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Browsing by Author "Gillen, Andrew L."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A Multiple Case Study of an Interorganizational Collaboration: Exploring the First Year of a Public-Private Partnership Focused on Secondary STEM Education
    Gillen, Andrew L. (Virginia Tech, 2019-04-04)
    National calls for improving the prospects of STEM workforce development and broadening participation in STEM place the focus of change within the education system. Despite many efforts towards integrating STEM, and specifically engineering, into pre-college settings, mechanisms for change in schools towards these goals remain underdeveloped. While collaborative solutions involving multiple organizations across sectors towards addressing this complex problem appear promising, more work is needed to develop a critical understanding of the processes involved when such different organizations come together to collaborate towards a social goal. Based in an effort to bring more theoretical literature into the discourse around school-university-industry partnership, the purpose of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of how K-12 STEM interorganizational relationships develop in their initial stages by focusing on the collaborative processes and structures and to develop implications for future success of such collaborations. To accomplish this, I used a multiple case study design to investigate the collaborative processes that emerged in the first year of the partnership within VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools). I centered my analysis on select adult stakeholders in the collaborative problem who were also programmatic participants including teachers, administrators, industry partners, and university affiliates. Using pre-year and post-year semi-structured interviews with these stakeholders, I characterized the collaborative processes in the first year of the program. Interpretation of results comparing across cases indicated considerations for education and organizational theory literature as well as implications for collaborative practice. Findings confirmed the emergent and negotiated nature of interorganizational collaboration and highlighted the importance of managing communication and reflection in partnership. Organizational culture may impact capacity building when organizations come together towards a complex social goal, particularly when industry is involved, and autonomy and operational issues within the school system and teaching can make collaborating with schools particularly challenging. When organizations come together towards a social goal centered around one of the collaborative partners, equality in exchange may not be a good measure of success. With the caveat that communication needs to be well managed to build credibility among partners, an unequal but equitable exchange of resources may be appropriate in collaborations towards a social goal. While it is tempting to continue to measure quality in interorganizational collaborations narrowly by the outcomes produced, a macro-level look at the collaborative processes involved enables collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success.
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    A multiple case study of an interorganizational collaboration: Exploring the first year of an industry partnership focused on middle school engineering education
    Gillen, Andrew L.; Grohs, Jacob R.; Matusovich, Holly M.; Kirk, Gary R. (2021-06-23)
    Background Calls to improve learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and particularly engineering, present significant challenges for school systems. Partnerships among engineering industry, universities, and school systems to support learning appear promising, but current work is limited in its conclusions because it lacks a strong connection to theoretical work in interorganizational collaboration. Purpose/Hypothesis This study aims to reflect more critically on the process of how organizations build relationships to address the following research question: In a public-private partnership to integrate engineering into middle school science curriculum, how do stakeholder characterizations of the collaborative process align with existing frameworks of interorganizational collaboration? Design/Method This qualitative, embedded multiple case study considered in-depth pre- and post-year interviews with teachers, administrators, industry, and university personnel during the first year of the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools (PEERS) program. Transcripts were analyzed using a framework of interorganizational collaboration operationalized for our context. Results Results provide insights into stakeholder perceptions of collaborative processes in the first year of the PEERS program across dimensions of collaboration. These dimensions mapped to three central discussion points with relevance for school-university-industry partnerships: school collaboration as an emergent and negotiated process, tension in collaborating across organizations, and fair share in collaborating toward a social goal. Conclusions Taking a macro-level look at the collaborative processes involved enabled us to develop implications for collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success. By systematically applying a framework of collaboration and capitalizing on the rich situational findings possible through a qualitative approach, we shift our understanding of collaborative processes in school-university-industry partnerships for engineering education and contribute to the development of collaboration theory.
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    Outcome Expectations and Environmental Factors Associated with Engineering College-Going: A Case Study
    Matusovich, Holly M.; Gillen, Andrew L.; Carrico, Cheryl; Knight, David B.; Grohs, Jacob R. (Purdue e-Pubs, 2020)
    Family, school, and community contexts each link to secondary school enrollment, yet these factors have been comparatively examined only in limited ways. A holistic examination of contextual factors will be particularly important for engineering where college enrollment patterns vary by demographics. To begin explaining patterns of engineering college-going at different high schools across the Commonwealth of Virginia, we answered the following research questions: Within a single school system and from a socializer’s perspective, what outcome expectations and environmental factors influence students’ engineering-related postsecondary educational plans? How are these factors the same and different between high schools within a school district? Using a single-case-study approach and in-depth interviews with socializers (teachers, administrators, and counselors), we examined similarities and differences in outcome expectations and environmental factors at three high schools within a single school district. By integrating the results regarding outcome expectations and environmental factors, three important findings emerged: (1) relationships between outcome expectations and environmental factors vary across schools within the same system, (2) proximity to a postsecondary institution is not just about physical distance, and (3) messaging regarding career pathways matters. Each of these has practical implications but can also set the foundation for future research.
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    Student Outcomes from the Collective Design and Delivery of Culturally Relevant Engineering Outreach Curricula in Rural and Appalachian Middle Schools
    Matusovich, Holly M.; Gillen, Andrew L.; Van Montfrans, Veronica; Grohs, Jacob R.; Paradise, Tawni; Carrico, Cheryl; Lesko, Holly; Gilbert, Karen (SAGE Publications, 2021)
    Middle school is a pivotal time for career choice, and research is rich with studies on how students perceive engineering, as well as corresponding intervention strategies to introduce younger students to engineering and inform their conceptions of engineering. Unfortunately, such interventions are typically not designed in culturally relevant ways. Consequently, there continues to be a lack of students entering engineering and a low level of diverse candidates for this profession. The purpose of this study was to explore how students in rural and Appalachian Virginia conceive of engineering before and after engagement with culturally relevant hands-on activities in the classroom. We used student responses to the Draw an Engineer Test (DAET), consisting of a drawing and several open-ended prompts administered before and after the set of engagements, to answer our research questions related to changes in students’ conceptions of engineering. We used this study to develop recommendations for teachers for the use of such engineering engagement practices and how to best assess their outcomes, including looking at the practicality of the DAET. Overall, we found evidence that our classroom engagements positively influenced students’ conceptions of engineering in these settings.