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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. 

This study collected data from a five-week summer camp that provided programming workshops and engineering-based group activities to girls in grades 6-11. The camp was part of the actions designed to increase girls’, especially minorities’, participation in computer science and engineering. All activities were designed to ensure that learning took place in a constructivist environment. With the collection and analyses of survey data, the objective of this study is to examine whether and how a constructivist learning environment impacted adolescent girls’ STEM interests beyond their gains in STEM knowledge and self-efficacy. 

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.