Integration of Trades-Based STEM Education in Canadian K-12 Schools
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Demand for skilled trades occupations in Alberta has steadily increased, coinciding with a decade-high youth unemployment rate. Addressing this challenge, this study evaluates the effectiveness of trades-based STEM kits in enhancing Canadian K-12 students’ retention of STEM knowledge and fostering interest in skilled trades careers. By addressing a gap in practical, hands-on learning opportunities, the research explores whether participation in STEM kit activities improves students' understanding of STEM concepts and influences their career aspirations. Surveys were administered to students from kindergarten to grade six, in two formats: Group or Individual. Results indicating significant STEM concept retention and a majority of students expressing enjoyment and willingness to engage in similar activities in the future. The initiative was also found to be statistically significant in affecting career aspirations. Thematic analysis of feedback highlighted the benefits of interactive, practical learning while also identifying logistical challenges. These findings suggest that trades-based STEM kits are a valuable educational tool that not only support STEM learning outcomes but also encourage youth to consider careers in the skilled trades.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".