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Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education

Gender Effects Of Robotics Programs On Stem-Related Self-Efficacy Of High School Students, Sandra Hall-Lay Jan 2018

Gender Effects Of Robotics Programs On Stem-Related Self-Efficacy Of High School Students, Sandra Hall-Lay

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Lack of STEM-related self-efficacy has impeded the growth of women in STEM fields. Out of school (OST) robotics programs and other STEM-related OST programs provide secondary students with opportunities to work in groups, brainstorm, and formulate ideas that require communication and teamwork. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to compare STEM-related self-efficacy scores among male and female students who participated in OST robotics programs or other OST STEM-related programming. Independent variables were type of OST STEM program and gender. The dependent variable was students' STEM-related self-efficacy as measured by the Coping Self-Efficacy Scale. Responses from 149 students in …


Cross Case Study Of An Elementary Engineering Task, John Heffernan Jul 2017

Cross Case Study Of An Elementary Engineering Task, John Heffernan

Doctoral Dissertations

Designerly play has been identified as a fundamental component of childhood learning (Baynes, 1994; Petroski, 2003). However, as students enter grade one and beyond, the increasing academic focus has resulted in the loss of opportunities for designerly play (Zhao, 2012). At the same time, there are increasing calls to increase the number, skill, and diversity of STEM workers (Brophy, Portsmore, Klein, & Rogers, 2008). The robotics based Elementary Engineering Curriculum (Heffernan, 2013) - used by students in this study - and other similar projects have the potential to increase the STEM pipeline but elementary engineering is not well-understood. Research is …