in Grades 5-8 mathematics.