Exposing Students in Special Education to STEM Through Engineering (2015)

Undergraduate: Mary Ward

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Akos
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Many students with disabilities are not involved in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields of study or career options. STEM learning is not only valuable for these students but also for our global society because it helps them stimulate new contributing ideas to STEM conversation in schools and in the community. Currently, the North Carolina School System follows the Common Core Standards, which focuses on mathematics and English language arts. This policy practice does not effectively give students the opportunities to focus on learning a larger diversity of STEM subjects. Research suggests various teaching techniques when teaching STEM material to special education classes. Some of these techniques include co-teaching, self-efficacy training, universal design, inclusive educational system, station teaching, and technology-focused learning. I plan to use a combination of these individually successful methods of teaching in a practice by creating an engineering curriculum that teaches a small group of high school students with moderate intellectual disabilities to build models. This curriculum will also teach them skills to solve tangible engineering problems. I will also evaluate these techniques to see how successful the curriculum was when practiced with this small group of high school students. Exposing students with disabilities to STEM learning through engineering will teach them various skills applicable to their everyday lives.