<p> What experiences do college STEM majors report as being factors that encouraged them to pursue a STEM related major? Do experiences and influences in school such as labs, curriculum, and teachers make a difference? How do extracurricular impact a students&rsquo; desire to continue on in science after high school? Through this qualitative study I attempted to find some answers to the above questions. </p><p> Seven current college STEM majors were interviewed in a semi-structured format. Through the coding of the interview data several themes emerged which included the following: development of students&rsquo; interest, experiencing real science, academic inclination, and knowledge of careers in the STEM fields. These reported factors seemed to influence these students in one way or another in choosing to pursue a STEM career. It was found that all but one subject interviewed experienced hands-on science within a career related experience. They cited those experiences as their biggest influencers.</p>

<p> The purpose of this mixed method research study was to examine the constructivist beliefs and instructional practices of secondary science teachers. The research also explored situations that impacted whether or not student centered instruction occurred. The study revealed science teachers held constructive beliefs pertaining to student questioning of the learning process and student autonomy in interacting with other learners. Teachers held the least constructivist beliefs pertaining to student teacher collaboration on lesson design. Additionally, teacher beliefs and practice were not congruent due to instructional practices being deemed less constructivist than reported. The study found that curricular demands, teacher perceptions about students, inadequate laboratory resources, and the lack of teacher understanding about the components of constructivist instruction inhibited student centered instruction. The results of this study led to six recommendations that can be implemented by school districts in collaboration with science teachers to promote constructivist instruction. </p>

<p> The purpose of this mixed-methods action research study was to examine to what extent entomological research can promote students&rsquo; hands-on learning in a high-poverty, urban, secondary setting.</p><p> In reviewing the literature, the researcher was not able to find a specific study that investigated how entomological research could promote the hands-on learning of students. The researcher did find evidence that research on learning in a secondary setting was important to student growth. It should also be noted that support was established for the implementation of hands-on science inquiry in the classroom setting.</p><p> The study&rsquo;s purpose was to aid educators in their instruction by combining research-based strategies and hands-on science inquiry. The surveys asked 30 students to rate their understanding of three basic ideas. These core ideas were entomological research, hands-on science inquiry, and urban studies. These core ideas provided the foundation for the study. The questionnaires were based on follow-up ideas from the surveys. Two interview sessions were used to facilitate this one-on-one focus.</p><p> Because the study included only 30 student participants, its findings may not be totally replicable. Further study investigating the links between entomological research and hands-on science learning in an urban environment is needed.</p>

<p> Due to the logistics of guided-inquiry lesson, students learn to problem solve and develop critical thinking skills. This mixed-methods study analyzed the students&rsquo; attitudes towards science during inquiry lessons. My quantitative results from a repeated measures survey showed no significant difference between student attitudes when taught with either structured-inquiry or guided-inquiry lessons. The qualitative results analyzed through a constant-comparative method did show that students generate positive interest, critical thinking and low level stress during guided-inquiry lessons. The qualitative research also gave insight into a teacher&rsquo;s transition to guided-inquiry. This study showed that with my students, their attitudes did not change during this transition according to the qualitative data however, the qualitative data did how high levels of excitement. The results imply that students like guided-inquiry laboratories, even though they require more work, just as much as they like traditional laboratories with less work and less opportunity for creativity.</p>

<p> This investigation examined how former members of the Wilderness Adventures Club at Bolsa Grande High School described the impacts of their outdoor experiences on their Interpersonal Connections, Outdoor Perspectives, Personal Growth and Well-Being, Agency, and Learning and Knowing. The data suggest that participants benefitted from participation in wilderness-based activities through the subsequent development of close friendships, connectedness to the natural world, 21st century skills like communication, feelings of well-being and agency, and increased knowledge. Administrative and district concerns about the perceived risks involved in outdoor extracurricular trips often become obstacles for educators who want to engage students in informal, wilderness-based learning opportunities. The results of this thesis may provide evidence of the benefits of these kinds of outings to argue for support for outdoor trips for students.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students&rsquo; high school Project Lead They Way participation and their subsequent academic success in post-secondary engineering studies and to assess to what degree, if any, their level of Project Lead The Way (PLTW) participation, gender, and AALANA status (African American, Latino/a American and Native American) effected this success. </p><p> PLTW is the nation&rsquo;s single largest provider of pre-engineering curriculums, the subject of this research study, currently being offered in over 3,200 secondary schools nationwide. Despite this level of integration, the amount of research on PLTW&rsquo;s effectiveness has been very limited. To date, the majority of the literature on PLTW has examined its impact on students&rsquo; high school academic performance or their desire to further their engineering studies. The findings from these studies have been overwhelmingly positive, indicating that PLTW students often had greater achievements in math and science and either plan to, or have actually enrolled, in post-secondary studies at higher rates. Nevertheless, the amount of literature on PLTW&rsquo;s effects on students&rsquo; academic success in post-secondary engineering studies is very limited. Furthermore, no research has yet to examine for the moderating effects of gender, ethnicity, or level of PLTW participation on students&rsquo; post-secondary academics success. </p><p> The population of interest for this research study was 1,478 students who entered an undergraduate engineering program from 2007 to 2009 at a privately endowed, co-educational university located in the northeastern United States. </p><p> The findings of this research study were that virtually all the effects of PLTW participation, gender, and AALANA status had on academic success were observed during students&rsquo; freshmen and sophomore years. These effects were positive for PLTW participation, and adverse for female and AALANA students. Additionally, PLTW participation, gender, and AALANA status only explained a small amount of the variance for each of the academic success metrics. These conclusions suggest that future research on PLTW should focus on the first and second year of study and expand the factors examined, both quantitative and qualitative, to gain a greater understanding of the complex factors that influence students&rsquo; initial academic success in post-secondary engineering studies.</p><p>

Data collected in this study indicated significantly greater pre-to-post test score gains, confidence level gains, and increased student engagement in learning about electric circuits through model-based instruction compared to students who learned through more traditional teaching methods. Since the teachers in the model-based group were known to widely utilize guided whole-class discussions to foster the students' construction of explanatory models, it was deemed important to study the specific types of teaching strategies that may be supporting these positive effects. An in-depth analysis was conducted to identify teaching strategies used during whole class discussions by the two teachers whose students had the largest pre-to-post test gains. A new diagrammatic system for representing the parallel use of several nested levels of teaching strategies and their interaction with student reasoning moves was developed to support these microanalyses. This study found evidence that, in addition to previously documented dialogical strategies that teachers utilize to engage students in effectively communicating their scientific ideas in class, there is a second level of more cognitively focused model-construction-supporting strategies that teachers use to foster students' reasoning about the construction of explanatory models of scientific concepts. A compendium was developed of thirty nine whole-class discussion-based teaching strategies, each of which contributes to one of four phases (Observation, Model Generation, Model Evaluation and Model Modification) of a model construction cycle. While the thirty nine strategies were identified within the teaching of high school electric circuits, it is believed that they are general enough to apply to other topics and levels of instruction. It was discovered that even though considerable differences were observed between two model-based teachers in the ratios of student and teacher contributions to the model construction process taking place during whole-class discussions, both teachers were able to support high levels of student participation in these conversations as well as virtually identical pre-to-post test gains in circuit problem solving outcomes. This result suggests that there is not "one best way" to facilitate model-based learning. The study attempts to contribute to a coherent model of how teachers can support students' conceptual change processes through a process of scaffolding whole-class discussions.

Urban districts suffer from a severe shortage of qualified science teachers. Therefore, many new science teachers will need to take positions in urban districts with little or no exposure to urban communities. As a result, prospective teachers find it difficult to learn how to negotiate the cultural contexts of urban teaching. Consequently, it is essential for teacher preparation programs to begin to examine the cultural contexts of urban science teaching to understand how to support the personal and professional well being of novice urban science educators. Through in-depth phenomenological interviews this research documents the experiences, perceptions, and beliefs of veteran urban science teachers and how they navigated pathways to successful teaching careers. Results focus on how the cultural levels of teacher socialization (personal, institutional, and societal) shaped their induction into the teaching profession. In addition, the analysis of the data suggests that teacher preparation programs need to be reconceptualized to include a specific focus on culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, teacher identity development, and how to develop community networks and connections. This restructuring is key for novice urban teachers to either increase their cultural sensitivity, or align their own cultural belief systems in-order to develop the necessary skill set to become successful urban science teachers.

<p> This study investigated high school students&rsquo; definitions and interpretations of what an animal is, with a focus on marine animals. Past studies have shown that students&rsquo; definitions of animals often center on themes of movement or appendages. In this study, student responses were analyzed against a predetermined definition of an animal--a multicellular eukaryotic organism that is heterotrophic. Marine animals consistently misidentified by the students were also identified. </p><p> The data for this study was collected through surveys and interviews, using ninth grade high school students. Students were asked to identify marine organisms as animals or not, and to provide a definition or reasoning for classifying organisms as animals.</p><p> The purpose of this study is to better inform educators of the preconceptions about animals, specifically marine animals, that students bring into the classroom. This will allow educators to address those preconceptions to encourage a fuller understanding of animals in their students.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to identify misconceptions and perceptions of best teaching practices to better bring about conceptual change in thermodynamics, a core idea within the high school physical science Next Generation Science Standards. This study identified student misconceptions related to a thermodynamics unit, focusing on misconceptions related to temperature and energy, temperature and perceptions of hot/cold, and heat capacity. I also sought to identify factors that students and I, separately, identified as affecting their thinking. Data includes a pre-test and a post-test given to high school chemistry students. The instruments included multiple-choice and free-response questions. I also kept a teacher journal of my thoughts throughout the unit. The unit was somewhat successful in addressing heat energy and temperature misconceptions as more students answered post-test questions correctly when compared to the pre-test responses. Students identified labs and out of class experiences as affecting their thinking, which I agree with and would also include activities that make students more aware of their own thinking along with group discussion and modeling.</p><p>