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- Creators: Chemical Engineering Program
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
The goal of this study was to understand elementary school children’s perceptions of engineering. A total of 949 elementary school students were surveyed, individually or as a whole group, to examine gender and age differences in achievement-related beliefs (i.e., competency, interest, and importance) pertaining to engineering-related skills and activities. The results of this study found that specific skills and activities showed significant gender and age differences for each of the three measures. Significant findings showed that younger students (kindergarten through second grade) found many of the engineering-related skills and activities more interesting than the older students (third through fifth grade); however, the older students rated more of the skills and activities as being important. Gender differences showed that girls typically rated themselves as being more competent, more interested in, and valuing the skills and activities that pertained more to mindset ideas, such as learning from your mistakes and failures or not giving up, whereas boys rated themselves higher in more of the hands-on activities, such as building with things like legos, blocks, and k’nex.
ContributorsHandlos, Jamie Lynn Harte (Author) / Miller, Cindy (Thesis director) / Reisslein, Martin (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Students with disabilities are underrepresented and underserved in college science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees. Disabled individuals comprise 26% of the U.S. population but only about 9% of the students enrolled in STEM undergraduate programs. Individuals with disabilities who do pursue STEM degrees report unique challenges within their programs, including struggling to receive needed accommodations and experiencing discrimination from peers and instructors. However, there has been limited research on the extent to which disability characteristics affect their experiences in STEM. To address this gap in the literature, we surveyed over 700 undergraduates with disabilities enrolled in STEM majors across the U.S. and probed their sense of belonging in science, feelings of morale, perception of campus climate, experienced classroom stigma, responsiveness of disability resource offices, scientific self-efficacy, science identity, and science community values. Using linear regression, we will assess and present on outcomes related to students’ persistence in college, outcomes specific to students with disabilities, and outcomes specific to these students in STEM. The findings of this work can be used to inform recommendations to create more inclusive experiences in college STEM for students with disabilities.
ContributorsNorton, Jennifer (Author) / Cooper, Katelyn (Thesis director) / Baumann, Alicia (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2022-05