- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 2149370
- First Name Kristin
- Last Name Cook
- Registration Faculty/Administrator/Other
- Discipline Chemistry, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, STEM Education (general)
- Role Co-PI
- Presenters
Kristin Cook, Erica Hartlage (Bellarmine University)
Need
College and universities, in pursuit of reversing the STEM teacher shortages, are developing programs for encouraging STEM-major students to consider entering the teaching profession.
Research Questions
In what ways does the internship impact STEM majors and their interest in pursuing a career in teaching?
Approach
STEM students (n=6) took part in a four-week summer internship at the Kentucky Science Center (KSC), funded by the Noyce Track-1 grant. There were 35 summer camps in various grade levels ranging from PreK to Grade 8. Each summer camp was a week-long and each intern took part in four separate summer camps to diversify their internship experience. All six interns (100%) were traditionally-underserved minority students. Each intern was evaluated by four KSC staff supervisors who conducted both quantitative and qualitative assessment of each intern’s performance at each summer camp using a Facilitator Skills assessment. Results from the Facilitation Skills assessment from the current cohort were compared with results from the previous cohort to identify demographic trends, particularly impactful elements of the internship, and significant outcome differences. Additionally, transcripts from interviews conducted with Bellarmine University researchers and interns provided qualitative data to contextualize the quantitative data collected from the Facilitation Skills assessment.
Outcomes
Our findings suggest that internships do have a positive impact on STEM majors considering the pursuit of teaching. Our findings also show that interns who were more responsive to working with students, compared to interns who were more confident in their content knowledge, were more likely to express interest in teaching following completion of the internship.
Broader Impacts
Continuing to develop informal educational internship experiences for STEM majors to explore the teaching profession and recruiting students from broader fields of STEM majors (including more environmental science, computer science, and mathematics disciplines) may be beneficial in turning the tide of nation-wide STEM teacher shortages.
