A Study On Out-of-School STEM Education Programs For Girls Of Elementary And Secondary Schools In The United States

Scientific and technological innovative talents have become the latest hot spot of competition in the 21st century,and the United States is paying more and more attention to the cultivation of technical talents in STEM fields.Yet women,who make up half of the workforce,are underrepresented in STEM fields.The United States dug deep into the root cause of the problem and found that the performance of girls in STEM as early as primary and secondary schools was not optimistic,which was manifested in the poor STEM academic performance of girls in primary and secondary schools,low interest in curriculum participation and low identification with STEM careers.To this end,the United States strongly encourages and supports the development of out-of-school STEM education programs for girls in primary and secondary schools,supplementing STEM education for girls in schools while making better use of its pertinence and flexibility.This paper will analyze the problems encountered in STEM education for girls in primary and secondary schools in the United States from the perspective of out-of-school education,and discuss the measures taken by the United States to deal with the STEM education of girls in primary and secondary schools,in order to provide useful experience for the development of extracurricular STEM education programs for girls in primary and secondary schools in China.Based on the collection and analysis of Chinese and foreign literature,this paper uses the literature method and comparative analysis method to study the out-of-school STEM education projects for girls in the United States and the background of the development of girls’ out-of-school STEM education in the United States.The first part shows the background of the emergence of out-of-school STEM education programs for girls in primary and secondary schools in the United States.In order to solve the problem of STEM learning for girls in primary and secondary schools and cultivate female talents in STEM fields,the US government attaches great importance to the development of out-of-school STEM education programs for girls in primary and secondary schools,and provides favorable conditions for the development of off-campus STEM education programs for girls in primary and secondary schools through policy and financial support;The second part organizes the types of out-of-school STEM education programs for girls in elementary and middle schools in the United States.Guided by the problems of girls in STEM education in primary and secondary schools,the United States has developed extramural STEM education programs for academic performance improvement,interest enhancement and career planning;The third part presents the specific implementation and operation guarantee of out-of-school STEM education projects for girls in primary and secondary schools in the United States from the aspects,procedures,guarantees and challenges of out-of-school STEM education projects for girls in primary and secondary schools in the United States.Part IV summarizes the characteristics of out-of-school STEM education programs for girls in elementary and middle schools in the United States.In the process of continuous development and improvement,the off-campus STEM education program for girls has formed the characteristics of curriculum characteristics,female role models,implementation subjects,assessment tools and methods,and teacher gendering.The fifth part compares the current situation of girls’ education in primary and secondary schools in the United States and China,and explores the enlightenment of the development experience of off-campus STEM education programs for girls in primary and secondary schools in China to the off-campus education programs of primary and secondary schools in China.