Trinity Walton Club: What is its potential for promoting interest in STEM?

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Date
2018-05-01
Authors
Prendergast, Mark
Murphy, Colette
O'Neill, Arlene
Roche, Joseph
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Publisher
Lectito
Published Version
10.20897/ejsteme/83659
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Abstract
Concerns are growing in many countries, including Ireland, regarding an inadequate number of graduates to meet workforce needs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. These graduate deficiencies are the result of low student uptake of STEM subjects and courses at post-primary and tertiary level education. Low uptake is partly a consequence of negative student attitudes towards STEM. Many students are losing interest in STEM at an early age due to an inability to see any relevance in their everyday lives. In light of such concerns, a Saturday afternoon club entitled “Trinity Walton Club” (TWC) was established in Trinity College Dublin with the purpose of uniting like-minded students to express, shape, inform and grow their interest in STEM. This club attempted to ‘bring STEM to life’ through thought provoking content, real world problems, contextualised analogies and projects. This paper describes the background to the TWC, reviews the literature around promoting student interest in STEM and examines initial feedback from participants in the pilot year of the club. The findings of this preliminary study indicate that the TWC has the potential to promote interest in STEM. Many of the recommendations from the literature review about promoting interest in STEM were referred to by participants in their responses.
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Keywords
Promoting interest , STEM club , STEM retention , Secondary students , Ireland , STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) , Workforce needs , STE education
Citation
Prendergast, M., Murphy, C., O'Neill, A., and Roche, J. (2018) 'Trinity Walton Club: What is its Potential for Promoting Interest in STEM?', European Journal of STEM Education, 3 (1), pp. 1-9. doi: 10.20897/ejsteme/83659
Link to publisher’s version
https://www.lectitopublishing.nl/Article/Detail/trinity-walton-club-what-is-its-potential-for-promoting-interest-in-stem
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/10365
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Education - Journal Articles
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© 2018 by Author/s and Licensed by Lectito BV, Netherlands. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.