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Louise Thomas was tired. She had worked hard for no pay at the Commerce School in Detroit, learning riveting in a defense training class. She spent 120 hours in the classroom, sacrificing weeks of income for the chance at a wartime job, one that paid much more than the average job an African-American woman in Detroit could get at that time. She passed the riveting course with flying colors, and in 1942 she went to Ford's Willow Run bomber plant to secure employment as she had heard that the factory desperately needed female riveters. On two separate occasions she spent money on bus fare to get to the site, only to sit and wait in an employment office. Finally, two different personnel officers told her that they could not place her. When Thomas returned to the school to question her riveting instructor about the situation, she overheard him telling the other teachers that "the school was not for colored girls and they were not going to get any employment."1 She also heard him tell another black woman that if African American women had left jobs to take the riveting class, they had better return to them, as Detroit factories would never hire them. Thomas was not going to go back to her former job. She had trained for a war-defense position, and she was going to fight for the right to work at a skilled job for decent pay. Moreover, she was familiar with the fact that many women had already complained to the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) about Ford's hiring practices, but that the FEPC had failed to eliminate discrimination in the Willow Run plant. Thomas took her story to one of Detroit's major black newspapers in order to publicize the situation African-American working-class women faced in the city. She spoke for many black women when she stated

During the middle school years, students frequently show significant declines in motivation toward school in general and mathematics in particular. One way in which researchers have sought to spark students’ interests and build their sense of competence in mathematics and in STEM more generally is through the use of technology. Yet evidence regarding the motivational effectiveness of this approach is mixed. Here we evaluate the impact of three brief technology-based activities on students’ short-term motivation in math. 16,789 5th to 8th grade students and their teachers in one large school district were randomly assigned to three different technology-based activities, each representing a different framework for motivation and engagement and all designed around an exemplary lesson related to algebraic reasoning. We investigated the relationship between specific technology-based activities that embody various motivational constructs and students’ engagement in mathematics and perceived competence in pursuing STEM careers. Results indicate that the effect of each technology activity on students’ motivation was quite modest. No gains were found in self-efficacy; for implicit theory of ability, a lower incremental view of ability was found; we found modest declines in value beliefs. With respect to math learning, students in all three inductions had modest improvements in their scores on the math learning measure. However, these effects were modified by students’ grade level and not by their demographic variables. In addition, teacher-level variables did not have an effect on student outcomes. The present findings highlight the importance of tailoring motivational experiences to students’ developmental level. Our results are also encouraging about developers’ ability to create instructional interventions and professional development that can be effective when experienced by a wide range of students and teachers. Further research is needed to determine the degree, duration of, and type of instructional intervention necessary to substantially impact multi-dimensional, deep-rooted motivational constructs, such as self-efficacy.