STEM Interest, Identity, and Career Awareness

• In Event: 31.044 - MakEval: Mixed Methods Approaches to Evaluating Making in Schools

Abstract

With the rhetoric around STEM education often focused on how to get more individuals interested in STEM fields, it seems that making is positioned to play a key role in getting more youth into STEM. Through data we collected as part of a separate project (Maltese, Simpson & Anderson, 2018) and anecdotal conservations with maker educators, many feel that making activities can engage youth in thinking about STEM that is different from the ways they traditionally engage with these topics. ​
In the realm of interest, this work builds off of extensive work our research group has done in investigating science or STEM interest, identity development and career intentions (e.g., Maltese and others, 2011, 2014, 2017). Additionally we incorporated items from from the EIDS (Capobianco & Deemer, 2017), the STEM Fascination and Competence and Self-efficacy Scales (Chen, Cannady, Schunn, & Dorph, 2017; Chung, Cannady, Schunn, & Vincent-Ruz, 2016), the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS; Kier, Blanchard, Osborne, & Albert, 2014), the Modified Attitudes Toward Science Inventory (M-ATSI; Weinburgh & Steele, 2000). With regard to career intention and awareness, we have had to modify existing tools in a significant way in order for them to fit our intentions here. We are taking both a blunt approach (i.e., asking directly about career intentions) and a more subtle approach (i.e., asking about preferences among a set of employment tasks). We feel that these approaches, collectively, can yield useful information on this construct. We have modified career surveys targeted at adolescents or adults for this purpose (e.g., Liao, Armstrong, & Rounds, 2008), which sometimes required modification of language to make age appropriate. ​
During survey testing we collected pilot data to conduct factor analysis. Our data suggested a 6-factor model which expanded on these three components. We also found evidence of additional factors that seemed to represent aspects of “doing” making and engineering. We expected to find one factor that represented recognition, but in fact, two factors emerged: Recognition by Others and Self-Recognition, consistent with work by Carlone and Johnson (2007). Two factors reflected interest and performance/competence. The factor measuring Interest captured an individual’s enjoyment in doing making/engineering, though some items seemed to overlap with one’s self-efficacy and beliefs about their abilities in these areas. The factor measuring Performance/Competence reflected students’ ability when doing activities. Both factors are similar to constructs found in the literature (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Godwin, 2016; Hazari et al., 2010). However, more work is needed differentiate between interest, performance/competence, and self-efficacy, as these constructs overlap. Our data suggested two additional components related to “doing” making/engineering: How Things Work and Designing.
We believe the significance of this work lies in connecting factors commonly measured for STEM programming with making. We are continuing to diversify how to measure these constructs and will report on updated results in the session.

Authors

• Adam V. Maltese, Indiana University

• Kelli M. Paul, Indiana University - Bloomington