STEM High School: Does multiple years of high school engineering impact student choices and teacher instruction?

K-12 engineering programs are rapidly increasing around the nation, particularly at the high school level. Integrating opportunities for high school students to repeatedly practice engineering skills has been suggested to increase students' interest in pursuing a career in engineering. However, little research exists to show the real impacts on the students' attitudes towards engineering and where they end up after high school. Also, as the number of programs increases, so does the need for qualified teachers to instruct those courses. 1 The majority of K-12 teachers do not have a background in engineering; more times than not, they do not know what an engineer does, nor do they have knowledge of the different disciplines of engineering, thusly making it difficult to effectively encourage their students to pursue engineering as a career.(2,3) One challenge for schools wanting to better implement the "E" in STEM is the training required of teachers to effectively teach engineering in the classroom. This paper examines 76 students who completed engineering courses in a targeted STEM Academy program over four years of high school. Data is analyzed from multiple sources, including semester surveys that provide an in-depth look at students' changing interests and attitudes towards engineering over four years in the Academy, retention rates of students in the program, and what intended career path these students chose after graduation. In addition, the STEM Academy teachers who taught this group of students over four years provide their views on their students' growth and progress, as well as their opinions of the STEM Academy's progression and effectiveness. This paper examines how an integrated four-year engineering program in high school impacts students over multiple years, as well as gives insight into the effectiveness of this kind of program when taught by teachers of varying backgrounds trained in partnership with a local university. Specifically, this paper addresses the following question, "Does four years of engineering education at the high school level, when taught by qualified teachers, significantly increase students' interests and attitudes towards engineering, as well as increase the number of students who pursue an engineering-related path after high school?"