In our efforts to sustain U.S. productivity and economic strength, underrepresented minorities (URM) (for the purpose of this paper defined as persons of African American, Hispanic American, and Native American racial/ethnic descent), provide an untapped reservoir of talent that could be used to fill technical jobs. Over the past 25 years, educational diversity programs have encouraged and supported URM pursuing STEM degrees. Yet, their representation in STEM still lags far behind that of White, non-Hispanic men.
To understand the reasons why this is occurring, the American Association for
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Yolanda S. GeorgeVirginia Van HorneShirley M. Malcom
This project will develop standardized, exportable and comparable assessment instruments and models for Women In Engineering (WIE) programs nationwide, thus allowing them to assess their program's activities and ultimately provide data for making well-informed evaluations.
To accomplish this goal, the principal investigators at the University of Missouri and Penn State University will work over a three-year period with their institutions' WIE programs and three cooperating programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Tech, and University of Texas at Austin. With these five programs that collectively represent a variety of private and public, years of experience for WIE directors and student body characteristics, the investigators will pilot, revise, implement, conduct preliminary data analysis and disseminate easy-to-access, reliable and valid assessment instruments. The principles of formative evaluation will be applied to all instruments and products. All institutions will use the same set of instruments, thus allowing them to have access to powerful benchmarking data in addition to the data from each of their respective institutions.
A prior project, the Women's Experience in College Engineering Project (WECE) sought to characterize the factors that influence women students' experiences and decisions by studying college environments, events and support programs that affect women's satisfaction with their engineering major, and their decisions to persist or leave these majors. In contrast to WECE's macro-level and student focus, this proposal's target audience is WIE directors, with a focus on WIE programs, not students.
Women in Engineering programs around the United States are a crucial part of our country's response to the need for more women in engineering professions. There are about 50 WIE programs nationwide. Half have expressed interest in this effort. WIE directors will benefit by having ready-made assessment tools that will allow them to collect data on programs, evaluate these programs, and make decisions on how to revise programs and / or redistribute limited resources to maximize overall program effectiveness. Data from these instruments will also provide substantiated evidence for administrators, advisory boards and potential funding agencies. Finally, because these instruments will be available nationwide, programs will have the opportunity to take advantage of powerful benchmarking data for their decision-making processes.
This project provides the next logical step in the national movement to recruit and retain women in engineering.
This article describes a partnership between Seton Hall University and the Liberty Science Center to engage preservice teachers in teaching and learning science. The partnership program offered preservice teachers the opportunity to interact with displays and demonstrations, teach and interact with the public, participate in professional development activities, and communicate with diverse groups.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Debra ZinicolaRoberta Devlin-Scherer
In this chapter we explore how people build new theories in the context of collaborative scientific thinking. As illustrated by many of the chapters in this volume, our default notion of "scientific thinking" has changed from that of the lone scientist or student toiling away on a magnum opus or in the laboratory, to that of people working as part of collaborative groups who negotiate goals for the task, co-construct knowledge, and benefit from the diverse prior knowledge that each collaborator brings to the table. In some ways, conceptualizing scientific thinking as fundamentally
When designing programs for science learning, it is important to consider that children's experiences with science begin years before they encounter science in the classroom. Children's developing understanding of science begins in their everyday activities and conversations about the natural and technical world. Children develop "scientific literacy" as they begin to learn the language of science (e.g., concepts such as "gravity" or "metamorphosis"), the kind of causal explanations that are used in scientific theories (e.g., the day-night cycle results from the rotation of the earth), and the
For children to achieve an understanding of science and of the ways of doing science, and for them to be motivated to use these ways in coping with, understanding, and enjoying the physical, biological, and social world around them, it is not enough that they believe that science is practically important. They must also be curious. Curiosity calls attention to interesting, odd, and sometimes important items in the drama that is revealed to us through our senses. Idle or purposeful, curiosity is the motor that interests children in science; it is also the principal motor that energizes and
This interpretive study of learning environments involved two groups of Israeli science teachers who participated in courses and implemented field trips as part of science‐technology‐society (STS) education and under the framework of general system theory. The different groups of preservice and experienced teachers were selected in order to provide diverse perspectives on learning environments associated with the enactment of field trips as enrichment for the science classroom. The article describes the field trip programs and provides examples of how teachers in different stages of their
The current world research agenda is comprehensive. The results of many studies and experiments in which scientists are currently engaged will undoubtedly have profound impacts on the lives of citizens in developed and developing nations. Yet few people even know what research is being conducted, much less understand why it is being done and what the potential implications may be. This is a critical shortcoming of our public information system. Given the frenetic pace of science research in multi-disciplinary fields, it is increasingly vital that the public be made aware of new findings in a
Indigenous science relates to both the science knowledge of long-resident, usually oral culture peoples, as well as the science knowledge of all peoples who as participants in culture are affected by the worldview and relativist interests of their home communities. This article explores aspects of multicultural science and pedagogy and describes a rich and well-documented branch of indigenous science known to biologists and ecologists as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Although TEK has been generally inaccessible, educators can now use a burgeoning science-based TEK literature that
This article takes an anti-essentialist approach to the gendered construction of the science curriculum and its exclusivity. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, it examines the student subject positions that are generated within the dominant discourses and practices of curriculum science. A critical discourse analysis of student interview talk demonstrates the importance of both gender and ethnicity in the production of, or rejection of, scientist identities. While hegemonic masculinity can provide comfortable scientist identities for some males, femininity is less compatible with physical
Two important content areas associated with informal environmental science programs are ecology/natural science topics and awareness of environmental problems/issues. This study attempted to evaluate which of these content areas may provide a more optimum learning experience. A quantitative analysis was conducted on two field trips to a science center that represented an ecological oriented program and an environmental issue presentation. Two variables that were chosen as indicators of program success—knowledge retention and attitude change—are outcomes that have been found prevalent in
Classroom tasks should develop a spirit of inquiry and a sense of delight in discovery that will become part of the individual's learning style. Yet in the traditional elementary classroom, the use of worksheets, lectures and basal reading tasks to the exclusion of hands-on, participatory opportunities fails to encourage a child's construction of knowledge. By setting up a problem to be solved, demanding interaction, producing effects from direct actions and allowing variations of approach, cognitive development in children is enhanced. Hands-On Children's Museums encourage contextually