A multiple case study of an interorganizational collaboration: Exploring the first year of an industry partnership focused on middle school engineering education

Background: Calls to improve learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and particularly engineering, present significant challenges for school systems. Partnerships among engineering industry, universities, and school systems to support learning appear promising, but current work is limited in its conclusions because it lacks a strong connection to theoretical work in interorganizational collaboration. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study aims to reflect more critically on the process of how organizations build relationships to address the following research question: In a public–private partnership to integrate engineering into middle school science curriculum, how do stakeholder characterizations of the collaborative process align with existing frameworks of interorganizational collaboration?. Design/Method: This qualitative, embedded multiple case study considered in-depth pre- and post-year interviews with teachers, administrators, industry, and university personnel during the first year of the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools (PEERS) program. Transcripts were analyzed using a framework of interorganizational collaboration operationalized for our context. Results: Results provide insights into stakeholder perceptions of collaborative processes in the first year of the PEERS program across dimensions of collaboration. These dimensions mapped to three central discussion points with relevance for school–university–industry partnerships: school collaboration as an emergent and negotiated process, tension in collaborating across organizations, and fair share in collaborating toward a social goal. Conclusions: Taking a macro-level look at the collaborative processes involved enabled us to develop implications for collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success. By systematically applying a framework of collaboration and capitalizing on the rich situational findings possible through a qualitative approach, we shift our understanding of collaborative processes in school–university–industry partnerships for engineering education and contribute to the development of collaboration theory

Building Community Capacity for Integrating Engineering in Rural Middle School Science Classrooms

: Broadening participation in engineering is an important national priority and has led to increasing demands for engineering content to be integrated into traditional K-12 curriculum. However, expecting teachers to incorporate engineering into their classrooms without additional training or resources is unreasonable. Partnering teachers with industry partners is one promising way to prioritize integrated science and engineering content while also introducing youth to possible career paths. In this programmatic article, we introduce the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools (PEERS) project that focuses on the collaborative design, implementation, and study of recurrent hands-on engineering activities with middle school youth in three rural communities in or near Appalachia. We discuss the curricular priorities of the program as well as preliminary findings on both student-focused and capacity-building metrics across the partnerships. Key discussion points include (1) a need to distill goals for engineering outreach by wrestling with what success might really look like for middle-school youth engagement with engineering and (2) cultivating community capacity to better support education systems and the simultaneous potential for and challenges of collaborating to build such infrastructure

Student Outcomes from the Collective Design and Delivery of Culturally Relevant Engineering Outreach Curricula in Rural and Appalachian Middle Schools

Middle school is a pivotal time for career choice, and research is rich with studies on how students perceive engineering, as well as corresponding intervention strategies to introduce younger students to engineering and inform their conceptions of engineering. Unfortunately, such interventions are typically not designed in culturally relevant ways. Consequently, there continues to be a lack of students entering engineering and a low level of diverse candidates for this profession. The purpose of this study was to explore how students in rural and Appalachian Virginia conceive of engineering before and after engagement with culturally relevant hands-on activities in the classroom. We used student responses to the Draw an Engineer Test (DAET), consisting of a drawing and several open-ended prompts administered before and after the set of engagements, to answer our research questions related to changes in students’ conceptions of engineering. We used this study to develop recommendations for teachers for the use of such engineering engagement practices and how to best assess their outcomes, including looking at the practicality of the DAET. Overall, we found evidence that our classroom engagements positively influenced students’ conceptions of engineering in these settings

Change theory in STEM higher education: a systematic review

Abstract This article systematically reviews how change theory has been used in STEM higher educational change between 1995 and 2019. Researchers are increasingly turning to theory to inform the design, implementation, and investigation of educational improvement efforts. Yet, efforts are often siloed by discipline and relevant change theory comes from diverse fields outside of STEM. Thus, there is a need to bring together work across disciplines to investigate which change theories are used and how they inform change efforts. This review is based on 97 peer-reviewed articles. We provide an overview of change theories used in the sample and describe how theory informed the rationale and assumptions of projects, conceptualizations of context, indicators used to determine if goals were met, and intervention design. This review points toward three main findings. Change research in STEM higher education almost always draws on theory about individual change, rather than theory that also attends to the system in which change takes place. Additionally, research in this domain often draws on theory in a superficial fashion, instead of using theory as a lens or guide to directly inform interventions, research questions, measurement and evaluation, data analysis, and data interpretation. Lastly, change researchers are not often drawing on, nor building upon, theories used in other studies. This review identified 40 distinct change theories in 97 papers. This lack of theoretical coherence in a relatively limited domain substantially limits our ability to build collective knowledge about how to achieve change. These findings call for more synthetic theoretical work; greater focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion; and more formal opportunities for scholars to learn about change and change theory