This article proposes a STEM workforce education logic model, tailored to the particular context of the National Science Foundation’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. This model aims to help program designers and researchers address challenges particular to designing, implementing, and studying education innovations in the ITEST program, considering ongoing needs and challenges in STEM workforce education in the USA. It is grounded in conceptual frameworks developed previously by teams of ITEST constituents, for their part intended to frame STEM

Learning about climate change is tangible when it addresses impacts that can be observed close to home. In this program, 64 diverse middle and high school students produced videos about locally relevant climate change topics. Graduate and undergraduate students provided mentorship. The program engaged students in research and learning about climate change and sparked their interest in science careers. Evaluation results showed that students were highly motivated by the experience, developed a genuine interest in their science topic, learned about the scientific process and developed 21st

An article in Make Magazine detailing the history of the Lab School, its collaboration with the Smithsonian, and the work of its students.

A new field of engineering called mechatronics combines mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science and makes all three disciplines accessible to surprisingly young students.

Surface area is consistently identified as a curriculum standard for K-12 students and it regularly appears on national and international assessments. Recently, many schools began acquiring digital fabrication and advanced manufacturing equipment. The growing use of digital fabrication in classrooms raises the question of whether or not this technology can be used to improve students’ understanding of surface area. The specific question we explore in this paper is: How did participation in a digital fabrication-augmented surface area unit affect 5th grade students’ ability to solve surface

Desktop digital fabrication technologies provide students with access to concrete and virtual manipulatives, which have both been identified as useful instructional tools to support student learning in a variety of different content areas, such as mathematics. In particular, these technologies can be used to help support students' development of conceptual understandings of three-dimensional measurement. This article describes how a digital fabrication-augmented unit supported the teaching and learning of surface area. Our goal was to see how working with both virtual and concrete

The Laboratory School for Advanced Manufacturing (Lab School) was established to identify and develop effective educational practices for advanced manufacturing technologies in schools. The Lab School is grounded in the premise that students can learn through the design and fabrication process. Students of all ability levels from a diverse population participate in the program with the goal of increased diversity in the STEM pipeline. The advent of digital fabrication technologies such as desktop 3D printers now offers students an opportunity to see their ideas and concepts realized in

Missing data are a common and significant problem that researchers and data analysts encounter in applied research. Because most statistical procedures require complete data, missing data can substantially affect the analysis and the interpretation of results if left untreated. Methods to treat missing data have been developed so that missing values are imputed and analyses can be conducted using standard statistical procedures. Among these missing data methods, Multiple Imputation has received considerable attention and its effectiveness has been explored, for example, in the context of

Propensity score (PS) methods provide viable strategies for reducing selection bias in non-experimental (observational) studies. An NSF funded project previously used propensity score analysis to examine the impact of special educational programs on advanced mathematics course enrollment (Rodriguez de Gil, et al., 2012). Results indicated that students who enrolled in career academies were almost twice as likely to enroll in a Calculus course. Encouraged by the findings from the previous study, we are currently using PS and discrete-time survival analyses to investigate rigorous high school

The purpose of this research was to develop and test a model of factors contributing to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and career orientation, examining the complex paths and relationships among social, motivational, and instructional factors underlying these outcomes for middle school youth. Social cognitive career theory provided the foundation for the research because of its emphasis on explaining mechanisms which influence both career orientations and academic performance. Key constructs investigated were youth STEM interest, self-efficacy, and career