Internationally, out-of-school time (OST) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs abound. However, rigorous evidence of their impacts on student outcomes is scarce. This study evaluated the relationships between OST STEM program participation and student motivational factors in math and science by analyzing survey and administrative data of 1.017 middle school students who participated in the seven-week, STEM-focused Prefreshman Engineering Program (PREP) in San Antonio, Texas, from 2015 to 2017. Multiple regression results indicated that the PREP participation was positively associated with students’ attitudes toward math and interests in math-related careers, whereas the effects on students’ attitudes toward science and career interests in science were negligible. No evidence was found to suggest that the associations between PREP participation and student motivational factors in math and science differed by gender, race/ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.
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Student Participation in Sociocritical Data Literacy: Shapes, Trends, and Future Directions From a Middle School Science Unit
Data science has increasingly integrated sociocritical theories and approaches, helping youth to not only learn data science but also relate data to their everyday and sociohistorical lives. Our project, Writing Data Stories, furthers these efforts by exploring sociocritical data literacies in a large-scale classroom enactment. We examine trends in middle school science student groups’ (n=11) data participation and sociocritical participation, showing how these forms of participation ebb and flow across a 21-day unit. We then present focal group case studies to further unpack how participation shifted over time and suggest what factors contributed to these shifts. We found that data participation was affected by the tools at students’ disposal, and sociocritical participation was shaped by the questions groups asked of each other and the data. These findings suggest that special attention to tools and guiding questions is critical when designing for sociocritical data literacy in middle school science contexts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1900606
- PAR ID:
- 10391905
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Conference for the Learning Sciences
- ISSN:
- 1573-4552
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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