Bringing Invention Education Into Middle School Science Classrooms: a Case Study

Zhang, Baiyu; Estabrooks, Leigh B.; Perry, Anthony

doi:10.21300/20.3.2019.235

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Literature on identity development and our study of Lesly's narrative provides evidence that participating in extracurricular invention education activities contributes to the development of an inventor's identity; however, limited opportunities are available to students within the school day, limiting access to participation, especially for those who have been historically underrepresented as inventors (Couch et al, 2018(Couch et al, , 2019b. Therefore, in concert with other invention education scholars (Committee for the Study of Invention, 2004;Zhang et al, 2019), we argue for invention education to be embedded within the school day.…”

Section: Implications For Policy Makersmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Our study contributes to the growing body of literature which calls for increasing access and opportunities for diverse students to participate in invention education. Researchers in the field have called for embedding invention education within the school day to increase access to invention and increase the number of diverse patent holders in the U.S. (Zhang et al, 2019;Couch et al, 2019a). By embedding invention education into the school day, policymakers may democratize access to invention education experiences, which are typically limited to after-school extracurricular activities, such as MESA and the InvenTeam™ and thus may not be accessible to all students.…”

Section: Implications For Policy Makersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Becoming an inventor: a young Latina’s narrative

Sáenz,

Skukauskaitė,

Sullivan

2024

Front. Educ.

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Latinas, along with many other minoritized groups, are underrepresented as inventors in the United States. Despite accounting for over 9% of the population, <1% of U.S. patent holders are Latina. In an effort to increase diversity among inventors and patent holders, a number of K-12 programs have been created to provide opportunities for students to participate in the iterative and recursive processes of inventing. One example is the emerging field of invention education. Invention education is an educational approach which teaches students how to identify and solve problems within their communities. Little is known about the experiences of Latina students who have participated in invention education and have begun developing identities as inventors. Through narrative methodology, we analyzed how the life experiences of one Latina student contributed to her identity development as an inventor. Four themes were developed through the analysis of the Latina student’s narrative. The first was the early and consistent support of her family members. The second theme was the student’s understanding of the importance of Latinx representation in STEM. The student’s participation in extracurricular STEM activities was the third theme that contributed to the development of her identity as an inventor. The final theme was her continued involvement in engineering at the university level. While early, consistent, and continued identity work in extracurricular invention and STEM activities contributed to the development of an inventor’s identity, literature has shown that opportunities such as these are not available to all students, especially those who have been historically underrepresented as inventors. We argue for making access to invention education more equitable by embedding it within the school day.

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Section: Implications For Policy Makersmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Implications For Policy Makersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming an inventor: a young Latina’s narrative

Sáenz,

Skukauskaitė,

Sullivan

2024

Front. Educ.

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“…A review of the literature shows that exposure to innovation during childhood has a significant impact on youth's likelihood to engage in invention activities (Bell et al, 2019). IvE engages youth learners and broadens participation in STEM, positioning youth to act as and to become inventors (Zhang et al, 2019). Bell et al (2019) point out that the top one percent of youth in high-income families are ten times more likely to become inventors than youth from below-median-income families, demonstrate gaps by race and gender, and exposing the skewed nature of financial returns to inventions as they correlate with scientific impact.…”

Section: Rural Needs and Invention Pathwaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

iINVENT pathways and practices: prizing the process over the product

Rowe,

Talamantes,

Well

et al. 2024

Front. Educ.

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Rural communities need skilled innovators who engage as community members, support economic opportunities, and develop novel ways to solve local problems. Through innovation, Invention Education (IvE) is one way to promote the creativity and problem-solving needed to restore economic vitality to regions of the rural US. IvE pathways support a skilled workforce that communities can draw upon to solve complex problems. Introductory IvE experiences can begin to bolster rural recovery and open prime grounds for innovative solutions. The Office of Precollege Programs at Oregon State University established the iINVENT Program for upper elementary, middle, and high school learners to engage in IvE and act as inventors. In this study, we describe the iINVENT pathways resulting from 8 years of curriculum design and iteration guided by engaged scholarship practices and robust evaluation. Program data from 2019–2023 was collected via learner, educator, community partner, and parent surveys, as well as through observations conducted by program staff and partner instructors. Results from qualitative content and thematic analysis demonstrate the value of introducing learners to IvE and how iINVENT practices support invention educators in impacting youth learners. The findings demonstrate essential practices, successes, and challenges that have shaped the iINVENT pathways and IvE curriculum delivered. Based on these findings and current discourse unfolding throughout the IvE professional community, the authors suggest that a process-oriented invention framework focused on inventiveness and the ways learners can act as inventors is pivotal to broaden access and participation in IvE, providing learners with a more applicable and relatable learning experience to cultivate inventiveness mindsets and skills transferable to all parts of life.

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“…For this paper, we examined a small sample of engineering curricular options aimed at K-12: Teach Engineering [18], a middle school course sequence called STEM Innovation & Design [21,22], and curricula that market themselves specifically as "invention education" [23][24][25][26]. At the K-12 level, hundreds of thousands of U.S. students engage annually in "invention education" programs including local, state, and national competitions, informal learning experiences such as summer camps [27,28], and team challenges facilitated by teachers or faculty mentors.…”

Section: K-12 Education Opportunities In Engineering Design and Entre...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, we briefly examined several problem framings from Teach Engineering [18], a middle school course sequence called STEM Innovation & Design [21,22], and curricula that market themselves specifically as "invention education" [23][24][25][26]. Based on the experience of subject matter experts, we ranked these problem framings along the same analytical x-axis and inventive y-axis as previously defined in Figure 4.…”

Section: Inventiveness In Problem Framingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infusing Entrepreneurship into Engineering Design Curricula to Promote Inventiveness: A Student-Centered Approach to Inclusive Innovation

Moore,

Flynn,

Eagle

et al.

2022 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Her research focuses on design and engineering education with a focus on promoting diversity and inclusion. She has served as PI and co-PI for grants from multiple sponsors including NSF and Amazon totaling more than $9M. In addition, her STEM outreach programs and curricula have impacted hundreds of thousands of K-12 students nationwide. She is the cofounder and director of Georgia Tech's K-12 InVenture Prize, a statewide invention competition, open to all students and teachers in Georgia. She earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2007, and her Masters and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2009 and 2012. Dr. Moore received the Georgia Tech Teaching Effectiveness Award in 2018.

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Bringing Invention Education Into Middle School Science Classrooms: a Case Study

Cited by 14 publications

References 14 publications

Becoming an inventor: a young Latina’s narrative

Becoming an inventor: a young Latina’s narrative

iINVENT pathways and practices: prizing the process over the product

Infusing Entrepreneurship into Engineering Design Curricula to Promote Inventiveness: A Student-Centered Approach to Inclusive Innovation

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