Broadening participation in engineering necessitates that educators take a learning-oriented stance to explore and understand the ways that learners from marginalized communities experience STEM. Students’ affective experiences (e.g. feeling of difficulty and enjoyment) are critical pieces in their perceptions of access to STEM learning in general, and engineering education specifically. In addition, their beliefs about the importance of STEM and its relevance to their families and communities are also critical. Research on the connections between students’ beliefs and affective experiences of STEM would contribute to our understanding about the ways that place-based affective and value-based understandings of STEM interact. This study explored the how high school students who pursue extracurricular STEM experience STEM in affective dimensions and what they believe about the importance of STEM within their family and community. Ultimately, this study revealed consistent connections between the difficulties faced by students in STEM programs as related, and even valuable, aspects of what is also enjoyable about STEM. The study also revealed that students perceived the importance of the technologies (e.g. robotics, renewable energy) to their communities but that this value was not necessarily visible to members of their communities.
Authors
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Allison Antink-Meyer is E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Science Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
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Jeritt Williams is an assistant professor of Engineering Technology at Illinois State University, where he teaches applied industrial automation and robotics.
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Dr. Jin Ho Jo is a Professor of Technology at Illinois State University, teaching in the Sustainable and Renewable Energy program. Dr. Jo also leads the Sustainable Energy Consortium at the university. Dr. Jo is an honors graduate of Purdue University, where he earned a B.S. in Building Construction Management. He earned his M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University, where he investigated critical environmental justice issues in New York City. His 2010 Ph.D. from Arizona State University was the nation’s first in sustainability. His research, which has been widely published, focuses on renewable energy systems and sustainable building strategies to reduce the negative impacts of urbanization.
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Matthew Aldeman serves as the founding Associate Dean of the ISU College of Engineering, where he leads the first year engineering program and the General Engineering undergraduate major. Prior to the College of Engineering, Aldeman served as an Associate Professor in the ISU Department of Technology, where he taught in the Sustainable & Renewable Energy and Engineering Technology programs and served as program coordinator for the Sustainable & Renewable Energy program. Matt joined the Technology department faculty after working at the ISU Center for Renewable Energy for five years. Before coming to ISU, he worked at General Electric as a wind project site manager at the Grand Ridge and Rail Splitter wind projects in central Illinois. Matt’s experience also includes service in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear propulsion officer, leader of the Reactor Electrical division on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, and Gunnery Officer on the destroyer USS O'Bannon. Matt is an honors graduate of the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power School and holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University, a Master of Engineering Management from Old Dominion University, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Note
The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on
June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-8969-1263
University of Missouri-St. Louis
[biography]