What does SBE and CTE have to do with STEM?

By:  Stephen Portz

Einstein Fellows at the Byrd  Radio Telescope Green Bank, WV October 2013

On the 9th Floor of the National Science Foundation is the Social, Behavioral, and Economics (SBE) Directorate.  Some consider these fields of study as the "soft sciences" because they deal with data streams which are far more subjective, nuanced, and hard to isolate and quantify.  This is because they encompass the enormous breadth of variables which make up the human condition as they describe why we humans do what we do... what are our motivations?

I came to respect the value of SBE research as it was revealed time and time again in studies indicating just how many technical challenges have been or have the potential of being resolved through an SBE Study.  There are intersections were domains collide in unexpected ways and one can benefit from recognizing these intersections to help solve many difficult problems.

As our high tech world continues to grow in sophistication, what SBE challenges will emerge?

Take voting for instance, there is a pressing need for voter authentication and integrity in the balloting process, but what are the trade-offs in deploying heightened security measures? Will they have the tendency of alienating and keeping people from the polls, or will they provide a confidence in the system in the assurance that each vote is valid and valued?  Both points of view have enormous motivational influences.

Another trending example is in the area of cybersecurity and password protection - how can we encourage computer users to create secure passwords?  With hackers employing more sophisticated hardware and algorithms, experts are strongly suggesting passwords of twelve or more mixed characters.  This raises questions as to what behaviors will emerge from such a mandate, how much productivity will be lost, and at what economic cost?

All of which raises the question of what SBE factors are at play in the educational challenges of today?  Since STEM Education is the big trending issue of our time lets take a look at some of the factors behind the movement.

STEM and SBE - the Economic Factors
There are clear economic factors at play in the promotion of STEM Education measures:

* There are an estimated 1.4 jobs available for each STEM graduate, compare that to 3.6 available workers for every non-STEM related job.

*Between 2000 and 2012 STEM salaries rose a modest 3.5% but at the same time all other wages shrank 5.5%

*An estimated 2 million manufacturing jobs will go unfilled in the next decade because workers lack the necessary STEM skills.

*STEM is the great equalizer - Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs - considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs. Minority graduates who took jobs related to their STEM degree earned at least 50 percent more than their non-STEM classmates did.

http://www.iseek.org/news/fw/fw8008FutureWork.html

According to the National Center for Education, for every 100 undergraduate students, just 28 percent enroll in STEM degree programs despite the allure of high wages and low unemployment. Of those 28 percent, nearly half (48 percent) change course before graduating. In the end, for every 100 undergrads, only 13 earn a degree in a STEM-related field. - See more at: http://www.stemeducationnews.com/stem-careers/understanding-the-stem-skills-gap#sthash.cshLaCRs.dpuf

http://www.stemeducationnews.com/stem-careers/understanding-the-stem-skills-gap

According to the National Center for Education, for every 100 undergraduate students, just 28 percent enroll in STEM degree programs despite the allure of high wages and low unemployment. Of those 28 percent, nearly half (48 percent) change course before graduating. In the end, for every 100 undergrads, only 13 earn a degree in a STEM-related field. - See more at: http://www.stemeducationnews.com/stem-careers/understanding-the-stem-skills-gap#sthash.cshLaCRs.dpuf

According to the National Center for Education, for every 100 undergraduate students, just 28 percent enroll in STEM degree programs despite the allure of high wages and low unemployment. Of those 28 percent, nearly half (48 percent) change course before graduating. In the end, for every 100 undergrads, only 13 earn a degree in a STEM-related field. - See more at: http://www.stemeducationnews.com/stem-careers/understanding-the-stem-skills-gap#sthash.cshLaCRs.dpuf

Social Behavioral Factors in STEM
Just as there are powerful economic factors in play, there are strong social/behavioral factors in play as well.  As a technology teacher I, like most of my colleagues, struggle with recruiting underrepresented populations in my program and I am constantly looking for ways to do better.  I came to realize what SBE factors were in play when a recent female STEM Graduate Student from Georgia Tech came to speak to our group of Career and Technical Educators (CTE).  

She was valedictorian of her high school and went to a university to study math - her favorite subject in high school.  She did so well as an undergrad that Georgia Tech offered her a scholarship to come there and get her masters degree in mechanical engineering.  While there, she learned SolidWorks, a 3D parametric modeling program, worked in a research lab, designed and patented a medical appliance, and was hired by a medical device company in Atlanta.

Since she graduated from a high school in our district and happened to have parents that were both CTE teachers, I was extremely interested in picking her brain about her public school experience and what we could have done to attract more people like her in our programs.  At the time I taught at a High School Engineering Academy which certified students with a credential in SolidWorks, so when we had a question and answer period I asked her:

"You represent the demographic that we are desperately trying to recruit in our CTE programs, what could we do differently or better to get students such as yourself to take our classes?"

She was surprisingly blunt in her response, irrespective of the fact that she could have received engineering and SolidWorks instruction several years earlier in her high school program of study AND that both her parents were CTE teachers - she told me:  "I never would have taken one of your classes because it would have lowered my weighted GPA in preparation for college."

It was a jaw dropping pronouncement... 

And it sent my mind scurrying off to make sense of what she was really telling me.  I realized that I had to frame this with the idea that she could not foresee where life was going to take her, after all, she just started as a math major with no decision as to what career path she would take beyond there; but that in hindsight, that there was seemingly no second guessing or pangs of regret about the missed opportunities either.  I believe this speaks volumes as to how our students are developing their attitudes about careers in their home life.  These attitudes then play out in their high school decisions as to what classes they will or will not take.

It began to make sense.  All the years I spent as the CTE department head attending end of the year awards programs where our seniors walked across the stage to receive their academic awards. It was surprising to hear many of them announce that they were going to such and such college to study engineering because we had an award winning engineering program being offered at their very own high school and they had never once darkened the doorway.  Students were evidently not taking the classes because they were CTE classes.  

 Now I knew why - and the reason was not pleasant to contemplate... it was intellectual snobbery.  The idea that career and technical classes are good for everyone but their child, ...because their child does not need it....they are going to college.

To see that it was affecting even my CTE colleagues was a strong indicator of how pervasive the attitude had become. Consider further this SBE finding in an attitudinal study: "Some of the shortage of skilled workers can also be traced to unfavorable perceptions. A recent survey of 1000 homes found that only 37 percent of parents would encourage their children to pursue manufacturing careers."

This is at a time when two year technical degrees are in high demand and four year liberal arts degrees are much less appealing.  The Wall Street Journal reports: "As states for the first time mine graduates' salary data from public colleges, they are finding that paychecks for holders of associate degrees in a technical field are outstripping many grads with four-year degrees, at least early in a career."

"...that paychecks for holders of associate degrees in a technical field are outstripping many grads with four-year degrees."

"In Indiana, figures show that after a year in the workforce there, a graduate of Ivy Tech Community College makes more on average than a graduate of Indiana University.  In Colorado, Tessa DeVore earned a two-year nursing degree from Front Range Community College in 2010. The degree cost her $23,000, but her starting salary was $53,000.  "At my hospital, the salary doesn't increase any faster if you have a four-year degree," she said. "For me, this was absolutely the way to go."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-study-says-it-still-makes-sense-to-go-to-college-1403618488


STEM to the Rescue... but STEM without CTE is just SMuh
Career and technical courses provide the T - technology and the E- engineering pieces of the STEM equation in a natural way.  Any solution to the STEM challenge that does not recognize this will be ineffective because it does not integrate the subject areas under real life engineering conditions and projects - the kind of activity that you would only find in a CTE program.  

This is in opposition to many other proposed solutions to the the STEM Crisis.  The Next Generation Science Standards for example, suggests that science teachers teach engineering design in parallel with the scientific method as a way to satisfy the E in STEM component. 

There is no explanation given in the NGSS as to where 

science teachers will receive instruction to be qualified 

to teach engineering education.

One of the engineering mentors in our FIRST Robotics team was a perfect case study for using CTE coursework with a college prep program of study to create the perfect STEM specimen.  He was a young mechanical engineer who drove an hour one way on his own time to work with our students because he loved robots that much.  He knew all about gears, transmission systems, CNC and manual machining, he could weld using a variety of processes, could design using PTC Creo (Pro-E).  He owned a few muscle cars which he was always working on to trick out even more.  It was evident to even a casual observer that this guy had talents beyond what any college ever could have taught him, so I had to ask him - where did it all come from?

FIRST Robotics Team 1875 Lunacy Robot

He told me that he just liked all that stuff when he was a kid so he took shop classes and learned as much as he could. He did a bunch of builds when he was young and just couldn't get enough of it. He then related a very sobering fact that some of the engineering students in his university program did not have simple understanding of many mechanical processes or as he put it, "didn't even know what a 2x4 was."

So even in the college program of study, students were not being prepared with real world activities and skills opting instead for more of academia instead of the practical. 

In Conclusion...

The challenges of educating our future workforce for whatever may come will happen when we provide for flexible, creative, problem solvers.  Flexible, creative, problem solvers will emerge when we encourage our students to develop with a variety of talents and abilities.  Especially by using real world project based learning activities.  When we use our CTE courses in concert with a rigorous academic program of study we can create the ultimate STEM program.

The barriers to accomplishing this lies mostly in parental attitudes toward CTE.  Social/behavioral studies have the potential to reveal these biases and attitudes which are not conducive to effecting necessary changes. These attitudes prevent students from acquiring real world problem solving ability and content in the context of the work place.  Economic factors mandate we change many of these associated attitudes which prevent our students from becoming all that they can be.  Social, Behavior, and Economic studies are very valuable in revealing and solving these societal problems.