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Currently, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a popular buzz word in P -12 education as it represents a means to advance American competitiveness in the global economy. Proponents of the engineering component of STEM advocate additional benefits in teaching engineering, such as its capacity to engage students in collaboration, and to apply critical thinking, systems thinking, negotiation, and communication skills to solve real-life contextual problems. Establishing a strong foundation of engineering knowledge at a young age will provide students with internal motivation as it taps into their curiosity toward how things work, and it also prepares them for secondary science courses. Successful STEM education is often constrained by elementary teachers' low perception of self-efficacy to teach science and engineering. Elementary teachers with low self-efficacy in science are more likely to spend less instructional time teaching science, which suggests that teachers with little to no training in engineering might avoid teaching this topic. Therefore, the purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the effects of engineering professional development on elementary (K-6) teachers' content and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and perceptions of self-efficacy to teach engineering, and (b) to identify and explain sources influencing self-efficacy. Professional development was conducted in a metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. Results revealed that after the engineering professional development, teachers experienced statistically significant gains in content, PCK, and self-efficacy to teach engineering. Increases in self-efficacy were mainly attributed to mastery experiences and cultivation of a growth mindset by embracing the engineering design process.

M.Ed. (Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that are associated with encourage the persistence of undergraduate women majoring in Engineering and Math (EM) at Florida Atlantic University, University of Central Florida, and University of South Florida. The persistence factors were examined through an analysis of university data and the use of a survey for enrolled senior standing students who declared their first major in engineering or math. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized to collect and analyze data from the three sites. Factor analysis and logistic regression were used to analyze the quantitative data. The quantitative data retrieved from the survey instrument revealed that participants who were self motivated, felt they had a safe learning environment, and were engaged by the university were more likely to persist in engineering and math. Additionally, the survey revealed that race and ethnicity does not predict persistence of undergraduate women maj oring in engineering and math. Qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions revealed that the most important factor that helps female students persist in engineering and math major was self-confidence and determination. They also indicated that discrimination and stereotyping were the most difficult factors for female students to overcome. To enable more women to be successful in the pursuit of a engineering or math degree, participants made an overwhelming reference to intervention as student engagement. / Student engagement consists of the following: outreach programs, support programs, study groups, homework sessions, women clubs, engineering or math clubs, math and sciences activities, math and science tours, engineering and math societies, educational programs focusing on engineering and math, online courses, women organizations in STEM, positive role models, female teachers, women mentors, exposure to engineering and math, and expanding the career outlooks of young women. They suggested that student engagement must start early and must be continuous throughout every level of the educational pathway and professional life. Recommendations are provided for policymakers and university administrators to continue supporting women majoring in EM and to increase awareness and access that encourage persistence of women in the pursuit of EM career goals. / by Jessica Pena-Lopez. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Data-driven learning (DDL), an inductive teaching approach in which students learn through corpus interaction, has gained recent traction as way to teach specialized vocabulary in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. There is little research, however, that addresses how to choose specialized vocabulary for teaching with DDL. This study addressed this gap in research by exploring the potential of a three-part analytical, corpus-based system for determining vocabulary to teach with DDL for a specific context of language use. This system included (1) identifying words that were significantly more frequent in a specialized expert corpus than in a corpus of general English, (2) narrowing to words that showed patterned differences in use between the specialized corpus and a student corpus, and (3) narrowing further to words with salient enough patterns of usage to teach with DDL. This three-part system was applied to the context of civil engineering in order to find vocabulary words to teach civil engineering students with low-proficiency writing skills at Portland State University. For the first step in my analytical system, I found 201 words that occurred significantly more frequently in civil engineering practitioner writing than in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and that met requirements for frequency, distribution, and other criteria. I tested the second and third steps on 45 of these words and identified 14 words that showed evidence of needing to be taught and being well suited to DDL. After reflecting on my process, I found that the analytical system was successful in meeting my goals for finding civil engineering vocabulary for data-driven activities. I also made several observations that may be useful for ESP teachers who are interested in applying this methodology for their classes, the most notable of which were: 1. The system was especially useful for connecting words that are not explicitly civil engineering themed (e.g., encountered or using) to important writing functions that civil engineers perform. 2. Although it provided a systematic basis for vocabulary teaching decisions, the process was generally time-consuming and required complex judgments, which indicated that it may only be worth performing if teachers plan to regularly incorporate DDL vocabulary instruction into their course.

What does it mean to be academically literate? Responses to this question have led to an explosion of research in the field of applied linguistics, yet the diversity of definitions proposed in the literature for the concept of literacy per se indicate that it continues to defy consensus. Literacy, and specifically by extension academic literacy, must thus be recognised as a contested field, with different meanings for different people and inevitable tensions between those taking positions on or affected by its practical implications. Accepting its contested status, this study sought to explore student representations of academic literacy, academic staff representations of academic literacy and associated academic staff representations of students insofar as these touch on specific concerns of academic literacy in an engineering faculty. The purpose of this exploration was to determine how these representations permeate academic practice and inform pedagogical practice and attitudes to learning. This led to the research thesis, that dominant discourses produce certain practices which can lead to social exclusion/inclusion of students. Such a thesis, allows for an examination of institutional practices of teaching and learning. To do this, I employed a multidisciplinary approach drawn from applied linguistics, sociology and philosophy. Consequently, I drew on theories from James Paul Gee, Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein and Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger to understand the socio-cultural context where representation occurs. An understanding of these discourses and epistemologies also necessitated an approach that probed participants‘ versions of reality. Consequently, this research was premised within a Critical Realist ontology whose central tenet is the recognition of tripartite framework of reality. Within this framework, reality is comprised of the domains of the real, actual and the empirical. The domain of the empirical relates to perceptions of experiences, while the actual is concerned with events that produce these experiences. The real is the domain of generative mechanisms, which if activated, produce the events and experiences in the other domains. Data was collected to correspond to these domains, with critical focus on the analysis of underlying mechanisms which reproduce social reality. To establish how the real relates to the other domains, Fairclough‘s critical discourse analysis was adopted. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

In science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, problem solving tends to be highly procedural, and these procedures are typically taught with general instructional text and specific worked examples. Instructional text broadly defines procedures for problem solving, and worked examples demonstrate how to apply procedures to problems. Subgoal labels have been used to help students understand the structure of worked examples, and this feature has increased problem solving performance. The present study explored using subgoal labels in instructional text to further improve learners’ problem solving performance. A factorial design examined the efficacy of subgoal labeled instructional text and worked examples for programming education. The results of the present study suggest that subgoal labels in instructional text can help learners in a different way than subgoal labels in worked examples. Subgoal labels in text helped the learner articulate the general procedure better, and subgoal labels in the example helped the learner apply those procedures better. When solving novel problems, learners who received subgoal labels in both the text and example performed better than those who received subgoal labels in only the example. Learners who received subgoal labels in only the example performed better than those who received subgoal labels in only the text and those who did not receive subgoal labels at all. The present study indicates that subgoal labeled instructional text can improve novices’ problem solving performance in programming, but subgoal labels must appear in both the text and example.

Orientador: João Frederico da Costa Azevedo Meyer / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T03:04:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Palmieri_Patrizia_M.pdf: 6997730 bytes, checksum: 5e1be00391bbdf3d38e2d3ff87c4fe3c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: O objetivo central desta pesquisa é verificar se a modelagem matemática é um meio capaz de promover a transformação na visão dos alunos em relação à matemática, seu ensino e aprendizagem. Esta questão sustenta-se na possibilidade de articulação das propostas da modelagem matemática com as concepções emergentes de ciência e mundo. Nessa perspectiva, a estratégia adotada baseia-se na elaboração de projetos realizados junto a alunos do primeiro ano de engenharia de computação, na disciplina intitulada Vetores e Geometria Analítica de uma faculdade privada. Os procedimentos metodológicos utilizados caracterizam-na como uma pesquisa-ação. A principal fonte de informações emerge de questionários aplicados aos alunos antes e depois do trabalho com modelagem matemática / Abstract: The central aim of this research is to verify if the mathematical modelling as a way to lead a transformation process on how to view mathematics, its teaching and learning. This is developed with the possibility of articulating mathematical modelling proposals vis-à-vis the influence emerging conceptions of science and world. From this perspective, the adopted strategy is based upon the elaboration of projects for freshmen college students of a computer engineering course from a private institution. The methodological procedures used characterize this work as an action research. The principal source of information comes from questionnaires applied to students before and after the work with mathematical modelling / Mestrado / Educação Matematica / Mestre em Educação

M.Ed. (Tertiary and Adult Education) / This empirical study forms part of a team research project which was spearheaded by the Bureau of University Education at the Rand Afrikaans University. The aim of this study was to establish whether significant differences between the aptitudes of succesfull and non-succesfull freshman engineering students could be determined. This study consists mainly of two parts. Firstly, a literature study discussing the concepts aptitude and aptitude testing was undertaken. Secondly, an empirical study to establish differences in various aptitudes of the above-mentioned student groups was undertaken. According to the literature study, aptitude can be seen as a combination of factors which enables an individual to achieve a certain level of performance or to develop a certain skill with the necessary training. From the literature study it is apparent that aptitude is inherited, and also influenced by environmental factors. In early childhood it varies considerably but stabilizes in later years. Although slight similarities between aptitude and intelligence exist, a very clear distinction can be drawn. Differences between the aptitude patterns of men and women also appear. In the empirical study a random sample (N=388) was taken from the 1989 - 1991 freshman engineering students of the Rand Afrikaans University. The results of the Senior Aptitude Test (SAT) of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) were used to indicate d ifferences between the above-mentioned student groups. Students t-test was used to establish significant differences between the two groups. The data which was already available, was processed by means of the BMDP-3D computer programme. Significant differences between the two groups were identified, proving/indicating that aptitude should be taken into account during the process of student selection for the engineering course.

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / According to Jansen van Rensburg (1987:62) the watchword in the present-day world is productivity and this necessitates that, that which the student learns must be relevant to particularly the needs of the practice for functional skills. As a result of the above-mentioned, the following questions were posed: * Does the existing Strength of Materials and Structures N5 curriculum conform to scientific justifiable criteria for curriculum development? * Does the contents of strength of Materials and Structures N5 conform to the needs of the Industry? * Is the purpose with the contents clear? To answer the above-mentioned questions a questionnaire was used. R.A. Kruger's evaluation model was used to evaluate the present Strength of Materials and Structures N5 syllabus. The following conclusions, inter alia, were arrived at: * Students who study at Technical Colleges, work mainly with maintenance aspects. A very small percentage indicated that design and drawing aspects are regarded as important in practice. However, the present Strength of Materials and Structures N5 syllabus makes very 1ittle provision for the maintenance of such contents. * Furthermore it was found that there is a particularly great need for practical elucidation of the theory. * The present document (syllabus) does not conform to scientific justifiable criteria. No objectives or aims are reflected in the document. The contents are listed point by point without any order.