Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale (CDSE)

Instruments

The Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale (CDSE) measures an individual's degree of belief that he/she can successfully complete tasks necessary to making significant career decisions. The CDSE consists of five subscales measuring the five Career Choice Competencies of John O. Crites' Theory of Career Maturity. The CDSE is available in both a 50-item form and a 25-item short form. It is strongly linked to positive educational and career decisional outcomes.

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Educational and Career Interest Scale in Science, Technology and Math

Instruments

The Educational and Career Interest scale, a self-report instrument measuring high school students’ educational and career interest in STEM, was developed and validated in two studies conducted during 2010 and 2011. Study 1 included data from 92 high school students, in which exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with an initial item pool of 20 items. EFA identified three factors: educational and career interest in science, educational and career interest in technology, and educational and career interest in mathematics. Study 2 utilized data from 658 students to revisit the three

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Student Attitudes toward STEM (S-STEM)

Instruments

The Upper Elementary (4-5th) and the Middle and High School (6-12th) Student Attitudes toward STEM Surveys (S-STEM) each contain four scales (sets of surveys items that most confidently describe a single characteristic of the survey-taker when the responses to these items are calculated as a single result). The first five scales consists of Likert-scale questions[1] which ask the respondent about their confidence and attitudes toward math, science, engineering and technology, and 21st century learning respectively. Final items in the surveys ask students about their attitudes toward 12

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STELAR ITEST PI & Evaluator Summit 2016: Making Connections to Broaden Participation in STEM

Event

The STELAR ITEST PI & Evaluator Summit was held on Monday and Tuesday, May 2-3, 2016, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, VA. The Summit was an opportunity for ITEST Principal Investigators (PIs) and evaluators to come together and share successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the ITEST program. More than 150 people attended the Summit, representing 80 ITEST projects.

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Schools as Part of Smart and Connected Communities, presentation materials from the Next Generation STEM Learning for All Forum

Publication

Within the context of NSF’s Dear Colleague letter that encourages innovative proposals for developing Smart and Connected Communities, speakers at the NSF-supported Next Generation STEM Learning for All Forum in November described how their work connects STEM learning with communities in need, how their work could shape schools of the future, and how to involve key systems and stakeholders in the development of these communities. View these presentation materials on the Forum website.

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RoboExpo

Video

Hundreds of students go to Balboa Park for the annual RoboExpo. The expo included thirty exhibits, and 700 kids registered for the event. Many of the expos involve robots that can do different tasks.

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Seaperch

Video

In Chula Vista, about 100 middle school students used seaperches - remote-controlled waterproof submersibles - to study sharks at the Living Coast Discovery Center. The seaperches are equipped with cameras to get an up-close look at sea life. The event was part of the SDSU STEM initiative to give

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Making Educational Games That Work in The Classroom

Publication

The development of analytical skills is a central goal of the Next Generation Science Standards and foundational to subject mastery in STEM fields. Yet, significant barriers exist to students gaining such skills. Here we describe a new “gentleslope” cyberlearning strategy that gradually introduces students to the authoring of scientific simulations via a Web-based modding approach called CyberMOD. Modding involves adding agents with predefined functionality to a simulation world to produce a unique combination whose behavior can then be visualized by running the simulation. This permits low

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