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1. Gender Stereotypes Influence Children’s STEM Motivation

   https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12424  

   Master, Allison (August 2021, Child Development Perspectives)

   Abstract Children’s memberships in social groups have profound effects on their motivation. Stereotypes about social groups shape children’s beliefs about what is expected for their group members. These beliefs can influence children’s developing beliefs about themselves (self‐perceptions). In this article, I review research on how gender stereotypes influence children’s motivation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), including ability beliefs and sense of belonging. When children belong to a gender group that is negatively stereotyped in a STEM field, they may doubt their own capabilities and whether they belong in that field, making it harder for them to develop interest over time. Developmentally, the influence of gender stereotypes on motivation begins during preschool and strengthens during late childhood. I also address the consequences of different kinds of stereotypes and why some children are more influenced by stereotypes than others. Understanding this process in childhood will help researchers design effective interventions to remedy educational inequities in STEM. 

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2. Ways of Being Smart in Engineering: Beliefs, Values, and Introductory Engineering Experiences

   https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v14i1.41633  

   Kramer, Amy; Kajfez, Rachel Louis; Dringenberg, Emily (January 2024, International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP))

   Common discourse conveys that to be an engineer, one must be “smart.” Our individual and collective beliefs about what constitutes smart behavior are shaped by our participation in the complex cultural practice of smartness. From the literature, we know that the criteria for being considered “smart” in our educational systems are biased. The emphasis on selecting and retaining only those who are deemed “smart enough” to be engineers perpetuates inequity in undergraduate engineering education. Less is known about what undergraduate students explicitly believe are the different ways of being smart in engineering or how those different ways of being a smart engineer are valued in introductory engineering classrooms. In this study, we explored the common beliefs of undergraduate engineering students regarding what it means to be smart in engineering. We also explored how the students personally valued those ways of being smart versus what they perceived as being valued in introductory engineering classrooms. Through our multi-phase, multi-method approach, we initially qualitatively characterized their beliefs into 11 different ways to be smart in engineering, based on a sample of 36 engineering students enrolled in first-year engineering courses. We then employed quantitative methods to uncover significant differences, with a 95% confidence interval, in six of the 11 ways of being smart between the values personally held by engineering students and what they perceived to be valued in their classrooms. Additionally, we qualitatively found that 1) students described grades as central to their classroom experience, 2) students described the classroom as a context where effortless achievement is associated with being smart, and 3) students described a lack of reward in the classroom for showing initiative and for considerations of social impact or helping others. As engineering educators strive to be more inclusive, it is essential to have a clear understanding and reflect on how students value different ways of being smart in engineering as well as consider how these values are embedded into teaching praxis. 

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3. Myths of Priority and Unity in Mathematics Learning

   https://doi.org/10.3390  

   Goldenberg, E. Paul; Carter, Cynthia J. (June 2018, Education sciences)

   How people see the world, even how they research it, is influenced by beliefs. Some beliefs are conscious and the result of research, or at least amenable to research. Others are largely invisible. They may feel like “common knowledge” (though myth, not knowledge), unrecognized premises that are part of the surrounding culture. As we will explain, people also hold ideas in both a detailed form and in a thumbnail image and may not notice when they are using the low-resolution image in place of the full picture. In either case, unrecognized myths about how young learners develop mathematical ideas naturally or with instruction are insidious in that they persist unconsciously and so sway research and practice without being examined rigorously. People are naturally oblivious to the ramifications of unrecognized premises (myths) until they encounter an anomaly that cannot be explained without reexamining those premises. Like all disciplines, mathematics education is shaped and constrained by its myths. This article is a conceptual piece. It uses informally gathered (but reproducible) classroom examples to elaborate on two myths about mathematics learning that can interfere with teaching and can escape the scrutiny of empirical research. Our goal is to give evidence to expand the questions researchers think to pose and to encourage thoughtful reappraisal of the implications of the myths. The myths we will discuss involve the order in which mathematical ideas are learnable and the “unity” of mathematical topics, with special attention to algebra. With examples, we will show that some ideas develop at a strikingly counterintuitive and early time. Taking advantage of such unexpectedly early developments can let educators devise pedagogies that build on the logic young children already have rather than predicating learning on statistically observed learning patterns or even the apparent structure of mathematics. Acknowledging such early developments might change the questions researchers ask and change how they study children’s mathematical learning, with the possible result of changing how children are taught. 

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4. Students use their lived experiences to justify their beliefs about how they will approach process safety judgements.

   Stransky, J.; Ritz, C.; Bodnar, C.A.; Dringenberg, E.; Miskioglu, E. (January 2023, ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   In the chemical industry, judgements related to process safety hold the potential to lead to process incidents, such as chemical leaks and mechanical failures that can have severe consequences. Many of these judgements require engineers to juxtapose competing criteria including leadership, production, relationships, safety, spending, and time. For such judgements, numerous factors are at play, including our beliefs about ourselves and our intention to behave a particular way. As part of a larger research project funded through the NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) program, we are working to investigate: 1) What do engineering students and practitioners believe about how they approach making judgements?, 2) how do they behave when actually making judgements?, 3) what gap, if any, exists between their beliefs and behavior?, and 4) how do they reconcile any gaps between their beliefs and behaviors? After completion of the first year of the project, we have interviewed fourteen senior chemical engineering students about how they believe they will approach process safety judgements in scenarios where they must juxtapose competing criteria. During our initial analysis to characterize students’ espoused beliefs about their approaches towards making process safety judgements, we identified an emergent finding about how they justify these beliefs. We present this emergent finding by answering the research question: How do undergraduate engineering students justify their beliefs about how they will make judgements in process safety contexts? When we asked students to provide reasoning for the beliefs they conveyed about how they will approach process safety judgements, we found that overwhelmingly, students used their lived experiences in different work settings to justify their beliefs. These lived experiences included engineering co-ops, internships, volunteer, and retail work. This emergent finding suggests that students’ lived experiences may be greatly informing their espoused beliefs about how they will approach process safety judgements. This paper will also briefly discuss implications for process safety educators on how they may incorporate lived experiences, or other ways of knowing, so students may develop more robust beliefs about process safety judgements. 

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5. Board 419: Students use their Lived Experiences to Justify their Beliefs about How they Will Approach Process Safety Judgment

   Stransky, J.; Ritz, C.; Bodnar, C.A.; Dringenberg, E.; Miskioglu, E. (January 2023, ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   In the chemical industry, judgements related to process safety hold the potential to lead to process incidents, such as chemical leaks and mechanical failures that can have severe consequences. Many of these judgements require engineers to juxtapose competing criteria including leadership, production, relationships, safety, spending, and time. For such judgements, numerous factors are at play, including our beliefs about ourselves and our intention to behave a particular way. As part of a larger research project funded through the NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) program, we are working to investigate: 1) What do engineering students and practitioners believe about how they approach making judgements?, 2) how do they behave when actually making judgements?, 3) what gap, if any, exists between their beliefs and behavior?, and 4) how do they reconcile any gaps between their beliefs and behaviors? After completion of the first year of the project, we have interviewed fourteen senior chemical engineering students about how they believe they will approach process safety judgements in scenarios where they must juxtapose competing criteria. During our initial analysis to characterize students’ espoused beliefs about their approaches towards making process safety judgements, we identified an emergent finding about how they justify these beliefs. We present this emergent finding by answering the research question: How do undergraduate engineering students justify their beliefs about how they will make judgements in process safety contexts? When we asked students to provide reasoning for the beliefs they conveyed about how they will approach process safety judgements, we found that overwhelmingly, students used their lived experiences in different work settings to justify their beliefs. These lived experiences included engineering co-ops, internships, volunteer, and retail work. This emergent finding suggests that students’ lived experiences may be greatly informing their espoused beliefs about how they will approach process safety judgements. This paper will also briefly discuss implications for process safety educators on how they may incorporate lived experiences, or other ways of knowing, so students may develop more robust beliefs about process safety judgements. 

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