| NSF Org: |
DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 30, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 30, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1657519 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Michael Ford
miford@nsf.gov (703)292-5153 DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $600,529.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $600,529.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
107 S INDIANA AVE BLOOMINGTON IN US 47405-7000 (317)278-3473 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
IN US 47401-3654 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | ITEST-Inov Tech Exp Stu & Teac |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
The Role Models in Engineering Education project (Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach and Indiana University) will improve the impact of engineering outreach programs through research and tool development. Providing role models through outreach is widely practiced and recommended, yet little is known about how elementary students, particularly girls, choose engineering role models. Engineering interest declines as girls enter middle school, making elementary school a potentially critical developmental window for bolstering engineering aspirations. The project will generate and share knowledge of female elementary students' selection of role models in a university-based engineering outreach program. Specifically, it will increase understanding of the ways in which girls identify and select engineering role models and it will contribute to understanding how role models promote interest in engineering careers by girls. This project will inform best practices in engineering outreach, and help university outreach leaders develop more effective educational interventions for female elementary students. Ultimately, this research aims to increase the number of girls and women studying engineering and working as engineers. Increasing the number of girls and women interested in engineering increases educational and economic equity for women and increases the pool of skilled engineers, thereby improving technology development in the nation. 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).
The Role Models in Engineering Education project goals are to advance the understanding of the mechanisms by which female elementary students identify engineering role models and to develop resources to support effective role model-student interactions that can be used by any university-based engineering outreach program. The intervention model draws on the stereotype inoculation model, role model theory, and design-based research practices. Over three years, the project will study 160 elementary students and 96 undergraduate engineering students in an established engineering outreach program, and will focus on positioning the undergraduates as emulable role models by making their engineering identities evident and by building supportive relationships between the undergraduates and the elementary students. The project will utilize in-depth qualitative analysis of the interactions between role models and students, complemented with quantitative tools to evaluate identity and career awareness. This research will inform an iterative process of designing resources and training to prepare role models in engineering and optimize their interactions with elementary students. This project aims to increase understanding of how girls take up engineering role models and to develop effective role model training. By adding to knowledge of engineering role model identification and uptake, this research may help outreach providers spark and sustain more girls' interest in engineering study and engineering careers.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Our Role Models in Engineering Education project started with two main goals:
1) Advance the understanding of the mechanisms by which elementary students, particularly female students, interact with and identify university engineering students as role models, and
2) Develop resources to support effective role model-student interactions that can be used by any university-based engineering outreach program.
As we sought to reach these goals we learned more about the STEM outreach program, its impact on youth and its impact on the outreach educators (undergraduate engineering students). The research insights generated by this project RMEE led to advancing our understanding of the design of engineering activities within both Tufts’ and IU’s other research and outreach efforts. Additionally, through dissemination of this work, we believe our results have already and will continue to influence the STEM outreach programming of other educators.
K-12 Engineering Education
The findings from this project will contribute to our broad understanding of how students experience STEM outreach, specifically engineering, as well as how identity, experience, confidence and role models might facilitate career interest development. The extensive data we collected for this project - via interviews and surveys - highlight how elements of the actual experience students have while engaged in engineering, design and making, mediate students’ conception of whether an engineering career is something they could and want to pursue. More broadly, we expected to find that putting near-age engineering students in front of youth would lead to many of them identifying these students as role models, but we learned to not assume this is happening.
STEM Outreach
Although many programs provide STEM outreach in the U.S., the design principles that govern the way these programs are structured are just starting to be captured through research. The engineering ambassadors that we focused on in this project are one of many adults in students’ lives and we thought extensively about how to maximize this connection given that they only spend 16 hours a year with students. Another interesting wrinkle is that the engineering ambassadors are not prepared as educators, hence their classroom interactions straddle teaching and role modeling. Our analysis of these classroom interactions is giving us new insight into how to leverage disciplinary experts in classroom settings - as coaches and facilitators. We believe that some findings from our project will inform discussions of how disciplinary experts can best support learning and interest in STEM. In addition, our engineering-specific intervention materials can be adapted to other STEM outreach efforts.
Research Contributions
In our efforts to determine how the focal outreach program impacted the engineering interest and identity of youth, we needed to identify tools to capture this information. We determined that existing tools were not satisfactory and thus we created and tested new instruments to service this purpose. The Engineering Identity and Career Aspirations survey developed for this project can be used to support STEM identity and career aspiration research more generally. The survey was tested over multiple iterations and appears to be quite robust. The survey was also adapted for a general STEM context and tested with a few hundred students across the U.S. Multiple researchers have reached out to our team about using these instruments in their own studies. As part of these surveys, we asked questions about career interests and about role models. We continue to work to prepare data from those surveys for publication.
Summary
This research project had direct local impacts and broader research impacts. The improvement to the focal outreach program at Tufts had positive impact on the elementary students who participated in the program in terms of increasing their engineering interest and identity. In addition, it supported the increased awareness of undergraduate student ambassadors in how STEM identity and self-efficacy develops in children. We expect this will make them better prepared for advancing STEM outreach in their professional and personal endeavors. We are left with many questions, most notably about how youth uptake STEM role models. Finally, the research tools and resources developed for the project will support research and evaluation in STEM education and will be shared on STEMOutreachTools.org for use by others.
Last Modified: 03/02/2023
Modified by: Adam V Maltese
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