A needs assessment and evaluation of an elementary afterschool STEM program in a small urban school district

2015-04-23This project was a needs assessment and evaluation of an elementary afterschool STEM program in a small urban school district. The organization we studied will be called Elementary Afterschool STEM Program to protect the identity of the organization that resides is a small urban school district. Three framing questions were created to organize the data: 1) Does the staff at Elementary Afterschool STEM Program have a positive attitude toward STEM and their LIAS principles? 2) To what extent is Elementary Afterschool STEM Program implementing the four components of STEM in their daily plans to achieve their program’s goals? and 3) To what extent does Elementary Afterschool STEM Program provide opportunities for student voice and choice in their learning? To answer these questions, data from the afterschool program’s students, tutors, site leads, and administration was sought. To support recommendations, literature was reviewed on the history of STEM education, STEM instruction, STEM programs practices, and effective STEM pedagogy. Also, literature about the literacy, the CCSS, and the NGSS were investigated as possible solutions as enhancements to their afterschool STEM program. Data was collected and analyzed to produce recommendations for program improvement. Data from student, tutor, and site leads along with an administrative questionnaire, classroom observations and document analysis was conducted to support the recommendations. The analysis included quantitative analysis on the surveys and qualitative analysis on the observations and document analysis. These methods were used to triangulate data and generate recommendations. Recommendations included creating SMART goals, increase staff training, implementing a full STEM curriculum, increasing students’ affective domain, measuring student outcomes, increase student voice and choice, and enhancing their STEM curriculum