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The purpose of the present study was to examine differences in engagement and achievement among 2,695 high students enrolled in (a) a STEM school, (b) a traditional school (no STEM program available), (c) a STEM program within a school, or (d) a traditional program within a school having the STEM program option. The High School Survey of Student Engagement was utilized to measure 3 dimensions of student engagement (cognitive, emotional, and social); grade point average (GPA) and standardized test scores were used to measure academic achievement. Students in the STEM schools and STEM programs academically outperformed students enrolled in the traditional schools or traditional program. Discriminant function analysis yielded 3 statistically significant (p< .05) roots. Of these, Root 1 was of a moderate size (λ = .808) and worthy of interpretation. All achievement variables contributed appreciably to the root, whereas the contribution of engagement variables was negligible. Canonical correlation analysis was used to illustrate that the relationship between the engagement and achievement measures varied across the 4 instructional settings.
Keywords: STEM schools, STEM Education, Embedded STEM programs, Student Engagement, Multivariate Analysis, Achievement
Prior to the turn of the century, U.S. educational reform movements focused on goals related to self-paced student learning, the creation of standards, and increasing high school graduation rates (Lee & Reedy, 2009). Later reforms, such as No Child Left Behind (U. S. Department of Education, 2001), focused on improving students' academic achievement via greater rigor in school. These more recent reforms have focused on the importance for K-12 students to develop 21st Century skills such as teamwork, creativity, perseverance, and problem solving (U.S. Department of Commerce, National Economic Council, 2012). Simultaneous to the emphasis on K-12 students' development of 21st Century skills, the need for more STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education was identified. Thus, federal and private funding was made available to design and to implement educational experiences that focused on STEM and 21st Century skills (After School Alliance, 2012; Kuenzi, 2008; Thomasian, 2011). Consequently, delivering STEM content using instructional strategies that develop 21st Century skills evolved as a standard STEM philosophy for newly developed STEM schools and eventually for STEM strands within traditional schools (Bell, 2010).
Typically, STEM education takes one of three forms: (a) a STEM school, (b)...