Background
Mentorship has been well-established in the literature as fostering scientific identity and career pathways for underrepresented minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Mentorship is prioritized by programs that aim to increase diversity and support future leadership in STEM fields, but in-depth understanding of mentorship in these contexts remains limited. Drawing on qualitative interview data, we sought to understand the relationship between mentoring and scientific identity among a diverse sample of 24 students in one such program
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kaitlyn AtkinsBryan DouganMichelle Dromgold-SermenHannah PotterViji SathyA.T. Panter
Mentoring is a widely accepted strategy for helping youth see how their interests and abilities fit with education and career pathways; however, more research is needed to better understand how different approaches to mentoring impact youth participants. Near-peer mentoring can be a particularly impactful approach, particularly when youth can identify with their mentors. This project investigates three approaches to near-peer mentoring of high-school-aged Hispanic youth by Hispanic undergraduate mathematics majors. Mentoring approaches include undergraduates' visits to high school classrooms, mathematics social media, and a summer math research camp. These three components of the intervention are aimed at facilitating enjoyment of advanced mathematics through dynamic, experiential learning and helping high school aged youth to align themselves with other doers of mathematics on the academic stage just beyond them, i.e., college.
Using a Design-Based Research approach that involves mixed methods, the research investigates how the three different near-peer mentoring approaches impact youth participants' attitudes and interests related to studying mathematics and pursuing a career in mathematics, the youth's sense of whether they themselves are doers of mathematics, and the youth's academic progress in mathematics. The project design and research study focus on the development of mathematical identity, where a mathematics identity encompasses a person's self-understanding of himself or herself in the context of doing mathematics, and is grounded in Anderson (2007)'s four faces of identity: Engage, Imagine, Achieve, and Nature. The study findings have the potential to uncover associations between informal interactions involving the near-peer groups of high school aged youth and undergraduates seen to impact attitudes, achievement, course selection choices, and identities relative to mathematics. It also responds to an important gap in current understandings regarding effective communication of mathematics through social media outlets, and results will describe the value of in-person mathematical interactions as well as online interactions through social media. The study will result in a model for using informal near-peer mentoring and social media applications for attracting young people to study and pursue careers in STEM. This project will also result in a body of scripted MathShow presentations and materials and Math Social Media content that will be publicly available to audiences internationally via YouTube and Instagram.
This Research in Service to Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Aaron WilsonSergey GrigorianXiaohui WangMayra Ortiz
The Apsáalooke (Crow Indian) Nation in Montana, as well as other Indigenous communities across the United States, disproportionally experience negative consequences from water-related environmental hazards, such as contaminated water. In this project, fifth- and sixth-grade Apsáalooke youth will act as change agents through investigating water issues in their communities and presenting findings to their communities. They will conduct this water-related research in the context of an informal summer program designed to integrate Indigenous and Western perspectives on science. For example, youth will learn the cultural significance of water sites while also practicing methods for collecting and analyzing data relative to those sites, guided by Apsáalooke elders and science professionals. During the summer program, Indigenous high school students and tribal college students will mentor the youth. To develop this program, the project team will conduct interviews with elders and Apsáalooke community members in scientific fields to determine the desired features of a program that integrates Indigenous and Western science. They will use the findings from these interviews to develop a multimedia toolkit, which includes a set of comprehensive materials that will enable other researchers and informal educators to implement similar programs. This toolkit will include information about water science and water quality, lesson plans and related resources for the summer program, professional development materials to prepare the high school youth to act as mentors, handouts for family members to facilitate at-home engagement with their children, and more. The project team will research how the implementation of the toolkit influences the participants' water-related knowledge and attitudes toward science. The toolkit, and the associated empirical findings, will be disseminated widely through local, regional, and national professional networks that serve American Indians.
Montana State University, in partnership with Little Big Horn College, will implement and research an informal summer program for Apsáalooke youth in the fifth and sixth grades, as well as a mentorship program for Indigenous high school students and tribal college students. The older students will participate in a four-week internship program in which they learn about conducting water research and facilitating science activities that foreground Apsáalooke perspectives and cultural practices. The high school and tribal college students will partner with Apsáalooke elders and science professionals to facilitate and implement a two-week summer program for the fifth- and sixth-grade youth. This program will use the toolkit materials that were previously developed in consultation with elders and other community stakeholders. Regression analyses of validated pre- and post-surveys, as well as inductive analyses of interviews with stakeholders, will be used to study how the mentoring program affects the high school and tribal college students' attitudes toward science and career interests, and how the summer program affects the fifth- and sixth-graders' water-related knowledge. The research team will also study how youth participation in the program affects their family and community members' water-related knowledge. This project will result in a multimedia toolkit, freely available to the public and widely disseminated through professional networks, which specifies how other informal educators and researchers can implement similar mentorship programs and summer programs for Indigenous youth. Ultimately, this project will broaden participation through resulting in empirically-tested materials that advance practice in informal education for Indigenous youth and their communities. This project is funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the AISL program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This Innovations in Development award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Preparing mentors for their role is essential. Though most research tells us that you cannot teach or train someone how to be a mentor, there is tremendous value in preparing mentors for their upcoming experience through self-reflection, setting expectations, and discussion.
Ultimately, mentors will learn and develop their skills while they are mentoring. For this reason, in addition to preparing mentors for their role, it is critical to create a supportive and inclusive community to support mentors during their mentoring experience.
This “Mentoring Training Toolkit” distills what was
Hispanic youths have traditionally been marginalized from participation in STEM careers, though efforts have been made to increase diversity in STEM careers through targeted learning interventions for these students. However, these efforts often do not purposefully address STEM identity formation, which is a construct closely related to career choice in STEM. Building on previous work that highlights the value of “science talk”, we focus on the childhood experiences of Hispanic/Latine college students that have informed the construction of their STEM identity and contributed to their decisions
The RASOR project is designed to increase engagement of students from rural Alaska communities in biomedical/STEM careers. Rural Alaskan communities are home to students of intersecting identities underrepresented in biomedical science, including Alaska Native, low-income, first generation college, and rural. Geographic isolation defines these communities and can limit the exposure of students to scientifically-minded peers, professional role models, and science career pathways. However these students also have a particularly strong environmental connection through subsistence and recreational activities, which makes the one-health approach to bio-medicine an intuitive and effective route for introducing scientific research and STEM content. In RASOR, we will implement place-based mentored research projects with students in rural Alaskan communities at the high school level, when most students are beginning to seriously consider career paths. The biomedical one-health approach will build connections between student experiences of village life in rural Alaska and biomedical research. Engaging undergraduate students in research has proved one of the most successful means of increasing the persistence of minority students in science (Kuh 2008). Furthermore, RASOR will integrate high school students into community-based participatory research (Israel et al. 2005). This approach is designed to demonstrate the practicality of scientific research, that science has the ability to support community and cultural priorities and to provide career pathways for individual community members. The one-health approach will provide continuity with BLaST, an NIH-funded BUILD program that provides undergraduate biomedical students with guidance and support. RASOR will work closely with BLaST, implementing among younger (pre-BLaST) students approaches that have been successful for retaining rural Alaska students along STEM pathways and tracking of post-RASOR students. Alaska Native and rural Alaska students are a unique and diverse population underrepresented in biomedical science and STEM fields.
The purpose of the proposed project, Community of Bilingual English-Spanish Speakers Exploring Issues in Science and Health (CBESS), is to increase linguistic diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-healthcare fields, including biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research careers. With support of the large group of Spanish-English bilingual (SEB), STEM-healthcare professionals that was formed during this proposal preparation, CBESS will contribute to the pipeline between K–12 and higher education/career.
CBESS will recruit Spanish-English bilingual (SEB) high-school students at the end of tenth grade and implement several language-supported STEM-healthcare interventions during the eleventh and twelfth grade (17 months): family-engaged career exploration; Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned, inquiry-based, youth-led summer research residential program; community outreach/dissemination, internships, and mentoring.
Applying methods that are known to be effective with the target population, CBESS will also train undergraduate, near-peer instructor-mentors—STEM-healthcare Leadership Trainees (LT)—in inquiry-based instruction and strategies for positioning K–12 bilingual students as “insiders” in STEM-healthcare, as well as in the responsible conduct of research and mentoring skills, followed by practical application with SR.
CBESS will develop and expand the nascent SEB STEM-healthcare community of practice (CoP) that was created during CBESS proposal preparation. Committed academic, clinical, research, and community partners will contribute to research and evaluation efforts, and support the pipeline between K–12 and higher education/career through Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), framing priority community health issues to be addressed by each cohort of SR from among issues identified by the SR during the application process. Finally, the CoP will target long-term institutional sustainability for linguistically diverse students in STEM-healthcare education and careers.
This project specifically addresses the SMRB’s imperative that “NIH’s pre-college STEM activities need a rejuvenated integrated focus on biomedical workforce preparedness with special considerations for under-represented minorities.”
Approximately one-third of CityLab’s participants are under-represented minority (URM) students, but we now have a unique opportunity to build a program that will reach many URM students and position them for undergraduate STEM success. We have partnered with urban squash education organizations in Boston (SquashBusters) and New York (CitySquash and StreetSquash) that recruit URM/low SES students to participate in after-school squash training and academic enrichment programs. We have also partnered with the Squash + Education Alliance (previously named the National Urban Squash and Education Association) to disseminate the new program—first from Boston to New York and later through its national network of affiliated squash education programs.
In order to bring this project to fruition, Boston University is joining forces with Fordham University in New York. Fordham is home to CitySquash so these organizations provide an ideal base for the New York activities. The proposed project will enable us to demonstrate feasibility and replicability within the 5-year scope of this grant. Our shared vision is to develop a national model for informal precollege biomedical science education that can be infused into a myriad of similar athletic/academic enrichment programs.
The squash education movement for urban youth has been highly successful in enrolling program graduates in college. Since the academic offerings of the squash education programs focus on English Language Arts and Mathematics, their students struggle with science and rarely recognize the tremendous opportunities for long- term employment in STEM fields.
This project will bring CityLab’s resources to local squash programs in a coordinated and sustained engagement to introduce students to STEM, specifically the biomedical sciences. Together with the urban squash centers, we will build upon the hands-on life science experiences developed and widely disseminated by CityLab to create engaging laboratory-based experiences involving athletics and physiology.
The specific aims of the proposed project are:
To develop, implement, and evaluate a new partnership model for recruiting URM/low SES students and inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM; and
To examine changes in the science learner identities (SLI) of the students who participate in this program and establish this metric as a marker for continued engagement in STEM.
With the involvement of the two urban research universities, three local squash education programs, and SEA, we see this new SEPA initiative as a unique way to pilot, refine, and disseminate an after-school/informal science education program that can have a significant impact on the nation’s production of talented STEM graduates from URM/low SES backgrounds.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carl FranzblauDonald DeRosaCarla Romney
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This broadening participation project will focus on a regional workshop aimed at increasing Historically Black Colleges and Universities' (HBCUs) capacity to develop high quality proposals for future competitions of various programs in the Division of Research on Learning. The proposed effort will occur through three specific steps involving a: (1) pre-workshop webinar to introduce and lay the foundation for the opportunity; (2) full two-day workshop to engage participants in a rigorous grant-writing exercise; and (3) post workshop follow-up to provide ongoing support and proposal development guidance. Through a theory-driven process, the goal is to establish some degree of conformity for maximizing grant productivity around strategies and ideas shown to be effective in retaining students in the STEM pipeline.
The multi-tiered workshop will establish a launching pad for increasing attendees' capacity to build on prior knowledge and use best practices to improve future grant writing efforts. Specialized activities will help prepare HBCUs to increase their contributions to diversifying the future STEM workforce, support innovation and creativity in STEM fields, expand networking strategies, and promote opportunities to learn. Central to this capacity-building effort will be a focus on understanding the current research context and expectations for competitive participation in funding opportunities offered by NSF. This, in turn, will align with the Foundation's strategic direction for broadening participation in STEM through meaningful cutting-edge STEM education research. Resources from the workshop will be made available online to facilitate broader dissemination of information beneficial to HBCUs and other education institutions engaging in broadening participation efforts.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Recognizing that race can influence African American youths' perception of which academic disciplines and careers are available to them, this pilot study will explore how African American youths' physical and social communities can be leveraged to support the evolution of their STEM identity and their ability to recognize their potential as scientists. Unfortunately, many of these youths live in communities that are void of critical resources that research has demonstrated time and time again are critical for success in STEM disciplines and careers. This lived reality for many African American youth is the direct result of long-standing disparities in access and opportunities, fueled by racial socialization and biased institutional structures. This pilot will empower youth to recognize these disparities and use science to provide solutions. One perilous societal disparity experienced in many predominately African American communities is the lack of access to fresh produce and healthy food. As a mechanism for potential resolution, this project will consider the utility of community gardens to address this important community need and as a strategy to engage youth in STEM content and skill development. While this notion is not novel to NSF, the intent to utilize an augmented reality (AR) storytelling platform for data collection and project experiences is innovative. This technology will also provide a space for participants to share their work with each other and their broader communities. To our knowledge, this pioneering approach has not been previously piloted in this context. In addition, the pilot will engage multiple youth serving community-based organizations such as park and recreation centers and faith-based organizations in this work, which is also innovative. This is significant, as youth serving community-based organizations are often play important role in the social, educational, and cultural lives of youth and their families in communities. These organizations are often at the heart of the community, figuratively and literally. If successful, this pilot could be transformative and provide a strong basis to support similar work in other communities.
Over the two-year project duration, eighty African American youth ages 11 -14 will participate in the year-long program, across three youth-serving, community-based organizations at four sites. They will be exposed to relevant agricultural, geological, engineering and technological content through a newly developed curriculum called "Cultivating My Curriculum." Community mentors and undergraduate role models will facilitate the instruction and hands-on experiences in the garden and with the AR platform. A capstone event will be a held for the participants and community to convene to learn more about the results of the pilot and share recommendations with community leaders for improving the disparities identified during the pilot. The research component will focus on: (a) the impact of the sociocultural theoretical framework grounding the work on youths' STEM identities, (b) the integration of the AR tool, and (c) mentorship. Formative and summative evaluation will take place through focus groups, surveys, journals, and youth storytelling. Ultimately, the project endeavors to advance the narrative that African Americans are scientists and that science can be used to improve the lives of African Americans and other groups challenged by structural and racial disparities.
This pilot study is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Harrison PinckneyDavid BoyerBarry GarstDilrukshi Thavarajah
Many of the Hispanic children and families who live in the Rio Grande Valley lack opportunities to engage in inspirational and educational experiences introducing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concepts and related careers. The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) will adapt and research the "Energy and U Show," which will introduce thousands of children and families to an exciting and dramatic that shows interconverting different forms of energy. The show will meld the excitement of chemical demonstrations and the natural connection between energy and STEM education in a fully produced, on-stage science extravaganza. A foundational philosophy of the show is that there is additional real value in getting children and youth onto a college campus. For many of its participants, this is their first time sitting in a seat at a university, the first opportunity for them to envision themselves in this environment. In partnership with the University of Minnesota, which originally developed the show, UTRGV will adapt the show, now presented in English, to a bilingual, culturally accessible format that is designed to Hispanic family audiences and student groups in learning about energy and related careers. Evaluation results demonstrate that the show has effectively engaged thousands of Minnesota students. The target audience will be upper elementary (4th-5th grade), middle school students, and their parents. This project will be led by UTRGV, nation's second-largest Hispanic Serving Institution, with a student enrollment of 28,000, of which over 90% are Hispanic and more than 60% are first-generation college students). In addition to the show, the project will include: (1) a manual to guide implementation of the program and related resources at different national or international venues; (2) educational resources for parents, teachers and school counselors introducing STEM careers and specific STEM college majors; (3) mentoring of UTRGV faculty in outreach activities; and (4) dissemination of the show to other campuses and venues.
The project will conduct ongoing research and evaluation guiding the adaptation of the show and investigation of factors contributing to positive educational impacts of the project, which will be carried out by a bilingual/bicultural researcher. Project research instruments will measure student level of engagement, interest and learning, as well as college interest, in surveys and analysis of data pre and post demonstration. The project will specifically investigate the impact of language on student impacts. Each component of this project will be studied to determine program intervention effectiveness (the scientific demonstration and language of the demonstration). To determine program effectiveness, a baseline of data before program implementation will be established concerning Hispanic students, their persistence, and perceptions of the environment. The project will measure parent perceptions of STEM careers for their children through pre and post demonstration surveys and focus groups. Student and parent research participants will be able to use surveys or respond to other research activities in the language of their choice. Project findings will contribute to the knowledge base concerning how linguistically and culturally adapted science shows and related resources adapted into can have positive impacts regarding the STEM knowledge and careers of students and parents from low-income and Hispanic communities.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen LozanoArturo FuentesAaron MassariBrian Warren