Resources

Recent discussions of making have focused on developing out-of-school makerspaces and activities to provide more equitable and enriching learning opportunities for youth. Yet school classrooms present a unique opportunity to help broaden access, diversify representation, and deepen participation in making. In turning to classrooms, we want to understand the crucial practices that teachers employ in broadening and deepening access to making. In this article, we investigate two high school teachers' approaches in implementing a novel eight-week, electronic textiles unit within the Exploring

3D printing is increasingly being used in manufacturing and engineering design processes. To be able to design and 3D print a feasible product it is essential to learn how to 3D model. Using 3D modeling software, students can build and iterate on their 3D designs. While these technologies make just-in-time manufacturing of designs and components feasible, they also raise new cognitive challenges: students need to develop visualization and evaluation skills to assess the feasibility of their 3D models during iterative design processes. 3D modeling software alone does not help in developing

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 52% of students in US K-12 public schools were eligible for free and reduced lunch during 2013-2014, up from 38 percent in 2000-2001. Research is needed to better understand how to create engaging and effective informal learning environments for this changing youth demographic. For instance, what are their interests? How can they be provided with experiences commensurate with peers who have greater opportunities? What are the aspirations of young people in middle-school who will be tomorrow’s leaders? To answer these questions, we

STEM21: Equity in Teaching and Learning to Meet Global Challenges of Standards, Engagement and Transformation is designed to contribute to discourses about how STEM teaching and learning can become more equitable, serving the needs of readers across the STEM educational spectrum. STEM21 is meant to problematize the status quo educational practices of STEM stakeholders including preservice and inservice teachers, district leaders, informal educators, policy makers, and the research community. While many books are narrowly targeted either for academics or practitioners, the outcome is limited

Informal learning programs provide youth with additional opportunities to engage in STEM. Here, we report on an informal engineering program for low-income youth. We describe how a curriculum was modified to reflect the instructional shifts outlined in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and how these changes enhanced youth interests and engagement in engineering practices.

This 3-year ITEST project focuses on integrating engineering design concepts and practices in the middle school physical sciences curriculum.The goal is to increase students’ interest in STEM and expand their access to opportunities to experience integrated STEM activities. Our work focused on middle school students as research shows that interest in STEM decreases through middle school. The planned intervention is based on existing theory and research on motivation, as well as the emerging body of literature on integrated STEM instruction. Research shows that relevance is essential to student

This paper describes the findings of a pilot study that used robotics and game design to develop middle school students’ computational thinking strategies. One hundred and twenty-four students engaged in LEGO® EV3 robotics and created games using Scalable Game Design software. The results of the study revealed students’ pre–post self-efficacy scores on the construct of computer use declined significantly, while the constructs of videogaming and computer gaming remained unchanged. When these constructs were analyzed by type of learning environment, self-efficacy on videogaming increased

In order to affect career decisions, it is important to reach youth at early ages. While some have focused on using mentors in order to successfully teach mentees, few have focused on the benefits to the mentors themselves. To our knowledge, no other research has been conducted on the effect that serving as a near-peer mentor has on increasing the mentors' interest, self-efficacy, value-beliefs, and skills in computer science. Our paid mentorships provided youth two weeks of participation in computer science camps using App Inventor. The mentors in our pilot study increased self-efficacy and

Parental support is a predictor of children's career interest and aspirations. However, mother and father support affects youth career choices differently. To understand how perceived mothers' and fathers' support affect career interest in computer science (CS), we developed two path models using both mother and father support gains to predict youths' interest in CS. We hypothesized that perceived father's and mother's support would relate to youths' interest in CS via youths' perception of CS utility value as a mediator. We found that both mother and father support leads to interest in CS

The paper provides details of a teacher professional development workshop on an authentic learning environment incorporating lessons based on hands-on activities on a flight simulator. The workshop design was based on best practices for teacher Professional Development (PD). The attitudes of teachers towards the use of technology were measured during the PD and are shared in this paper. Subsequently, a summer camp using the same learning environment was conducted for middle school students to learn selected math and science concepts. The results of the impact on the student participants of the