Making Science Fair: How Can we Achieve Equal Opportunity for All Students in Science?

Getting Everyone to the Fair: Supporting Teachers in Broadening Participation in Science and Engineering Fairs

“…Our observation in the field was that students from low-resource schools or from minoritised backgrounds did not have the same opportunities to engage in meaningful S&E fair experiences and to benefit from the possibilities these fairs offer for success, recognition and even scholarships. This is consistent with prior research that suggests that both school participation in S&E fairs and students’ project quality may be associated with socioeconomic status (Grinnell et al, 2020 ; Kook et al, 2020 ; Korkmaz, 2012 ; McComas, 2011 ). With the STEM-IQ program, our team sought to create a model of collaboration with teachers in low-resource schools that could be scaled to other contexts to support teachers implementing S&E fairs in these contexts to provide a quality S&E fair experience.…”

“…The impetus for this project was an observation by the directors of a regional S&E fair that their participants and winners, who advanced to state and national competitions, consistently came from a small number of well-resourced schools with teachers who were experienced in the fair process. This is consistent with the literature showing that parent resources and school quality are associated with participation and success in these types of extracurricular program (Abernathy & Vineyard, 2001 ; Korkmaz, 2012 ).…”

“…Our first research question focused on the impact of the program on regional fair participation. There is scant research on the diversity of participants in S&E fair programs (cf., Korkmaz, 2012 ), and only recently initiated programs tracking their population (Kook et al, 2020 ), so we used baseline and follow-up data to explore the diversity of the regional fair. The program overall was successful in increasing the number and quality of projects that were presented at the regional fair.…”

“…Much of the extant literature on science fairs studies only participants in the fairs (e.g. Abernathy & Vineyard, 2001 ; Grinnell et al, 2020 ; Korkmaz, 2012 ; Sahin, 2013 ). One of the only studies to have a true control group failed to find any effects of fair participation on student knowledge of the scientific method and mixed results for attitudes (Yasar & Baker, 2003 ).…”

The views of students participating in science fairs with their projects and advisory teachers on science fair

“…Öğrenciyi merkeze alacak biçimde eğlenerek öğrenmeye imkân tanırken; problem çözme, sorumluluk, yaratıcı düşünme, bilime ilgi ve bilimsel süreç becerileri özelliklerinin gelişimine de katkı sağlamaktadır (Keskin, 2019). Bilim fuarları öğrencilerin bilimsel bir araştırma sürecini gerçekleştirmelerine imkân sağlayan, öğrenciler tarafından hazırlanan projelerin sergilendiği, öğrencilerde fen bilimlerine yönelik olumlu tutum kazandırabilecek, dönem sonunda ya da yılsonunda gerçekleştirilen etkinliktir (Korkmaz, 2012;Yıldırım 2018). Günümüzde bilim fuarları ulusal-uluslararası seviyede düzenlenen büyük organizasyon biçiminde ya da okullar tarafından hazırlanan sergi biçiminde de olabilir (Çelik, 2019).…”