Helping Academically Talented STEM Students with Financial Need Succeed

AbstractThe goal of this study was to measure food insecurity among families with children in a low-income district of Lima, Peru and to identify the formal and informal food resources available to them that may affect their food security status. In June-July 2019, we collected data from 329 randomly selected households in Villa El Salvador (Lima, Peru). Following a mixed methods approach, we found that the percentage of households using food assistance programs (FAPs) increased with increasing levels of food insecurity, but two FAPs were heavily used by households regardless of food (in)security. The main reasons for using FAPs included financial need, already being signed up in the program, and believing that the food was of nutritional value; the main reasons for non-use were finding the program unnecessary, dislike or poor perceived quality of the food, and not being able to sign up for the program. Similarly, informal food resources, such as buying food on credit or receiving food from someone outside the household, were incrementally used with increased levels of food insecurity. Our study clarifies the relationship between level of household food insecurity and FAP use – FAPs more commonly used by food insecure households were used because of financial need, whereas the FAPs most commonly used by food secure households were those with automatic enrollment. At a programmatic level, our research highlights the need for making nutritious and preferred foods available in FAPs and standardizing the application of enrollment criteria.

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Analysis of University STEM Students’ Mathematical, Linguistic, Rhetorical–Organizational Assignment Errors

Education Sciences ◽

10.3390/educsci11040173 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 173

Author(s):

María-José Arévalo ◽

María Asun Cantera ◽

Vanessa García-Marina ◽

Marian Alves-Castro

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Writing Skills ◽

Mathematics Students ◽

Educational Design ◽

Science Technology ◽

Communicative Strategies ◽

Precise Diagnosis ◽

Stem Students ◽

And Mathematics

Although Error Analysis (EA) has been broadly used in Foreign Language and Mother Tongue learning contexts, it has not been applied in the field of engineering and by STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) students in a systematic way. In this interdisciplinary pilot study, we applied the EA methodology to a wide corpus of exercises and essays written by third-year students of mechanical engineering, with the main purpose of achieving a precise diagnosis of the students’ strengths and weaknesses in writing skills. For the analysis to be as exhaustive as possible, the errors were typologized into three main categories (linguistic, mathematical, and rhetorical–organizational), each of which is, in turn, subdivided into 15 items. The results show that the predominant errors are rhetorical–organizational (39%) and linguistic (38%). The application of EA permits the precise identification of the areas of improvement and the subsequent implementation of an educational design that allows STEM students to improve their communicative strategies, especially those related to the writing skills and, more precisely, those having to do with the optimal use of syntax, punctuation, rhetorical structure of the text, and mathematical coherence.

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