CSI–Chocolate Science Investigation and the Case of the Recipe Rip-Off: Using an Extended Problem-Based Scenario To Enhance High School Students’ Science Engagement

Abstract

This paper discusses a K−12/university collaboration in which students participated in a four-day scenario-based summer STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) camp aimed at making difficult scientific concepts salient. This scenario, Jumpstart STEM−CSI: Chocolate Science Investigation (JSCSI), used open-and guided-inquiry methods to generate meaningful student engagement for 33 rising 8th through 12th graders. This paper presents curriculum for the scenario; reports results from postevent survey data regarding students' self-reported gains in science motivation, science confidence, science knowledge, and students' associations with scientificallyminded social niches; and illustrates how a scenario can incorporate the use of skills and knowledge from many disciplines and make them relevant to student learning, providing a context for STEM literacy. Implications for science educators are discussed.

What are we talking about when we talk about STEM education? A review of literature

“…Develops creativity (Lamb et al, 2015). Allows the accumulation of practical experience (Marle et al, 2014;Lou et al, 2017).…”

“…In contrast, mathematics appears to be a discipline that, despite having a relevant role for science, technology, and engineering is complex to use as a "backbone" from which the other STEM disciplines begin. Regarding the dominant role that could be exercised by science (21%; n = 4) or technology (16%; n = 3), it is common for them to adopt such relevance from the solving of real-world problems in the case of science (e.g., Marle et al, 2014), or virtual contexts in the case of technology (e.g., Toth, 2016). Moreover, it has been impossible to identify which of the STEM disciplines could exercise a dominant role in the educational intervention developed by Blustein et al (2013), given that they neither explain the content addressed nor how it was studied throughout the educational experience.…”

“…The second category accounts for 42% (n = 8) of the educational interventions described as STEM education (cases only quoting the first author: McLurkin et al, 2013;Duran et al 2014;Marle et al 2014;S.-H. Chang et al 2015;Evans, Lopez, Maddox, Drape & Duke, 2014;Lamb et al 2015;Toth, 2016;Barak and Assal, 2018). Thus, these interventions outline the STEM disciplines and describe the content studied.…”

“…The preferred integrating context is, therefore, framed within the discipline of Technology, as it appears common to use the creation and handling of virtual contexts to achieve the insertion of the rest of the STEM disciplines (e.g., August et al, 2016;Caglar et al, 2015;Evans et al, 2014;Toth 2016;Won et al, 2015). Other contexts used to start out from real-world situations (e.g., Marle et al, 2014) or engineering (e.g., Tseng et al, 2013). These findings, on the one hand, appear to corroborate the potential of technological tools for improving student learning (C. Y.…”

Developing Teacher Competencies for Problem-Based Learning Pedagogy and for Supporting Learning in Language-Minority Students

“…With successes in medical education, PBL emerged in other professional education programs including nursing, architecture, engineering, advertising, physical therapy, and business administration (Barrows, 1996;Gould & Sadera, 2015;Quinn & Albano, 2008;Rideout & Carpio, 2001;Zubaidah, 2005). The move of PBL into K-12 education necessitated a broader view from foci on clinical skills or problemsolving for a single profession to K-12 experiences designed to prepare learners for many possibilities in life (Delisle, 1997;Edwards & Hammer, 2007;Marle et al, 2012;Torp & Sage, 2002). To understand the effects of PBL on measures of student science and mathematics learning in K-8 settings, a team at our center conducted a systematic review of the literature on control group studies with PBL as the independent variable (Merritt, Lee, Rillero, & Kinach, 2016).…”