The K–12 STEM School–Industry Partnership: Where It Is and Where It Should Go

• In Event: 35.054 - Commmunity–School Partnerships in the Era of Educational Reform: Current Practices and Future Directions

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed increasing number of corporations pumping resources and efforts into schools across the country to help strengthen STEM education. Using inductive and deductive content analysis (Elo & Kyngas, 2008), the present study examined seventy-two K-12 STEM school-industry partnership cases, and constructed a taxonomy of K-12 STEM school-industry partnership programs and proposed a model for building K-12 STEM school-industry partnerships. The taxonomy provides a framework for understanding K-12 STEM school-industry partnership programs and for guiding K-12 STEM school-industry partners in their planning and evaluation of program scope, program focus, and partner roles. The model proposed in this paper is intended to help K-12 school-industry partners make optimal use of resources each partners in the partnership possesses.

Authors

• Yan Sun, Mississippi State University

• Johannes Strobel, Texas A&M University - College Station