Analyze student data and apply research to adapt instruction and to select appropriate materials to improve student performance and enhance inquiry and critical thinking.

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Name Nihal Senlik
Artifact Title
Research Purpose and Questions
Program
Outcome#
4. Analyze student data and apply research to adapt instruction and to
select appropriate materials to improve student performance and enhance
inquiry and critical thinking.
Required Key
Assessment
Program Outcome 4 Artifact - Key Assessment 1 (RES5153 Research
Methods - Module 1)
Degree Program M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction
This particular assignment at pointing out that STEM involves group work and this will
lead to sharing of ideas from diverse groups of students. Building and design projects in STEM
disciplines allow for students to express their creativity. They take advantage of the diversity in
students’ thought processes. Since these type of projects are typically done in groups, students
can benefit from working with peers who think differently than themselves. A project such as this
also engages diversity in students’ backgrounds. Students often rely on past experience when
given open ended projects and can share these experiences with others. They work together and
learn the value of team work, communication, and critical thinking. All very valuable life skills.
This assignment helps the teacher on how to focus on different levels of engagement among
students like female with STEM projects.

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Nihal Senlik
Research Problem Statement, Purpose and Questions
American College of Education

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ResearchProblem Statement, Purpose and Questions
Our school is a science academy. Our goal is to educate students for gaining Science
Technology Engineering and Mathematics skills. Many teachers send me an email about STEM
activity needs. They told me that they need to have more time to help students to enhance their
STEM interests. According to our school duty schedule, it’s really hard to have students to focus
on STEM activities, competitions, scholarships. We have various types of technology to educate
our students but we do not have time to use for extra-curricular activities.
I decided to focus on "STEM Activity Efficiency". I believe that after my research our
school will have impressive progress on STEM Activity Efficiency. I also learned from this action
research to ask the teachers about their needs it will help to improve school spirit and quality of
education. My campus mentor and I decided to focus on teachers needs without breaking school
duty roster. My mentor wants to be a fair leader, he wants to support our STEM activities, but also
he has to lead all staff members. He decided to have weekly breakfast to listen and help STEM
educators about their needs.
We’ve observed low participation of female students in STEM extra-curricular activities.
We found many reasons to make educators aware of this problem.
Female students see few female engineer role models than male engineer role models. Each
year I facilitate field trips for my Mathematics classes to meet with engineers, doctors, bank
managers, etc. After field trips, students write an essay about their feedback on a field trip. A lot
of students mention on there was not enough female engineers, bank managers, or doctors. They
always see female teachers at school and nurses. After that, they think they cannot improve their

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STEM abilities. I invite female engineers, doctors, and bank managers to inform my students to
be successful in STEM areas.
Girls see engineering is still seen as a dominant male field. We visited Lockheed Martin
when I was an Algebra teacher at my previous school. We have met with engineers to discuss how
to improve girls' interest in engineering majors. My students and I visited some places to see an
essential study about global security and aerospace. We tried to arrange a meeting with female
engineers, but we couldn’t find enough as we expected. Female students informed us about
engineering is still seen as a not female field.
My central questions are how to boost high school girls' interest in Science Technology
Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)?
What is the importance of Hands-on and Visual teaching activities in the STEM?
What kind of projects do we have for the STEM in the school?
How do we know if teacher effective use of STEM Curriculum to get female students attention?
Literature Review
I’ve gathered the information from "Million Women Mentors." In the past ten years,
growth in STEM jobs has been three times greater than that of non-STEM jobs. Today 80% of the
fastest growing occupations in the United States depend on mastery of mathematics and knowledge
and skills in hard sciences. While women comprise 48% of the U.S. workforce, just 24% are in
STEM fields, a statistic that has held constant for nearly the last decade. (PR Newswire, 2014). As
I knew there was not enough increase on STEM interest with female students, it helps me to

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understand to data with increases. This research is to bring me to have detailed information about
my research topic.

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References
PR, N. (2014, January 8). ADP Joins STEM Mentoring Initiative Million Women Mentors PR
Newswire US.