Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research

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Anastasia Johnston — 2024-05-03

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Anastasia Johnston — 2024-05-03

We hope you enjoy.

Making the Case for Elementary Biomedical Education in Rural Communities

Amanda Obery — 2024-05-03

Exploring the intersections of CTE and STEM education may foster interest in critical rural healthcare careers beginning in elementary school. Starting early to develop career awareness may be essential and best take advantage of the possible flexibility that rural schools can provide. This study provides a theoretical foundation for rural biomedical education efforts and measured the outcomes of an elementary biomedical intervention. Results show an increase in career aspirations and self-efficacy while maintaining high levels of student interest. In addition, when exploring what drives career aspirations in students, results show that self-efficacy is mediated by student interest fully. Overall, the study shares one effective educational path to enable students to become aware of and begin to develop a skillset for a biomedical career present in their community.

How KEEN Encourages the Adoption of Educational Innovations Focused on Entrepreneurial Mindset into Engineering Classrooms

Cayla Ritz — 2024-05-03

Background

A consistent challenge in educational research is ensuring that published innovations are successfully integrated into the classrooms they aim to improve. The process of integrating new pedagogy into existing classrooms involves both a method of communication (journal articles, workshops, word of mouth, etc.) and faculty motivation to make change. This work characterizes the research-to-practice translation of the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), a network of higher education institutions invested in the development of entrepreneurial mindset (EM) in engineering students.

Results

Through semi-structured interviews with six sustained adopters of EM, we were able to examine faculty members’ approaches to adoption and how these approaches correlated with KEEN’s approaches to dissemination. We analyzed KEEN’s professional development offerings using the Designing for Sustained Adoption Instrument (DSAAI) and described how faculty motivation, as characterized by the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), may affect their integration of innovations into the classroom. We found that KEEN’s offerings largely aligned with the DSAAI’s recommendations for sustained adoption—their consistent emphasis on faculty engagement as well as a mix of active and passive professional development strategies were effective in supporting faculty members throughout the adoption process. Faculty members generally expressed interest in and enjoyment of KEEN professional development offerings, saw value in EM education, and were willing to put in effort to adopt related strategies, implying strong intrinsic motivation to adopt EM. However, many faculty members interviewed expressed a low level of competence related to the entrepreneurial mindset.

Conclusions

Results of this study suggest that faculty members who successfully adopt EM into their classrooms do so using primarily professional development offerings aligning with the DSAAI’s guidelines for sustained adoption. Additionally, successful adopters recognized their own deficiencies in EM and identified KEEN professional development as an opportunity for growth, indicating high intrinsic motivation to make changes in their classrooms.

Exploration of Critical Thinking Attributes in an Innovative Undergraduate STEM Program

Pamela Martínez Oquendo — 2024-05-03

Experiences during post-secondary education can accentuate the ongoing, ever-changing process of developing 21st-century skills for undergraduate students. These 21^st-century skills, including critical thinking (CT), are important for students to develop for competitive job placement after graduation. The future workforce requires diverse knowledge, skills, and dispositions to navigate complex and ever-changing jobs, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Purpose: This project aimed to qualitatively investigate previously determined quantitative attributes of CT to gain a deeper understanding of how these attributes manifest themselves in undergraduate STEM scholars’ problem-solving and decision-making.

Sample: Twelve program undergraduate student participants from a STEM professional development program partook in completing materials for this study.

Methods: We used a phenomenology approach to explore the nuances of CT attributes from the responses of our program participants. We explored how the eight CT attributes (induction, analysis, inference, evaluation, deduction, interpretation, explanation, numeracy) emerged from participant responses, in isolation and in interaction with each other in undergraduate STEM students’ responses to real-world scenarios to find potential trends or insights to better understand the intricate nature of critical thinking as a construct.

Results: While we aimed to explore CT attributes in isolation based on their previously defined definitions, our findings demonstrate that certain CT attributes occurred concurrently with other CT attributes at higher frequencies than others (e.g., analysis and induction). These concurrent attributes show that undergraduate students identified various entry points to a real-life scenario, and simultaneously find multiple solutions to these complex problems. The findings of this exploratory study suggest areas for STEM program improvement based on the qualitative examination of whether CT attributes are present, and how they might also happen concurrently more frequently when undergraduate students face real-life decision-making scenarios.

Conclusions: Findings from this study will help create a more robust program model for undergraduate student development to meet STEM workforce demands and competitive job placement after graduation. A deep understanding of what makes up this complex construct is essential to increase students’ CT skills. Further research in this area may explore how CT attributes offer additional insights for framing undergraduate professional development programs. With careful attention to distinct and concurrent attributes, carefully designed professional development might be more effective and transferrable to STEM fields.

Pursuing Retention and Success of Rural and Diverse STEM Students: A Qualitative Investigation of a Program Ecosystem and Undergraduate Participants

Rebecca M. Jones — 2024-05-03

Since 2016, the NSF-funded Rural and Diverse Student Scholars Program at George Mason University supported two cohorts of diverse STEM students from rural Virginia during their undergraduate years. A holistic program design and individual components aimed to combine to support student success. In a qualitative research study with journal prompts, focus groups and interviews, the program was assessed, and insights gleaned regarding the participant population. Results reveal the importance of community and mentoring in supporting student retention and success. Participants described being rural as part of their identity and many maintained significant relationships with home and family, even after matriculation. Conclusions from this study are consistent with scholarly precedent and have implications for universities serving similar populations.

Mathematics as a Common Language in Science: A Scholarship Program for Students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Maggie Herring — 2024-05-03

This study evaluated a scholarship support program, “Mathematics as a Common Language in Science,” that was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Running from 2015 to 2020, the scholarship support program assisted 31 students to major in chemistry, physics, or mathematics with the intent of supporting these students to enter graduate school and careers in the physical sciences. In this study, student outcome metrics and survey data were collected to investigate the impact of the program elements on the participants’ academic success. Additional program elements, such as access to tutoring support, outreach opportunities, and undergraduate research, were emphasized to support students in their designated major. A 1-credit-hour course, taught first semester for the freshman cohort of students, emphasized study skills and university resources, and engaged students to consider the overarching applicability of math concepts to the science curriculum. The findings of this study offer insight into program elements that supported student success with consideration of aspects that did not function as planned. The authors hope that sharing these insights will aid other programs to structure effective programming for students.

Microscopic Technique as a STEM Initiative Promotes Environmental Stewardship at a Community Sailing Program

Gary du Moulin — 2024-05-03

As part of its STEM programming initiatives, Community Boating, Inc., the nation’s oldest public sailing organization introduced an “Introduction to Microscopy” course merging principles of scientific investigation with analytical techniques using compound light microscopes. Boston’s Charles River provided the environmental setting for five two-day sessions. In all, 49 students between the ages of 10 and 15 took part. Students developed an ability to analyze river water samples they had collected during kayak-based field expeditions. Once in the laboratory, wet mount slides were prepared for microscopic investigation for cyanobacteria and photosynthetic phytoplankton, diatoms, and dinoflagellates which are crucial for a healthy aquatic ecosystem. With these new skills students were able to better appreciate the biodiversity of the microbial life within the river, and better understand the importance of environmental stewardship in a world threatened by global climate change and the effects of urban pollution. This program demonstrated the feasibility of developing sophisticated STEM programming founded upon principles of the scientific method for important environmental initiatives in the unique setting of a community sailing program.

Editorial and Review Board

Anastasia Johnston — 2024-05-03

Editorial and Review Board

Anastasia Johnston — 2024-05-03

We hope you enjoy!

Chemistry By Design: A 4-Week In-Person and Virtual Activity to Teach Chemistry Through Human-Centered Design

Saadeddine Shehab — 2024-05-03

Teaching chemistry through design has been advocated by chemistry education researchers as a pedagogy that can engage students in chemical thinking. This paper presents a 4-week activity to teach chemistry through Human-Centered Design (HCD) for high school students. The paper describes an in-person and online version of the activity including the collaborative learning tasks that a teacher implemented to engage students in human-centered design processes and chemical thinking. In this activity, students will work in groups on a design challenge that engages them in learning about and acquiring relevant chemistry knowledge so they can chemically think and make informed decisions about ideas that can transform into solutions to meet what they identify as people’s needs.

Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research

Back Cover

Information

Making the Case for Elementary Biomedical Education in Rural Communities

How KEEN Encourages the Adoption of Educational Innovations Focused on Entrepreneurial Mindset into Engineering Classrooms

Background

Results

Conclusions

Exploration of Critical Thinking Attributes in an Innovative Undergraduate STEM Program

Pursuing Retention and Success of Rural and Diverse STEM Students: A Qualitative Investigation of a Program Ecosystem and Undergraduate Participants

Mathematics as a Common Language in Science: A Scholarship Program for Students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Microscopic Technique as a STEM Initiative Promotes Environmental Stewardship at a Community Sailing Program

Editorial and Review Board

Table of Contents

Chemistry By Design: A 4-Week In-Person and Virtual Activity to Teach Chemistry Through Human-Centered Design