Engineering

Currently, 19 states have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) while 16 states have revised their standards to mirror the NGSS. Transitioning from the previous standards to the NGSS requires in-depth teacher professional development (PD) that delves into the three-dimensional (3D) performance expectations (PE) of the NGSS. Each PE constitutes: science and engineering practices (SEPs), disciplinary core ideas (DCIs), and crosscutting concepts (CCCs).

A robotics-based curriculum offers numerous opportunities to enrich science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for students and enables teachers to integrate engineering and computing techniques into educational programs.

Rapid technological advances are dominating the evolution of world’s economy and increasingly influencing our daily lives. Even as such advances have greatly improved human living condition, a majority of people either lack the understanding of technology or frequently ignore it. While post-secondary science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education seeks to remedy this disconnect, its reach is limited because formal education ends for many students at the secondary level.

The persistent lack of diversity in STEM fields remains a serious challenge for U.S. global competitiveness. STEM jobs are growing 29% faster than any other U.S. sector. Yet, today, white men hold roughly 75% of all scientists and engineering jobs, despite making up only 26% of the total workforce. The cause of this diversity gap can be traced to our educational system, where girls and most children-of-color do not receive equitable public education due to high teacher attrition rates, which in turn affects access to well-trained teachers, and lack of school resources.

This paper investigates classroom-related factors such as pedagogical strategies and management of robotics-based educational content that contribute to the formation of student perceptions in robotics-enhanced classes. Robots are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in K-12 classroom in the United States and are used to improve student engagement, interactive learning, innovative thinking, collaboration, problem-solving skills, language learning, and achievement scores.

Multimedia environments provide multiple resources for expression, collaboration, and knowledge-creation. Yet there is much to be learned about the design of such environments, the forms of collegial discourse that take place, and the benefits of participation. To this end, we study the 2017 STEM for All Video Showcase, a multimodal environment, that enabled educational researchers to share and discuss short videos depicting their federally-funded work to improve STEM education.

Recent reforms in science education have supported the inclusion of engineering in K-12 curricula. To this end, many science classrooms have incorporated engineering units that include design tasks. Design is an integral part of engineering and helps students think in creative and interdisciplinary ways. In this study, we examined middle-school students’ naturally occurring design conversations in small design teams and their learning of science as a result of engaging in an engineering and science unit.

There is a need to arm students with noncognitive, or 21^st Century, skills to prepare them for a more STEM-based job market. As STEM schools are created in a response to this call to action, research is needed to better understand how exemplary STEM schools successfully accomplish this goal. This conversion mixed method study analyzed student work samples and teacher lesson plans from seven exemplary inclusive STEM high schools to better understand at what level teachers at these schools are engaging and developing student 21^st Century skills.