K-12 science teachers in the United States are encouraged to teach their students engineering. When incorporating engineering into their science curricula, teachers commonly either focus on: (1) engineering and lace science throughout; or (2) science and lace engineering throughout. This study explores middle school students' nature of engineering…

This study aimed to investigate students' perceptions of engineers and how they vary by grade level and gender. This study proposes an approach to understanding the Chinese students' perceptions of engineers and the interest preference of middle school students in the way of graphic analysis and questionnaire. This descriptive study incorporated a…

In this paper, we describe our solution to predict student STEM career choices during the 2017 ASSISTments Datamining Competition. We built a machine learning system that automatically reformats the data set, generates new features and prunes redundant ones, and performs model and feature selection. We designed the system to automatically find a…

As part of a longitudinal study of the development and implementation of a middle school engineering design curriculum, we have used an occupational values subscale of the Assessing Men and Women in Engineering (AWE) project's Engineering version of the Core Survey for Middle School-Aged Participants to measure student occupational interest in…

This dissertation investigates the intersection of economics of innovation and human capital development to understand how to empower individuals and marginalized communities to be directed to innovation and STEM disciplines. The research focuses on three main chapters: Chapter 1 examines the effectiveness of an education program in teaching and…

The aim of this article is to report the results of an empirical study on adolescents' interest, self-efficacy, and vocational interest in technology and design. Following the expectancy-value model, we wanted to know how context-specific interest in technology and perceived self-efficacy in solving technical tasks are developed at lower…

Purpose: In 2017 and 2018, engineering applications and design process were given weight to with the updates carried out in the Physical Sciences Lesson Curriculum in Turkey. For the STEM education which is at the center of this update to reach its target, it is highly important that students accurately learn what engineers do, what their work…

Over the last fifteen years, engineering has made its way into science curriculum at all levels, elementary, middle, and high school. A need to analyze students' perception the field of engineering is warranted. Previous techniques for studying representations of scientists and build on what researchers in the science field have learned from…

Students' knowledge about a profession influences their future decisions about careers. Research indicates that students tend to hold stereotypical views of engineers, which would hinder engineering as a career choice. The purpose of this study was to measure how participating in a week long engineering summer camp affected middle school students'…

This longitudinal study analyzes survey responses in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade from diverse public school students (n = 482) to explore gender differences in engineering and science career preferences. Females were far more likely to express interest in a science career (31%) than an engineering career (13%), while the reverse was true for…

To compete globally in the 21st century, it is important to introduce more young people to industrial technology and improve technology-related education. All citizens must understand and know how to use technology (Burris, 1998). Knowledge, expertise, and economics will determine their future success in the world's markets. This article describes…