The impact of Project Lead The Way gateway to technology foundation unit completion on students' critical-thinking skills

<p>Georgetown's Public Policy Institute (2013) reported that the fastest growing occupations and the highest demand for college education and training fields will be in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM), healthcare, and community services. One of the K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs' purposes is to promote critical-thinking skills (Johnson, 1992). This study examined the impact of Project Lead The Way Gateway to Technology (PLTW-GTT) units, a middle school STEM program, on the critical-thinking skills of middle school students. Quasi experimental research methods were utilized to test the impact of the completion of two PLTW-GTT foundation units on students' critical thinking scores as measured by the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). Participants from the sixth- and seventh-grades of a suburban middle school in a Midwestern state formed two sets of treatment and control groups. Students enrolled in the PLTW Design and Modeling (D&M) (63 participants) and Automation and Robotics (A&R) (27 students) units along with two control groups (28 and 19 respectively) completed the CCTST at the beginning and at the end of the units. The results of the study indicated that completion of the PLTW Design and Modeling (DM) unit had a significant positive influence on participants' critical-thinking skills when compared to the control group. The Automation and Robotics (AR) unit had no significant impact on participants' critical-thinking skills when compared to a corresponding control group. There appeared to be some inconsistencies in the data collection steps which may have affected the AR unit results. Therefore, future studies to test the impact of the AR unit on critical thinking are recommended. An additional finding was that both of the PLTW-GTT foundation units influenced the critical-thinking skills of male and female participants similarly. Selected results may be generalized to schools that possess similar characteristics to those possessed by the sample school. Since the sample used for this study did not include a variety of ethnicities or races, it is recommended that future studies include schools with a larger proportion of ethnic and racial diversity. Finally, there was some evidence that experiences at the sample school may be influencing students to pursue STEM careers. This phenomenon should be investigated in future studies.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

College of Technology

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Hashem, Rula Odai

Contributors dc:contributor

• John Dugger, Ph.D., Committee Chair
• Margo Dichtelmiller, PhD., Graduate Representative
• Giri Jogaratnam, PhD.

• critical thinking
• middle school education
• Science
• Technology
• Engineering
• and Mathematics Education Society
• Science and Technology Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.emich.edu/theses/629

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.emich.edu:theses-2008