This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences.
Twin Cities Public Television project on Gender Equitable Teaching Practices in Career and Technical Education Pathways for High School Girls is designed to help career and technical education educators and guidance counselors recruit and retain more high school girls from diverse backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pathways, specifically in technology and engineering. The project's goals are: 1) To increase the number of high school girls, including ethnic minorities, recruited and retained in traditionally male -STEM pathways; 2) To enhance the teaching and coaching practices of Career and Technical Education educators, counselors and role models with gender equitable and culturally responsive strategies; 3) To research the impacts of strategies and role model experiences on girls' interest in STEM careers; 4) To evaluate the effectiveness of training in these strategies for educators, counselors and role models; and 5) To develop training that can easily be scaled up to reach a much larger audience. The research hypothesis is that girls will develop more positive STEM identities and interests when their educators employ research-based, gender-equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices enhanced with female STEM role models. Instructional modules and media-based online resources for Minnesota high school Career and Technical Education programs will be developed in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and piloted in districts with strong community college and industry partnerships. Twin Cities Public Television will partner with STEM and gender equity researchers from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, the National Girls Collaborative, the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU-Boulder), the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System.
The project will examine girls' personal experiences with equitable strategies embedded into classroom STEM content and complementary mentoring experiences, both live and video-based. It will explore how these experiences contribute to girls' STEM-related identity construction against gender-based stereotypes. It will also determine the extent girls' exposure to female STEM role models impact their Career and Technical Education studies and STEM career aspirations. The study will employ and examine short-form autobiographical videos created and shared by participating girls to gain insight into their STEM classroom and role model experiences. Empowering girls to respond to the ways their Career and Technical Education educators and guidance counselors guide them toward technology and engineering careers will provide a valuable perspective on educational practice and advance the STEM education field.
To address the need for STEM reform in K-12 schools, this article describes the design and implementation of a rigorous, interdisciplinary science and research program (ISR) in two local high schools (HS-S and HS-H). The ISR, adapted from the successful School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt program, provides seven courses over four years that focus on the development of critical thinking skills and the ability to construct and perform hypothesis-driven research projects. The courses are co-taught by a science teacher (masters or doctoral level) and a Ph.D. scientist. Overall, students in
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jennifer A. UfnarVirginia L. Shepherd
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, NARST, Chicago, IL. It describes findings from the Work With a Scientist Program (WWASP), which engages scientists and high school students in cogenerative dialogues.
This poster was presented at 2017 Campus Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives (COURI) Symposium, El Paso, TX.
One of the principal challenges of the partnership of scientists and high school students are the existent barriers of language between them (Kim & Fortner, 2007). In other words, since scientists are usefully deemed as characters with higher power, status, and knowledge, students may feel nervous or intimidated, especially when scientists speak jargons and complex language. The best educators have a magical way of engaging their audiences with compelling stories. Even the
This poster was presented at 2017 Campus Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives (COURI) Symposium, El Paso, TX.
Purpose & Problem - According to some existing results identified in the literature, the partnership between high school students and scientist involves several challenges, such as time management, lack of equipment, communication barriers, organization, complexity of the scientific language and scientist availability. The purpose is to address these problems and identify effective ways that can enhance the partnership between the scientist and high school students during
This poster was presented at 2017 Campus Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives (COURI) Symposium, El Paso, TX.
This study introduces cogenerative dialogues as a pedagogical tool to enhance the communications between students and engineers in a university internship environment. High school student interns worked with engineers for 7 months and were invited to conduct cogenerative dialogues with engineers regularly and discuss any issues, concerns, positives happened in the internship in order to improve their learning experience.
This poster was presented at 2017 Campus Office of Undergraduate Research Initiatives (COURI) Symposium, El Paso, TX. It describes the Work With a Scientist (WWASP) program, in which scientists and high school students engage in co-generative dialogues.
This poster was presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, AERA, San Antonio, TX.
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) emphasize that K–12 science education should reflect real-world interconnections in science and focus on deeper understanding and application of content. One effective way to help students learn to apply science is to invite them to work with scientists on authentic scientific projects. Internship programs designed for students to work with scientists have been suggested as one of the most productive
This summative evaluation report focuses on the impact that the Working with a Scientist Program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) had on its student participants. Student participants were recruited from regional high schools that are categorized as Title I schools, due to the large population of low income students that they serve. The participants engaged in mentored research activities a UTEP every other Saturday during the spring semester and on weekdays during the summer. Their mentors were professional scientists from different STEM disciplines, such as Chemistry, Immunology
This report comprises the third part of a 4-year evaluation assessing the impact of the Working with a Scientist Program (WWASP) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) had on its student-participants. This report includes an assessment of the program’s impact on the third cohort of student-participants. To assess the students’ overall performance, several measures were used. First, a review of participant’s academic performance before and after their involvement in the program was conducted. Second, the impacts that the programs’ cogenerative dialogues (cogens) had in the third cohort of
This report is part of a four-year evaluation assessing the impact of the Working with a Scientist Program (WWASP) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) had on its student-participants. This report includes an assessment of the impact on the first two cohorts of student-participants. This program selected participants from local high schools to take part in research activities for the spring and summer semester. To assess the students’ overall performance, several measures were used. First, a review of participant’s academic performance before and after their involvement in the program
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lizely Madrigal-GonzalezGuadalupe Corral
This report is part of a four-year evaluation assessing the impact that the Working with a Scientist Program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) had on its first cohort of participants. Participants were students from a regional high school that were selected to take part in research activities every other Saturday during the Spring semester and on weekdays during the summer. The evaluation components included in this report focus on assessing students’ academic performance and the gains the students made while in the program. It also focused on an assessment of students’ perceptions
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Guadalupe CorralJacqueline LowereeJoseph Negron