Northern Illinois University
STEM Interest and Engagement (STEM IE)

Professional Development Resources on Fostering Interest Developed by the STEM IE Project

Materials for professional development are provided. PowerPoint slides and an accompanying Facilitator's Guide can be customized for professional development offered to STEM summer program staff or used individually for self-study.

• PowerPoint
• Facilitator's Guide (PDF)

A professional development module developed by the STEM Teaching Tools initiative presents cultural formative assessment as a way to help educators learn about the interests, knowledge, and experiences of youth. The module explains how educators can use this information to plan instruction and activities that overlap with the lives of youth. The method presented is that of self-documentation, which was described previously. An explicit purpose of the module is to promote equity and social justice.

A PowerPoint slide deck, a facilitator’s guide, and student work samples are available at the link. The module is open source and takes about one hour to complete.

Further Reading

Linnenbrink‐Garcia, L., Patall, E. A., & Messersmith, E. E. (2013). Antecedents and consequences of situational interest. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 591–614. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671627/

This study focused on a three-week summer program for talented young adolescents. Findings of the study indicated that practices used by leaders during learning activities fostered youths’ situational interest. Situational interest contributed to motivation and engagement.

Renninger, K. A., Emmerson, M., King, B. R., Riley, K. R., Niwagaba, A., & Bachrach, J. E. (2013, September).Drawing on cognition and affect to trigger interest and learning: The ICAN Intervention. Paper presented at the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness Fall Conference, Washington, DC. Retrieved from https://www.sree.org/conferences/2013f/program/downloads/abstracts/1041_2.pdf

This abstract describes the use of the ICAN Intervention with youth ages 10–12 who attended a five-week summer science program. The intervention, which entailed writing daily responses during inquiry-based lab work, was effective in triggering interest and learning.

Renninger, K. A., & Hidi, S. (2015). The power of interest for motivation and engagement. New York, NY: Routledge.

This book provides a thorough review of the research on how interest develops and what can be done to enhance it.

Erete, S., Pinkard, N., Martin, C. K., & Sandherr, J. (2015, August). Employing narratives to trigger interest in computational activities with inner-city girls. In 2015 Research on equity and sustained participation in engineering, computing, and technology (RESPECT) (pp. 1–4). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f67c/b99af307839809b1ebf108ed69946379ca3c.pdf & http://digitalyouthnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015RESPECT_EreteNarratives_Poster.pdf

Women are underrepresented in the computational sciences, and minority women are the least represented of all demographic groups. The Digital Youth Divas program, which involves fashion design using electronic tools and narrative stories with inner-city middle school girls, aims to influence participants’ computational literacy and their decisions about future studies and careers. The Digital Youth Divas program intentionally fosters supportive communities and perceptions of girls and women as strong and successful in fun and engaging STEM learning and careers. This paper describes the role of narrative stories in Digital Youth Divas and how that approach fostered situational interest, the first phase of Hidi and Renninger’s four-phase model of interest development.

Maltese, A. V., Melki, C. S., & Wiebke, H. L. (2014). The nature of experiences responsible for the generation and maintenance of interest in STEM. Science Education, 98(6), 937–962. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267158201_The_Nature_of_Experiences_Responsible
_for_the_Generation<_and_Maintenance_of_Interest_in_STEM

            Educators can request full-text from the authors by following the link.

Wyss, V. L., Heulskamp, D., & Siebert, C. J. (2012). Increasing middle school student interest in STEM careers with videos of scientists. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 7(4), 501–522.

Students are making choices in middle school that will impact their desire and ability to 
pursue STEM careers. Providing middle school students with accurate information about 
STEM careers enables them to make more knowledgeable choices about courses of study and career paths. Practical ways of helping students understand the nature of science careers are limited. This study investigates using video interviews of STEM professionals as a method for better informing youth about careers in science.

Abbott, A. L. (2017). Fostering student interest development: An engagement intervention. Middle School Journal, 48(3), 34–45.

This article focuses on engaging and developing interest among middle school youth. It discusses how to promote interest and engagement among middle schoolers. Hidi and Renninger’s four-phase model of interest development is used as the basis for suggested enrichment activities.