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1. Constructivist Learning as Intervention: A Pre-Post Examination of STEM Interest and Self-Efficacy

   Xu, Y; Yang, M; Zhang, S; Muthukumar, V (April 2025, AERA 2025)

   The core component of this study was a five-week summer camp that provided Arduino and robotics workshops and group activities to girls in grades 6-11. All activities were structured to ensure that learning took place in a constructivist environment. The camp was designed as a program to increase girls’, especially minorities’ participation in computer science and engineering. Key elements of camp participants’ STEM interest, self-efficacy, and contextual factors were measured both before and after the camp. With the collection and analyses of the survey data, our present study is to examine how constructivist learning environment may impact adolescent girls’ STEM learning and interests. 

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2. Engaging girls in learning engineering through building ubiquitous intelligent systems

   M. Yang, B. Tiwari (January 2022, Proc. IEEE Int’l Conf. Teaching, Assessment, and Learning (TALE))

   Women make up only 28% of the workforce in STEM fields. It’s important to engage more girls in learning STEM; however, girls’ interests in STEM careers keep declining. It is well studied that the lack of sense of belonging underlies gender differences in STEM differentiation and achievement. Researchers have found that secondary girls’ sense of belonging declines as they age. To enhance secondary female students’ interests and self-concept in computing and engineering fields, the UNLV ITEST project sets the focus on engaging Girls in Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (GUIC) through a constructivist learning environment. In the GUIC Summer Camp, 40 secondary female students will take three-week training courses in Arduino & Internet of Things and Robotics Design and conduct two-week engineering project development in tiered teams co-mentored by STEM teachers and college student mentors. Based on the active learning method, the training courses are designed with interactive lectures and hands-on labs/activities. The engineering projects in ubiquitous intelligent systems are designed to connect computing & engineering concepts with real-world problems. Project demo results and students’ feedbacks have confirmed the effectiveness of the project activities in enhancing female students’ interests and self-efficacy in learning engineering and STEM. The unique constructivist learning environment is helpful in improving female students’ sense of belonging in STEM. 

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3. How Constructivist Learning Impacts Secondary Girls’ STEM Career Interests

   https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v12i2.6793  

   Xu, Y; Yang, M; Zhang, S; Muthukumar, V (January 2024, Journal of Education and Training Studies)

   This is a quantitative study that examines how constructivist learning in a summer camp impacted middle school and high school girls’ STEM knowledge, self-efficacy, and ultimately, their interests in future STEM learning and growth. An online survey was used to collect information from thirty-one girls at the end of a five-week summer camp. The results are mostly confirmative of past studies that used student-centered project-based authentic STEM learning with significant gains in students’ understanding of STEM, self-efficacy, and interests in STEM for future development. The unique contribution of the study, though, is the finding that, when given the opportunity to engage in active learning and problem-solving, girls’ interest in STEM subjects could be substantially boosted; the constructivist learning environment along with their gains in STEM knowledge can compensate any insufficiency in self-efficacy in this regard. This study provides insight about the importance of instructional approach in STEM education. 

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4. Crochet: engaging secondary school girls in art for STEAM’s sake

   P. York, S. Zhang (December 2022, Science education international)

   Recent STEAM programs have made accomplishments in recruiting K-12 girl students to participate in STEAM activities. Educational researchers have called for studies of how STEM programs engage girls. However, little research has embedded STEM education with girl education such as their emotional needs, identity, and self-expression. This study examined how crochet that was embedded in a STEM summer camp impacted their sense of belonging, creativity, well-being, and STEAM learning. For this qualitative study, surveys were conducted with 37 student participants and Discord was used as part of the data sources. Findings indicated that crocheting enhanced students’ sense of belonging, creativity, well-being, as well as STEM learning. This study contributes to the STEM learning program design for girls in secondary schools with two closely related theories: constructivist learning environment theory and sense of belonging theory. This study added new knowledge to the research of crochet in girl education and STEM program design. 

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5. Understanding Racially Minoritized Girls’ Perceptions of Their STEM Identities, Abilities, and Sense of Belonging in a Summer Camp

   https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13121183  

   Milton, Saki; Sager, Marc T; Walkington, Candace (December 2023, Education Sciences)

   Informal science education researchers have become increasingly interested in how out-of-school spaces that offer STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) programs inform learners’ STEM achievement, interests, and affective outcomes. Studies have found that these spaces can offer critical learning and developmental opportunities for underrepresented racially minoritized (URM) students (Black, Latinx, low socioeconomic status) in STEM subjects. Shifting away from the leaky STEM pipeline analogy, researchers have posited contemporary understandings to explain why the minoritization of URM girls persists. Informal learning environments such as STEM summer camps are being studied to assess how URM girls experience and interact with STEM in novel ways. These environments can inform the research field about how URM girls’ perceptions of their STEM identities, abilities, efficacy, and belonging in STEM develop as they engage in those spaces. This mixed-method study used a multiple-case-study approach to examine how aspects of URM middle school girls’ STEM identities positively changed after participating in a one-week, sleep-away, single-gender STEM summer camp held at a university in the Southwestern U.S. Drawing on intersectionality and STEM identity, we used ecological systems theory to design our research study, examining how URM middle school girls narrate their STEM identities in this informal learning environment. Using quantitative analyses and deductive coding methods, we explored how elements of girls’ STEM identities were shaped during and after their participation in the STEM summer camp. Findings from our study highlight (1) quantitative changes in girl participants’ STEM identities, sense of belonging in STEM, and perceived STEM ability belief, (2) qualitative results supporting our quantitative findings, and (3) how the intersectionality of participants’ race and gender played a role in their STEM identities. This study points to the potential of STEM informal learning camps as a way of developing and fostering URM girls’ STEM identities. 

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