Creativity in STEM Education: Exploring Students’ Creative Behaviors in an Engineering Design Course

The purpose of this research are (1) find out how the perceptions of high school students towards the librarians of the Bung Hatta Proclamator Library. (2) find out how the perceptions of senior high school students to the collection of Bung Hatta Proclamator Library. (3) knowing how perceptions of senior high school students to the services of Bung Hatta's Proclamator Library. (4) knowing the perceptions of high school students on Bung Hatta Proklamator Library facilities.Keywords: Perceptions, Students, Bung Hatta's Proclamator Library

This work-in-progress research paper focusses on comparing changes in students’ learning outcomes in engineering design and entrepreneurship courses. Recent national calls to reform undergraduate engineering education has led to extensive research in the identification and development of effective instructional strategies. Project-based learning (PBL) is one instructional strategy that has received empirical and anecdotal support for its ability to instill professional skills in addition to technical content knowledge in engineering graduates. Engineering programs have increasingly adopted PBL in the form of capstone engineering design courses, entrepreneurship courses, and co-curricular experiences. However, PBL is broadly defined in the literature, and as such, these adaptations are often nuanced in their design, structure, and pedagogical approaches; and consequently, may have differing impact on student learning outcomes.Engineering design and entrepreneurship courses are two commonly used avenues in which engineering students are exposed to PBL. In design courses, students often work in teams to complete tasks that lead to devising an engineering solution to a given ‘real-world’ problem. Most, if not all, engineering students gain exposure to PBL via capstone design courses that are often required in the engineering curriculum. In addition to design courses, entrepreneurship courses also expose engineering students to PBL by engaging them in entrepreneurial projects in which students work in teams, often conceptualizing and designing products. While the engineering design process is more focused on the outcome solution to the problem, entrepreneurship design processes tend to emphasize the front end of the design process, specifically opportunity identification and validation. Students engage in customer discovery and develop prototype solutions. Although nuanced, we hypothesize that due to these different approaches, engineering design and entrepreneurship will have varied impact on student learning outcomes. In our presented work, we investigate these differences by examining changes in students’ perceived risk-taking abilities, creative self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy in engineering design and entrepreneurship practicum courses. Preliminary results show that entrepreneurial self-efficacy increases in both design and entrepreneurship courses. However, differences in the magnitude of change for its subconstructs are noted between the two courses. In contrast, increase in risk-taking and creative self-efficacy is only found in the entrepreneurship course and not in the engineering design course. Future work will focus on analyzing the pre-post survey data for statistically significant changes.

This study aims to reveal the perceptions of Anatolian High School and Vocational High School students towards their schools using metaphors. For this purpose, the following questions were sought. What are the metaphoric perceptions of Anatolian High School and Vocational High School students towards their schools? How are metaphorical perceptions of Anatolian high school and Vocational High School students’ schools conceptualized? What are the likes and dislikes of Anatolian and Vocational High School students about their schools? In this research, maximum diversity sampling was employed to reflect the views of students from different sampling areas and purposeful sampling methods. The study group consisted of students from an Anatolian High School and a Vocational High School in Ankara in the 2016-2017 academic year. The research was conducted with a total of two hundred students, one hundred from each high school. It was found that the students in both groups perceived the school with supervision and rules.

The ocean engineering design and marine field projects (MFP) courses at Florida Tech are a unique combination of classroom, laboratory, and field work. These two one-semester courses provide the upper-level comprehensive engineering design content required by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In addition, the MFP course also provides at-sea field work experience during a one-week offshore research cruise on the R/V Delphinus, Florida Tech's 20-meter ocean-going research vessel. Unlike most university undergraduate engineering curricula in the United States, the senior-level engineering design course is taken in the spring semester of the junior year instead of the fall term of the senior year, with the construction of the design during the following summer term (instead of the following spring term). This allows the students to devote 100% of their efforts to the construction of their project during the summer term, without having to take additional courses during that term. Many additional benefits result from the ocean engineering design and MFP courses at Florida Tech. These include the design and construction of equipment that can be used at Florida Tech for teaching and research, participation by students in international competitions, press coverage of many of the projects, and industry support of some of the student projects. The Division of Marine and Environmental Systems at Florida Tech is continually exploring improvements and additions to these courses, which are the capstone courses in the ocean engineering program.

This study was conducted on the perception of high school students regarding the influence of learner and teacher on school science learning. The subjects were 867 South Korean high school students at 464 natural science and 404 humanities learning course. The components of the influence of learner and teacher in school science learning consisted of learning motivation, class participation, learning, and achievement. Overall, high school students perceived that learners had a stronger influence than teacher on learning motivation, class participation and achievement except learning. High school students at natural science learning course recognized more than students of humanities learning course that learners had a stronger influence on learning motivation, class participation, and the achievement than teacher. Since high school students at natural science learning course considered their future careers when selecting such learning course, their interests and motivation in science were already higher than students of humanities learning course. Thus, school teachers have to make an effort to develop the professionalism of teaching because the learning effect was not limited to the cognitive skills of science class students, and may vary depending on the explanations of teachers.

What do you want to be when you grow up? All too often Teacher! is not the response from minority high school students about to graduate. The increasing minority representation in schools prompts the need to encourage talented minority students to consider teaching as a career. Districts face a changing demography while education loses potential minority teachers to business and other fields. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) warned in 1990 that if a national intervention policy were not established to recruit and retain minority teachers, the percentage of minority teachers would continue to decline. The nation may face a situation in which minority educators are only 5% of the teaching force and minority students are over 33% of the student enrollment by 2000 (Hawley, 1989). Hawley wrote that it is as important for White children to see minority teachers in roles of authority and power as it is for minority children. The Study In Washoe County School District, Nevada, minority teachers make up approximately 5% of the teacher force in the district, whereas the student population is about 22% minority and growing steadily. The district recognizes the need to focus recruitment energies on local residents and, more precisely, on high school students. All 19 new minority teachers hired in Nevada in 1991-1992 were Nevada residents at the time of their application. We conducted this study to better understand high school seniors' perceptions of teaching as a career and determine if differences exist in student perceptions based on ethnicity and gender. In a fall 1994 survey of all high school senior students enrolled in regular and advanced placement American Government classes in nine comprehensive high schools of Washoe County, Nevada, we posed questions about what it would take for minority students to reconsider teaching. We based the data analyses on 1,537 usable surveys returned, or 91.7% of the total population. Background Since the early 1980s, a number of researchers have investigated perceptions of high school students about a teaching career. Because the nation's largest minority population currently is Black and there has been a sharp decrease in the percentage of Black teachers during the past 20 years, much research has focused on Black high school students (Jordan, 1988; Page & Page, 1984; Page, Page, & Shelton, 1982). More recently, with the influx of large numbers of Hispanic students into the public schools, researchers have examined perceptions of Hispanic high school students about a teaching career (Mack & Jackson, 1993). Roberson, Keith, and Page (1983) examined data from 58,270 subjects in a national longitudinal study of 1980 high school sophomores and seniors and found that students aspiring to teach are less concerned with financial rewards than are those who choose other professions. In 1982, a survey of 1,478 Southeastern United States high school seniors determined that although most students viewed teaching as a good profession to enter, especially for women, 82.9% of the students perceived that salaries were a discouraging factor in selecting a teaching career; they also saw discipline problems and working conditions in a similar light (Page & Page, 1984). Page and Page reported that female and Black students perceived many factors in teaching in a more positive manner when they made comparisons on the basis of gender and race. Mangieri and Kemper (1984) surveyed 4,349 academic juniors and seniors in six states. Of that number, 1,531 (35%) responded that they were either very interested or somewhat interested in teaching as a career. Approximately 55% more females than mates indicated an interest in a career in teaching. Females' reasons for choosing teaching varied as a function of gender in terms of job security, desire to work with children, and presence of a relative or a friend also a teacher. …

In preparing students for living in the 21st century there has been a re-focus on thinking skills, particularly critical and creative thinking. Current belief, highlighted in schools’ curricula around the world is that creativity is seen as ‘for all’ and should be visible within a school community, yet views of employers suggest students lack this necessary capability. In response to such concerns 21st century skills have been inserted into many countries’ curricula. In a school setting these key capabilities are at risk of marginalisation as they are secondary to core curricular, hard to define and difficult to assess. This vulnerability particularly applies to secondary education as many schools place priority on exacting external examinations which may, or may not, appraise these skills. There is no denying the importance placed on creativity, yet research is minimal in providing a clear picture of how high schools might incorporate creativity and creative thinking into and alongside an already packed curriculum.The purpose of this study was to explore understandings of creativity and the enactment of creative thinking in the secondary classroom. The study attempts to answer the following questions:· What are teachers’ understandings of creativity?· Are there substantial differences in thinking and approaches across learning domains?· What are the perceived possibilities and tensions of enacting creativity in the secondary classroom?Whilst several studies suggest teachers are insufficiently knowledgeable about creativity and there is a lack of professional development in this area, the problem may be more deep-rooted. Perceiving how teachers act, understand, enact, and foster creativity helps to fill the gap in current literature. Since the introduction of creative thinking into the Australian Curriculum 2009, there has been limited study of how this capability is being enacted. Most research in this area has concentrated on primary education or the gifted and talented.Data collection for this study consisted of interviews with key stakeholders of a metropolitan secondary school in Australia: the principal, members of the senior management team, teachers of observed classes and some students from the same classes. The school I visited was chosen as a purposeful sample because the ‘possibilities’ of teaching creativity were apparent, fruitful and had the potential to inform other stakeholders. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory was utilised as an analytical framework, to represent teachers’ understandings of creativity in the specific context of their professional practice. The study highlights the problematics which emerged as teachers interpreted and taught this capability and indicates possibilities for development. Tensions and contradictions, as well as possibilities, indicate a capacity for transformation.Several key findings emerged. At a conceptual level, the teachers were strongly committed to fostering creativity and creative thinking in their classrooms. They had a current understanding of the creativity and recognised certain social and environmental needs of students in order to facilitate productive activities. There were commonalities of pedagogical choices and significant support for greater facilitation. Teachers believed a classroom environment that fosters creativity provides students with choices, opportunities to collaborate, and a safe environment that accepts ambiguity and encourages risk-taking.However, there are implications for enabling enactment in a secondary school setting. Teachers expressed a need for further professional development and stressed the impact of curriculum constraints on time to foster creative thinking. More noteworthy is the perception that students are unwilling to take intellectual risks. The Australian Curriculum alludes to the need for students to take such risks, yet, reducing this suggestion to practice is complex and problematic. Proposals for change should go beyond both the simplistic provision of providing a safe environment and engaging activities that derive positive outcomes suggested in the literature. Recommendations informed by research suggest this begins with a whole-school culture which values student voice, expects adults to exemplify creativity, and reaches beyond the classroom to the community. The more systemic constraints of being time-poor due to curriculum constraints and bound by high stakes assessment are more reliant on school/curriculum intervention or focused professional development. At present, these findings indicate a need for further research and professional development in order to provide teachers with the understanding and autonomy to ensure their classrooms are positive, safe spaces where students are confident risk-takers. Such professional development could encourage a common language that is shared with students to promote shared understandings. The review of the literature found that the voice of the teacher in curriculum reform is largely unheard. This study provides the voices of teachers to understand the possibilities and problematics of implementing creativity within the curriculum. ​​​​​​​

Assessments For Three Performance Areas In Capstone Engineering Design

Privacy perception and information technology utilization of high school students

Typhoons are a severe form of natural disaster that can impose huge economic losses and casualties on society. High school students are more vulnerable compared with adults during typhoons. Improving risk perceptions of typhoons can help high school students to effectively respond to typhoons and reduce related losses. Environmental values play an important role in human perceptions and actions. Although typhoons are caused by environmental factors, few studies have investigated the influence of environmental factors on typhoon risk perceptions of high school students. This study investigates the typhoon risk perceptions of high school students in Ningbo, China, and further analyzes the influence of environmental values on these perceptions with the structural equations model. The results reveal that environmental values have significantly positive impacts on typhoon risk perceptions. The findings also demonstrate that disaster threats and the disaster management ability of the government have significant positive impacts on typhoon risk perceptions. This study proposes suggestions and measures to improve typhoon risk perceptions among high school students and provides a reference for typhoon prevention and reduction education in China.

This study aims to reveal the metaphorical perceptions of Turkish high school students in rural area about the concepts of career, profession, and job. The participants consisted of 160 (82 females and 78 males) high school students in the rural area. Participants are 10th (n=65), 11th (n=40), and 12th-grade (n=55) students. In order to reveal the metaphorical perceptions of the students about the concepts of career, profession, and job, each student was asked to complete the sentences of ''career is like ............ '' and '' because it is ... ''; ''profession is like ............ '' and '' because it is ... '' and 'job is like ............ '' and '' because it is ... ''. In this study, the phenomenology design was used and the data were analyzed by content analysis. Participants created total of 121 metaphors related to the career concept, 73 metaphors related to the profession concept, and 108 metaphors related to the job concept. The results are discussed basing on the career psychological counseling literature and presented suggestions for future studies.

BackgroundHigh quality physical education programs in high schools may facilitate adoption of sustainable healthy living among adolescents. Public health nurses often meet students who avoid taking part in physical education programs. We aimed to explore physical education teachers’ and public health nurses’ perceptions of high school students’ attitudes towards physical education, and to explore physical education teachers’ thoughts about how to facilitate and promote students’ participation in class.MethodsPrior to an initiative from physical education teachers, introducing a new physical education model in two high schools in the South of Norway, we conducted focus groups with 6 physical education teachers and 8 public health nurses. After implementation of the new model, we conducted two additional focus group interviews with 10 physical education teachers. In analyses we used Systematic Text Condensation and an editing analysis style.ResultsIn general, the students were experienced as engaged and appreciating physical education lessons. Those who seldom attended often strived with other subjects in school as well, had mental health problems, or were characterized as outsiders in several arenas. Some students were reported to be reluctant to expose their bodies in showers after class, and students who seldom attended physical education class frequently visited the school health services. Although the majority of students were engaged in class, several of the students lacked knowledge about physical fitness and motoric skills to be able to master daily activities. The participants related the students’ competence and attitude towards participation in physical education class to previous experiences in junior high school, to the competence of physical education teachers, and to possibility for students to influence the content of physical education programs.ConclusionsThe participants suggested that high school students’ attitudes towards participation in physical education is heterogeneous, depends on the students’ previous experiences, and on their present health and quality of life. All participants recommended adolescents to take part in program development, and selecting activities that generate competence, fun and enjoyment.

This paper analyzes the efficacy of a rapid, interdependent design sequence on student learning and engagement. The Rapid Product Design Cycle (RPDC) activity takes students through a three-part waterfall design sequence – problem formulation, conceptual design, and detailed design. Our objective was to give the students an appreciation of the challenges faced by interdependent teams across multiple different design stages within tight time constraints, and to encourage design work under the constraining pressures of time and stakeholder expectations. This paper first details the design of the RPDC activity, and then examines the administration and logistics, assessment, student engagement and learning, and student response to this highly accelerated product design cycle. The examination of the activity pays specific attention to the challenges posed by a high frequency of cognitive disruptions (3 different design tasks in 5 weeks) compounded by the requirement of working in small teams. 1. Design Context – Introduction A core premise of Praxis is that the perspectives, terminology, and tools of “engineering design” are transdisciplinary. In keeping with this premise, this engineering education paper has been structured as an engineering design report and uses engineering design terminology. Selected headings include both design-focused and education-focused terminology to assist the reader in navigating this structure. Institutional and Program The University of Toronto is a large, publicly funded, research-intensive Canadian university. The Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering offers undergraduate and graduate engineering programs, and admits approximately 1300 undergraduate students per year into one of 10 programs. All of these programs require that their students take a capstone engineering design course in their senior year, and a cornerstone engineering design and communication course in their freshman year. Our program, the Division of Engineering Science, admits approximately 320 undergraduate students each year and is distinguished from the other programs pedagogically, structurally, and in the destination of its graduates. The Engineering Science pedagogy privileges foundational principles and breadth of application, and expects that students will engage in additional exploration beyond that presented in the classroom. The program is structured such that all students take a common two-year foundational curriculum, followed by a two-year specialization in an engineering discipline. Approximately 50% of the students pursue an advanced degree. The remaining students tend to seek employment in entrepreneurial or consulting organizations. Nine years ago, we established a series of foundational design and communication courses known as Praxis. These courses were tasked with preparing students to practice engineering design in their other foundational courses, in any of the areas of specialization available to them, in their summer and internship experiences, and in their capstone design courses. The pair of cornerstone courses are in continuous (re)development and this paper reports on the design of a new assignment in the first course of the series.

This research is a phenomenological study that explored the perceptions of high school students in Killarney, a suburb of Bulawayo Zimbabwe, on the impact of social media usage (YouTube, Instagram and TikTok). The aim of the study is to investigate the perceptions of high school students in Killarney regarding the impact of social media usage. Interviews and focus group discussions were used as the primary method of data collection. A diverse group of 12 high school students was selected as the sample population. The data gathered from the interviews and focus group discussions was then analyzed to identify recurring themes and patterns. The findings of the study reveal that the students expressed concerns about the negative consequences, such as addiction, decreased productivity, and a lack of focus on important aspects of life. However, some students also recognize the positive aspects, such as access to educational resources and exposure to diverse perspectives. Based on the findings, the study concludes that high school students in Killarney have mixed perceptions of social media usage. It highlights the need for promoting responsible social media use and finding a healthy balance between online and offline interactions.

Today, only people, who truly understand what scientific knowledge is and how it is obtained, are considered scientifically literate. This understanding expected in today’s scientific areas is called the nature of science (NOS). This study aimed to determine the perceptions of high school students and their parents regarding NOS. In addition, the changes in high school students’ and their parents’ perceptions of NOS according to various variables were examined. The data of the research were collected in the second semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The research involves students and their parents studying in high schools in Konya, a Central Anatolian province of Turkey. The sample group of the research consists of 428 high school students and 428 of their parents. “NOS Questionnaire as Argumentation (NSAAQ)” developed by Sampson and Clark (2006) and translated into Turkish by Çetin et al. (2010) was used. As the results showed, students’ perceptions of NOS did not differ significantly according to gender, grade level, place of residence, and average monthly income of the family. Only in the first dimension (How do you define scientific knowledge?) was there a significant difference between parents in favor of men. However, this difference had a low effect size. On the other hand, the fact that parents with higher education had average score and the existence of a significant linear correlation between NOS perceptions of students and their parents were two noteworthy findings. From this perspective, it can be said that today’s formal education process in Turkey has significant deficiencies in terms of a more advanced understanding of NOS. In summary, it is clear that the desired development has not been achieved in the perceptions of high school students regarding NOS in formal education in Turkey.