Fiddlers Green College: Looking for Equitable Workforce Pathways in Silicon Valley

Abstract

Often, research on the efficacy of postsecondary workforce programs does not convey their impact on true social mobility. The purpose of this study is to investigate project-based Career and Technical Education (CTE) workforce pathways in Silicon Valley.1 This study takes a step towards better understanding what constitutes the metrics that explain functioning pathways. In contributing to Project-Based Learning (PBL) theory, Amaral et al. (2015) found that seven PBL essentials form good learning outcomes; Creghan and Adair-Creghan (2015) then showed a measurable outcome of PBL is higher attendance, to which Plasman and Gottfried (2020), using a case of Applied STEM CTE (AS-CTE), framed attendance as a predictor of the efficacy of a workforce pathway. Recommendation: Through ethnography, the investigators observed that when social mobility was added as a metric of high quality PBL with AS-CTE in a predictive ontology framework of education success, an improved level of attendance was observed. The authors conclude that using the seven essentials and social mobility as a metric of PBL helps explain the observation of PBL’s improved efficacy. Hence, social mobility should be a metric of PBL AS-CTE program outcomes. © 2021, Aalborg University press. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Social mobility Career technical education equity Virtual design and construction Workforce pathways

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Digital Learning Lab, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States

Stanford Engineering, Stanford, CA, United States

Funding & Acknowledgements

Imperial Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, ECMC

We applied a combined first-last-author-emphasis and sequence-determines-credit authorship approach: the second-to-last author and third-to-last author made important contributions to this study shared with the last author. The work reported herein was supported under the ECMC Bridging the Gaps to Postsecondary Carrer and Technical Education fellowship. This work was also supported by the Ridge to Reef NSF Research Traineeship, award DGE-1735040. Special thanks to Professors Danny C. Martinez, Kylie Peppler, Salvador Z\u00E1rate, and Teresa McCarty for their feedback and support. Thank you to Professor Mark Warschauer for his guidance and ongoing support. Thank you to Professor James Bartlett and Professor Michelle Bartlett from North Carolina State University. We would also like to thank Dr. Nick Barron for his feedback. Thank you to current and former S4CA chairs Neil Struthers, Robert Baldini, and Tony Mirenda as well as Catherine Ayers, Carl Cimino, Dr. Brenda Childress, Dr. Ingrid Thompson, and David Ravizza. The authors are in gratitude to Arielle Marina DeVito, our editor, for their constant attention in guiding us to style and grace.

North Carolina State University, NCSU

We applied a combined first-last-author-emphasis and sequence-determines-credit authorship approach: the second-to-last author and third-to-last author made important contributions to this study shared with the last author. The work reported herein was supported under the ECMC Bridging the Gaps to Postsecondary Carrer and Technical Education fellowship. This work was also supported by the Ridge to Reef NSF Research Traineeship, award DGE-1735040. Special thanks to Professors Danny C. Martinez, Kylie Peppler, Salvador Z\u00E1rate, and Teresa McCarty for their feedback and support. Thank you to Professor Mark Warschauer for his guidance and ongoing support. Thank you to Professor James Bartlett and Professor Michelle Bartlett from North Carolina State University. We would also like to thank Dr. Nick Barron for his feedback. Thank you to current and former S4CA chairs Neil Struthers, Robert Baldini, and Tony Mirenda as well as Catherine Ayers, Carl Cimino, Dr. Brenda Childress, Dr. Ingrid Thompson, and David Ravizza. The authors are in gratitude to Arielle Marina DeVito, our editor, for their constant attention in guiding us to style and grace.

National Science Foundation, NSF

Grant: DGE-1735040, DGE-1735040

We applied a combined first-last-author-emphasis and sequence-determines-credit authorship approach: the second-to-last author and third-to-last author made important contributions to this study shared with the last author. The work reported herein was supported under the ECMC Bridging the Gaps to Postsecondary Carrer and Technical Education fellowship. This work was also supported by the Ridge to Reef NSF Research Traineeship, award DGE-1735040. Special thanks to Professors Danny C. Martinez, Kylie Peppler, Salvador Z\u00E1rate, and Teresa McCarty for their feedback and support. Thank you to Professor Mark Warschauer for his guidance and ongoing support. Thank you to Professor James Bartlett and Professor Michelle Bartlett from North Carolina State University. We would also like to thank Dr. Nick Barron for his feedback. Thank you to current and former S4CA chairs Neil Struthers, Robert Baldini, and Tony Mirenda as well as Catherine Ayers, Carl Cimino, Dr. Brenda Childress, Dr. Ingrid Thompson, and David Ravizza. The authors are in gratitude to Arielle Marina DeVito, our editor, for their constant attention in guiding us to style and grace.

National Science Foundation, NSF

We applied a combined first-last-author-emphasis and sequence-determines-credit authorship approach: the second-to-last author and third-to-last author made important contributions to this study shared with the last author. The work reported herein was supported under the ECMC Bridging the Gaps to Postsecondary Carrer and Technical Education fellowship. This work was also supported by the Ridge to Reef NSF Research Traineeship, award DGE-1735040. Special thanks to Professors Danny C. Martinez, Kylie Peppler, Salvador Z\u00E1rate, and Teresa McCarty for their feedback and support. Thank you to Professor Mark Warschauer for his guidance and ongoing support. Thank you to Professor James Bartlett and Professor Michelle Bartlett from North Carolina State University. We would also like to thank Dr. Nick Barron for his feedback. Thank you to current and former S4CA chairs Neil Struthers, Robert Baldini, and Tony Mirenda as well as Catherine Ayers, Carl Cimino, Dr. Brenda Childress, Dr. Ingrid Thompson, and David Ravizza. The authors are in gratitude to Arielle Marina DeVito, our editor, for their constant attention in guiding us to style and grace.

References 10 References

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Fiddlers Green College: Looking for Equitable Workforce Pathways in Silicon Valley

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