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When implemented effectively, Place-Based Experiential Learning (PBEL) pedagogies have been shown through different studies to enhance student content knowledge, course engagement, critical thinking skills, and civic-mindedness. This research followed 10 semester long university courses, during one academic year, implementing PBEL pedagogies with a focus on urban farming. Courses came from a wide array of disciplines including courses focused on science, technology, engineering, or mathematics as well as many non-STEM courses. Students completed pre- and post-assessments to measure change in civic-mindedness, place attachment, situated sustainability meaning-making, and environmental scientific literacy. Statistically significant positive change with small to moderate effect sizes were found in student’s environmental scientific literacy, situated sustainability meaning-making, place attachment, and civic-mindedness.
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Predictors of Scientific Civic Engagement (PSCE) Survey: A Multidimensional Instrument to Measure Undergraduates’ Attitudes, Knowledge, and Intention to Engage with the Community Using Their Science Skills
Civic engagement is an individual’s active participation that is intended to improve a community’s socioeconomic status or help shape its future. Undergraduates who engage with a community during formal course work are more likely to participate civically later in life. This outcome is important for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) students since they use STEM knowledge to make informed decisions about public health, national security and the environment. STEM courses that incorporate this idea actively engage students in helping communities, and yet, assessment of the civic outcomes in these courses, such as measuring important predictors of future civic engagement, has been inconsistent and challenging. To address this need, we designed and assessed a new survey by adapting and testing items from previously existing civic engagement measures. The result was a 14-item survey comprising the following scientific civic constructs, that predict future scientific civic engagement: value, self-efficacy, action, and knowledge. This survey has potential to provide insight into the development of scientific civic engagement for STEM disciplines among undergraduate populations and can be used with additional scales of interest, allowing for researchers to assess relationships between predictors of scientific civic engagement and other constructs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1836510
- PAR ID:
- 10392156
- Editor(s):
- Nehm, Ross
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CBE—Life Sciences Education
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1931-7913
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-02-0032
