The CIS-E is an educator self-report survey that asks educators about several aspects of being a STEM educator. In addition to program context (e.g., where STEM activities are taking place), educators are asked to rate their perceptions of their own STEM identities on a 4- point Likert scale from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree,” the ease of implementing practices aligned with high-quality programming on a 4- point Likert scale from “Very Hard” to “Very Easy,” and their perceptions of change in their students’ STEM confidence, STEM skills, and social-emotional skills on a 4-point Likert scale fro m “Not at All Confident/Skilled” to “Very Confident/Skilled.” Reliabilities for these scales are also high, ranging from 0.74 to 0.94 (Allen et al., 2019; Price, 2018).
Table 1. Student Demographics (n = 1,317)
Common Instrument Suite Survey Findings Student Demographics Between December 2022 and February 2023, 1,317 Putnam County students in grades 4-12 completed the CIS-S RPP. Table 1 reports the demographics of these students. The vast majority of student data (81%) was collected from seven Putnam County Elementary Schools (grades K-6). The remaining data (20%) was collected from four Putnam County Junior-Senior High Schools (grades 7-12). Nearly half of the students in the sample were boys (47%), over two-fifths were girls (44%), and the remainder preferred not to answer (9%). Two- fifths of students were in fourth grade (21%), a little over a quarter were in fifth grade (26%), a third were in sixth grade (33%), and the remaining two-fifths were in seventh through twelfth grade (20%). The distribution of students’ racial and ethnic identities revealed that about a quarter of students identified as White, Caucasian (non-Hispanic) (25%) and approximately two-fifths preferred not to answer (21%). The other major racial identities represented were African-American, Black (15%), Multi-Race (14%), unlisted (14%), and Latino or Hispanic (7%). The remaining students (6%) identified as American Indian, Native-American (4%), Asian, Asian-American (2%), Caribbean Islander (<1%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (<1%), and Middle Eastern or Arab (<1%). The majority of students (87%) spoke English as their primary language at home. Student Overall Outcomes To examine the results from the six STEM-related attitudes and four 21 st -century skills, we computed difference scores for each scale. These scores were calculated by subtracting each retro-pre mean from its retro-post mean. Then, these difference scores were analyzed to see if they differed significantly from zero, which indicates no change from retro-pre to retro-post. If the p -value of a given scale was below 0.05, its mean difference is considered statistically significant, meaning that the change is unlikely to be a result of chance.
Sample size (%)
Variable
School Browning Pearce Elem.
182 (14%) 117 (9%) 225 (17%) 91 (7%) 104 (8%) 240 (18%) 107 (8%)
James A. Long Elem. Kelley Smith Elem.
Melrose Elem. Ochwilla Elem.
Robert H. Jenkins Elem. William D. Moseley Elem. Crescent City Jr.-Sr. High Interlachen Jr.-Sr. High
73 (6%) 66 (5%) 26 (2%) 86 (7%)
Palatka Jr.-Sr. High
QI Roberts Jr.-Sr. High
Gender
Female
577 (44%) 618 (47%) 122 (9%) 282 (21%) 345 (26%) 437 (33%) 251 (20%)
Male
Prefer not to answer
Grade
Fourth
Fifth Sixth
Seventh – Twelfth
Race/Ethnicity African-American, Black American Indian, Native- American
198 (15%)
53 (4%)
Asian, Asian-American
20 (2%) 88 (7%)
Latino or Hispanic
White, Caucasian (non- Hispanic)
335 (25%)
Multi-Race Not listed
179 (14%) 155 (12%) 282 (21%)
Prefer not to answer Primary Language English
1,146 (87%)
Non-English
90 (7%) 81 (6%)
Prefer not to answer
Across the entire student sample, analysis revealed statistically significant positive change ( p ’s < 0.0 01) on all 10 scales ( Figure 2 ). To examine the magnitude of this change, we computed effect sizes for all scales using Cohen’s d : critical thinking ( d = 0.34), perseverance ( d = 0.34), relationships with adults ( d = 0.19), relationships with peers ( d = 0.24), STEM engagement ( d = 0.37), STEM identity ( d = 0.23), STEM activities ( d = 0.26), STEM career interest ( d = 0.40), STEM career knowledge ( d = 0.58), STEM enjoyment ( d = 0.34). The effect size for STEM career
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