Impact of Engineering Curricula and Student Programming on STEM Attitudes among Middle and High School Students (Evaluation)

Abstract

tinguished Teaching Award at NYU. In 2004, he was selected for a three-year term as a Senior Faculty Fellow of NYU Tandon's Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies. His scholarly activities have included 3 edited books, 8 chapters in edited books, 1 book review, 55 journal articles, and 126 conference papers. He has mentored 1 B.S., 17 M.S., and 4 Ph.D. thesis students; 31 undergraduate research students and 11 undergraduate senior design project teams; over 300 K-12 teachers and 100 high school student researchers; and 18 undergraduate GK-12 Fellows and 60 graduate GK-12 Fellows. Moreover, he directs K-12 education, training, mentoring, and outreach programs that enrich the STEM education of over 1,500 students annually.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016 Impact of Engineering Curricula and Student Programming on STEM Attitudes among Middle and High School StudentsEvaluation BackgroundAjzen and Fishbein's 1 theory of reasoned action describes a relationship between attitude, intention, and behavior; behavior is a result of intention and intention is a result of attitude towards the behavior combined with beliefs about how others will judge the behavior. Within this context, both individual student and overall classroom attitude towards science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines and their content can affect student behaviors of engagement, performance, and persistence in STEM subjects and subsequent choice of a STEM career. Thus, creating a positive attitude towards STEM, overall, is a goal of STEM education.Interventions can be evaluated not only for their effect on STEM content learning, but also for their effect on student attitudes 2 which can have longer-term effects on student career choice. Century, Before it's Too Late, 4 noted the U.S.'s failure to "capture the interest of our youth for scientific and mathematical ideas" and its economic, social, and national security implications. In an effort to improve STEM education for local K-12 students, contribute to K-12 STEM education best practices, and attract a larger and more diverse pool of students to pursue higher STEM education, New York University Tandon School of Engineering (NYU Tandon) has developed engaging, hands-on curricula based on two engineering-based tracks: robotics and smart cities. These curricula have been applied through NYU Tandon's faculty and students to both direct K-12 student services such as summer programs and K-12 STEM teacher professional development (PD). While previous research has shown hands-on engineering-based teaching and learning to have a positive impact on STEM attitudes, 5,6 we conducted an evaluation of student attitudes towards STEM both before and after their participation in an engineering-based summer STEM learning experience to evaluate our methods and curricula. In the spirit of promoting "Doing with Understanding," 7 our curricula were designed to provide students with the opportunity to learn while being creative, a sense of purpose in their learning, and a learning...

Full Paper: Where’s the Math? A Case for Reconsidering Math in K-12 Engineering

“…Plenty of literature suggests that engineering activities can provide a meaningful context for learning math [e.g., 2,3]a practice that is recommended by the National Academy of Engineering [4] and that engineering-based curricula can positively influence: a) students' STEM content knowledge, b) their appreciation of STEM fields' interconnectedness, and c) their attitudes towards STEM careers [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Interdisciplinary STEM approaches can also be leveraged to inform students about engineering, a field that is not widely understood by K-12 students [14].…”