Summary Northeast Florida Regional STEM2 Hub’s student and educator data demonstrate how participation in in-school, progressively-aligned STEM courses in Putnam County Schools increases students’ STEM -related attitudes and 21 st - century skills. Students reported significant positive change on all 10 STEM and 21 st -century outcomes, with the greatest positive change in STEM career knowledge and STEM career interest. Based on common effect size benchmarks, Putnam County STEM courses had a medium effect on career knowledge (Cohen, 2009). To contextualize this finding, the effect sizes of Putnam County student STEM career knowledge and STEM career interest were larger than the overall weighted average effect size found in a meta-analysis examining the impact of STEM programs on mathematics achievement (Siregar et al., 2019). Although Putnam County in-school STEM courses target all aspects of STEM, this comparison still highlights the magnitude of Putnam County STEM course impact. Across multiple STEM and 21 st -Century outcomes, analyses revealed outcome differences by gender and race/ethnicity groups. Specifically, females experienced significantly more positive change than males. Greater change in females may be partially explained by females reporting lower “baseline” (retro-pre) scores at the beginning of their STEM courses and therefore, having a greater threshold for change. Additionally, gender impacted the strength of the relationship between retro-pre and retro-post scores on a number of outcomes. Outcome differences between White, Caucasian (non-Hispanic) students and students of color may also be partially explained by White students reporting lower baseline scores on many outcomes. Across all 10 STEM and 21 st -century outcomes, students in 6 th grade reported significantly greater positive change than students in other grades. Similarly, when we examined findings for 6 th grade vs. 4 th -5 th grade students, 6 th grade students reported significantly more positive change on both STEM outcomes assessed (STEM engagement and identity) and three of the four 21 st -century skills (critical thinking, perseverance, and relationships with adults). Previous research found that more frequent engagement in scientific inquiry-based learning resulted in greater science proficiency (NAEP, 2019b). Because 6 th graders participate in STEM as a core course that meets daily and students in other grades receive less frequent dosages of STEM learning, these differential outcomes may be explained by differences in dosage. Educators reported significant increases in comfort, interest, confidence, and capability leading STEM activities at the time of the survey compared to a year ago. While educators who received professional development reported greater increases in attitudes toward teaching STEM over time than educators who did not receive professional development, those differences did not reach the level of statistical significance. Previous research has found that the effectiveness of professional development may be influenced by a variety of contextual factors (e.g., duration, format, alignment with curriculum, teacher practices and beliefs) (Lynch et al., 2019). To better understand the current finding, more information on the dosage, duration, and content of professional development received would be helpful, as well as a larger sample size to differentiate between the impact of STEM professional development on STEM-specific educators and non-STEM-specific educators. Educators also reported increases in perceived student confidence in STEM, skills in STEM, and 21 st -century skills, mirroring student-reported increases in all 10 STEM and 21 st -century outcomes. Alignment between educator and student perspectives strengthens evidence of in-school STEM course impact and provides a more comprehensive understanding of the features of the learning environment that may be contributing to positive outcomes. There were a few limitations to this year’s data collection efforts. Sample sizes across grades were vastly differerent with this sample overwhelmingly representing elementary school students. Also, because of the small sample size of 6 th grade STEM teachers, opportunities for analyzing outcomes for these teachers were limited. Future research should focus on collecting additional 6 th grade STEM teacher data as well as linking educators with students to
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