Many urgent environmental challenges, from soil degradation and water pollution to global climate change, have deep roots in how complex systems impact human well-being, and how humans relate to nature and to each other. Learning In and From the Environment through Multiple Ways of Knowing (LIFEways) is based on the premise that Indigenous stewardship has sustained communities on these lands since time immemorial. This project is collaboratively led by the Indigenous Education Institute and Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center, in partnership with Native Pathways and the Reimagine Research Group, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, World Forestry Center, and a national park network in the Pacific Northwest. The aim of this partnership is to deepen the informal learning field’s understanding of how Indigenous ways of knowing are currently or can be included in outdoor learning environments such as parks, nature preserves, and tribal lands. The project will share practices that center Indigenous worldviews to build awareness of their value and enhance STEM learning in outdoor settings. These approaches engage Native community members in continuing their traditional knowledge and practices, and help non-Native audiences learn from the dynamic interrelationships of the environment in authentic, respectful ways.
Conventional outdoor education is mostly grounded in Western concepts of “conservation” and “preservation” that position humans as acting separately from nature. This Research in Service to Practice project will identify “wise practices” that honor Indigenous ways of knowing, and investigate current capacities, barriers and opportunities for amplifying Indigenous voices in outdoor education. A team of Native and non-Native researchers and practitioners will draw upon Indigenous and Western research paradigms. Methods include Talk Story dialogues, a landscape study using national surveys, case studies, and a Circle of Relations to interpret and disseminate research findings. LIFEways will also document partnership processes to continue to build on the Collaboration with Integrity framework between tribal and non-tribal organizations (Maryboy and Begay, 2012). Findings from the LIFEways project will be shared broadly through a series of webinars, local and national meetings, conferences, and publications.
This project is designed to support collaboration between informal STEM learning (ISL) researchers, designers, and educators with sound researchers and acoustic ecologists to jointly explore the role of auditory experiences—soundscapes—on learning. In informal STEM learning spaces, where conversation advances STEM learning and is a vital part of the experience of exploring STEM phenomena with family and friends, attention to the impacts of soundscapes can have an important bearing on learning. Understanding how soundscapes may facilitate, spark, distract from, or even overwhelm thinking and conversation will provide ISL educators and designers evidence to inform their practice. The project is structured to reflect the complexity of ISL audiences and experiences; thus, partners include the North Park Village Nature Center located in in a diverse immigrant neighborhood in Chicago; Wild Indigo, a Great Lakes Audubon program primarily serving African American visitors in Midwest cities; an after-school/summer camp provider, STEAMing Ahead New Mexico, serving families in the rural southwest corner of New Mexico, and four sites in Ohio, MetroParks, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and the Center of Science and Industry.
Investigators will conduct large-scale exploratory research to answer an understudied research question: How do environmental sounds impact STEM learning in informal learning spaces? Researchers and practitioners will characterize and describe the soundscapes throughout the different outdoor and indoor exhibit/learning spaces. Researchers will observe 800 visitors, tracking attraction, attention, dwell time, and shared learning. In addition to observations, researchers will join another 150 visitors for think-aloud interviews, where researchers will walk alongside visitors and capture pertinent notes while visitors describe their experience in real time. Correlational and cluster analyses using machine learning algorithms will be used to identify patterns across different sounds, soundscapes, responses, and reflections of research participants. In particular, the analyses will identify characteristics of sounds that correlate with increased attention and shared learning. Throughout the project, a team of evaluators will monitor progress and support continuous improvement, including guidance for developing culturally responsive research metrics co-defined with project partners. Evaluators will also document the extent to which the project impacts capacity building, and influences planning and design considerations for project partners. This exploratory study is the initial in a larger research agenda, laying the groundwork for future experimental study designs that test causal claims about the relationships between specific soundscapes and visitor learning. Results of this study will be disseminated widely to informal learning researchers and practitioners through workshops, presentations, journal articles, facilitated conversations, and a short film that aligns with the focus and findings of the research.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Martha MersonJustin MeyerDaniel Shanahan
The Dunes Center will provide in-class instruction and field trip activities focused on coastal restoration and community education on water quality for over 300 5th-graders at Guadalupe’s Kermit McKenzie Intermediate School. Through science experiments and hands-on experiences, students will learn how ecosystems function and explore watershed characteristics. Intended to supplement current local science education and reach underserved, rural, Latinx students, the “Explore the Coast” program will help students understand how human actions can affect the environment, promote pollution prevention in the community, and aspire to higher education in the field of science.
The McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum will create a mobile cart with hands-on, immersive experiences and educational materials to expand programming to the open-air plaza in front of the museum. To educate visitors about the Chicago River ecosystem, the museum will develop and deliver three live science experiences utilizing the mobile outdoor cart, which will include a 3-D model of a watershed. Additionally, the museum will contract with photographers and a graphic designer to generate content for educational displays and curriculum. By creating a mobile cart with hands-on, immersive experiences and educational materials, the Bridgehouse Museum will reach more diverse audiences on the plaza, which extends onto the Chicago Riverwalk.
Building on program assessments and feedback, the Plains Art Museum will scale up its youth leadership-building program, Buzz Lab. The paid summer internship program engages teens in student-led, project-based learning in art and science. The program inspires the teens to lead community change while highlighting the art museum's role in addressing community needs. The program centers around the museum's pollinator garden, and the next phase of the project will engage interns with new and diverse project partners and guest speakers. For example, the interns will help find creative ways to streamline Buzz Lab projects for mass appeal and engage citizens around the pollinator crisis. The museum will also create a support network for interns entering post-secondary education programs by leveraging relationships with regional universities. Project assessment will be responsive to intern feedback so the teens become co-collaborators on the program's future.
The Chicago Botanic Garden will launch the Healing Environments Ambassadors Learning Through Horticulture (HEALTH) project to help low-income Latina/o (Latinx) individuals and communities understand and create connections between nature and human health and well-being, as well as foster an interest in STEAM education and career paths. In partnership with Instituto del Progreso Latino, the garden will develop and implement annually a year-round curriculum for 16-20 teens and young adults from two charter schools. Through multi-sensory learning, project-based discovery, and incentives, teens will proactively and creatively begin to address challenges related to plants, nature, and sustainability in their local environments. HEALTH will engage family and community members in environmental education and stewardship activities through a partnership with Forest Preserves of Cook County and visits to the garden. Students will have opportunities to create and present films on community environmental topics and their personal experiences with the project, bringing awareness of the program model and its outcomes to a broad audience.
The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will leverage its partnership with NASA Kennedy Space Center to design, equip, and operate an inclusive and interactive scientific research workspace. The new makerspace will provide visitors of all ages an opportunity to contribute to identifying solutions to food production issues. Preparation of the Growing Beyond Earth Innovation Studio will involve equipping the space with state-of-the-art tools and materials for designing and monitoring growing experiments, installing plant growing equipment, and furnishing the space to maximize experimentation, collaboration, and learning. The garden will invite K-12 students, families and casual visitors to collaborate on plant science experiments, allowing them to address questions relevant to current NASA research on food production aboard spacecraft, and within habitats on the surface of Mars.
Hanohano o Oahu: The Geology and Moolelo of Kona to Ewa project will provide learning opportunities for 500 fourth grade students and their teachers from ten public schools located in central and leeward Oahu, Hawaii. A geology unit will be developed that includes a 90-minute class presentation, hands-on classroom activities, a Discovery Box to extend learning opportunities, and a full-day (5-hour) field trip experience. The multi-stop bus tour will be centered on the moku (district) of Kona and Ewa and highlight significant Oahu cultural sites, their moolelo (stories, history) and geology. A culture-based student activity booklet, hands-on activities, and other education materials will also be developed for the unit. The project will target rural communities with underserved families, large Hawaiian homestead neighborhoods, and little access to museum services. Participation in the programming will provide students and teachers with a better understanding of the connection between scientific information and Hawaiian knowledge.
The Massachusetts Audubon Society will develop, pilot, and implement an evaluation framework for nature-based STEM programming that serves K-12 students visiting its network of nature centers and museums. Working with an external consultant, the society will develop the framework comprised of a logic model and theory of change for fieldtrips, and develop a toolkit of evaluation data collection methodology suitable to various child development stages. The project team will design and conduct three professional development training seminars to help Massachusetts Audubon school educators develop a working understanding of the new evaluation framework for school programs and gain the skills necessary to support protocol implementation. This project will result in the development and adoption of a universal protocol to guide the collection, management, and reporting of education program evaluation data across the 19 nature centers and museums in the Massachusetts Audubon system.
The Paine Art Center and Gardens will address challenges facing arts education in the region, in particular the low retention rate of new visual and performing arts teachers in the first five years of entering the field. Previous community-based planning sessions determined that arts integration is a compelling and relevant strategy to address the needs of new teachers and arts education. The project will support the development and implementation of the ArtsCore Laboratory, a new dedicated classroom at the Paine, which facilitates teacher collaboration, experimentation, and art activities for students. The laboratory will be designed and equipped to foster interdisciplinary activities and learning styles, with an emphasis on connecting STEM education with arts education. A new educator-in-residence program, the ArtsCore Experience, will offer a professional development program for teachers. The initiatives are a collaboration between the museum and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, the Oshkosh Area School District, and more than seven additional school districts.
The Garfield Park Conservatory will launch a new initiative to expand and improve its offerings for local students and teachers with a focus on meeting the needs of Title I schools and under-served schools on Chicago's West Side. The new Student Engagement and Educational Development (SEED) program is designed to enhance the quality of fieldtrip experiences for PreK-8 students visiting the conservatory; support teachers in planning and connecting their conservatory fieldtrips to their classroom studies; align fieldtrip content to Next Generation Science Standards; provide increased access to STEM-based fieldtrips for the city's Title I schools; and connect under-resourced schools on Chicago's West Side more deeply to the conservatory. This program will build the organization's capacity to serve more students and teachers each year, and make the conservatory more appealing to teachers, more engaging for students, and easier to access for low-income schools that struggle to provide their students fieldtrip experiences.
Environmental educators have used guided-inquiry in natural and supportive learning environments for decades, but comparatively little programming and research has focused on experiences in urban environments, including in constructed ecosystems like green roofs, or impacts on older youth and adults. To address this gap, we designed a tiered, near-peer research mentoring program called Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology) and used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate impacts on undergraduates serving as research mentors. During the 11-week program, undergraduates conducted