This guidebook will help you plan your action project. The initial brainstorm pages will help you consider where to start, and the Action Project Framework will navigate you through steps to get to your destination: the completion of your project!
This project focuses on environmental health literacy and will explore the extent to which diverse rural and urban youth in an out-of-school STEM enrichment program exhibit gains in environmental health literacy while engaged in learning and teaching others about community resilience in the face of changing climates. Science centers and museums provide unique opportunities for youth to learn about resilience, because they bring community members together to examine the ways that current science influences local decisions. In this project, teams of participating youth will progress through four learning modules that explore the impacts of changing climates on local communities, the local vulnerabilities and risks associated with those changes, possible mitigation and adaptation strategies, and building capacities for communities to become climate resilient. After completion of these modules, participating youth will conduct a resilience-focused action project. Participants will be encouraged to engage peers, families, friends, and other community stakeholders in the design and implementation of their projects, and they will gain experience in accessing local climate and weather data, and in sharing their findings through relevant web portals. Participants will also use various sensors and web-based tools to collect their own data.
This study is guided by three research questions: 1) To what extent do youth develop knowledge, skills, and self- efficacy for developing community resilience (taken together, environmental health literacy in the context of resilience) through participation in museum-led, resilience-focused programming? 2) What program features and settings foster these science learning outcomes? And 3) How does environmental health literacy differ among rural and urban youth, and what do any differences imply for project replication? Over a two- year period, the project will proceed in six stages: a) Materials Development during the first year, b) Recruitment and selection of youth participants, c) Summer institute (six days), d) Workshops and field experiences during the school year following the summer institute, e) Locally relevant action projects, and f) End- of-program summit (one day). In pursuing answers to the research questions, a variety of data sources will be used, including transcripts from youth focus groups and educator interviews, brief researcher reflections of each focus group and interview, and a survey of resilience- related knowledge. Quantitative data sources will include a demographic survey and responses to a self-efficacy instrument for adolescents. The project will directly engage 32 youth, together with one parent or guardian per youth. The study will explore the experiences of rural and urban youth of high school age engaged in interactive, parallel programming to enable the project team to compare and contrast changes in environmental health literacy between rural and urban participants. It is anticipated that this research will advance knowledge of how engagement of diverse youth in informal learning environments influences understanding of resilience and development of environmental health literacy, and it will provide insights into the role of partnerships between research universities and informal science centers in focusing on community resilience.
Few people realize that the largest part of our planet’s biosphere remains virtually unexplored and unknown. This enormous habitat, accounting for an area of 116 million square miles or the equivalent size of roughly 30 times the area of the United States, is the abyssal zone of the deep ocean. The abyssal sea floor, at about 6000 ft., contains more than four times as much habitat for animal life as all of the dry mountains, forests, deserts, plains and jungles combined. Microscopic larvae in the deep ocean, are essential for the renewal and replenishment of life and they repopulate areas damaged by human activities such as mining and trawling, and they make marine protected areas both feasible and important. The National Science Foundation has funded intensive studies of oceanography related to larval recruitment for decades. However, findings from this large NSF investment of personnel, technology and funding have never been widely presented to the public. This project proposes to remedy this by developing a 40 minute giant screen film to be shown in science centers across the country, supported by virtual reality and augmented reality learning tools. The film will cover select deep ocean science expeditions using the deep-sea vehicles Alvin and ROV Jason. Content will include elements of the research process, activities related to the design and operation of deep-sea vehicles as well as interviews with scientists and technologists. The companion activities, Deep-Ocean Pilot (a VR-360° viewing station) and Plankton Quest (an AR biology treasure hunt) will extend the audience experience of the deep ocean out of the giant screen theater and into the surrounding museum environment. The website and social media will extend awareness and resources into homes. The project will be appropriate for a broad general audience, with particular appeal for the target audience of women and girls (ages 7-20). The larval biologist team is led by the PI at the University of Oregon, in collaboration with scientists from North Carolina State University, Western Washington University and the University of Rhode Island. Several young women scientists will be featured in the film providing role models. The production company, Stephen Low Productions, Inc. will use the latest technology on the Alvin and other cinematic tools to capture the visual images in the abyss. Collaborating museums will participate in the development and implementation of the Virtual and Augmented Reality learning tools as well as showing the film in their theaters.
Broader impact project goals include 1) Advancing public awareness of the abyssal ocean, the role of microscopic larvae, and what scientists are learning from expeditions that use deep submergence technologies; 2) Introducing public audiences and young women specifically to the wide range of STEM-related occupations encompassed in the field of ocean exploration and research; and 3) Advancing STEM learning research and practice in the area of immersive media in conveying STEM concepts and enhancing audience identification with STEM. Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center will build new knowledge by conducting formative and summative evaluation of the film and its associated support products (e.g., Virtual and augmented reality activities, website resources), addressing the following evaluation questions: 1)What do audiences take away from their experience in terms of fascination/interest, awareness and understanding related to ocean science exploration? 2) To what degree does the film alone or in combination with supplemental experiences trigger career awareness in girls and young women, and youth of racial/ethnic backgrounds? 3) To what degree do immersive experiences (a sense of “being there”) contribute to learning from the film? 4) How enduring are outcomes with audiences past the onsite immediate experience? Formative evaluation will be designed as ongoing improvement informed by empirical evidence in which evaluators work with team members to answer decision-relevant questions in a timely and project-focused way. The summative evaluation will be structured as an effectiveness study using mixed methods and ascertaining whether key programmatic outcomes have been reached and the degree to which particular program elements will have contributed to the results.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Craig YoungAlexander LowStephen LowGeorge von DassowTrish Mace
Mathematizing, Visualizing, and Power (MVP): Appalachian Youth Becoming Data Artists for Community Learning is a three-year Advancing Informal STEM Learning, Innovations and Development, project that focuses on community-centered data exploration catalyzed by youth. The project develops statistical artistry among young people in East Tennessee Appalachian communities and enables these youth to share their data visualizations with their communities to foster collective reflection and understanding. The creative work generated by the MVP project will be compelling in two ways, both as statistical art and as powerful statements giving voice to the experience of communities. Critical aspects of the MVP model include (1) youth learning sessions that position youth as owners of data and producers of knowledge and (2) Community Learning Events that support community learning as youth learning occurs. The MVP project has a primary focus on broadening the STEM participation of underrepresented communities of Appalachia. The project’s mission is to increase the learning and life outcomes of young people and communities of Appalachia by creating a meaningful foundation of data science and collective data exploration. The University of Tennessee partners with Pellissippi State Community College, Drexel University, and the Boys & Girls Club of the Tennessee Valley to bring together a convergent team of community members, practitioners, and professionals, with the expertise to carry out the project. The project will impact approximately 120 youth and 3800 of their East Tennessee community members. The research generated will inform how to engage community members in learning about community issues through the exploration of datasets relevant to participants.
The field of STEM education is in urgent need of knowledge about effective models to inspire community-based data exploration with young people as leaders in these efforts. The MVP project includes engaging youth with meaningful problems, building a discourse community with possibilities for action, re-positioning youth as knowledge producers within their own communities, leveraging linguistic and cultural resources of the youth participants and their communities, and implementing critical events that support substantial interaction between youth, community members, and the data visualizations. MVP builds on the idea that the design of data visualizations requires an understanding of both data science and artistic design. Research will inform the model of community engagement, examine data artists’ identities, and document community learning. The MVP model will be designed, developed, tested, and refined through three cycles of design-based research. The overarching research question guiding these cycles is: What affordances (and delimitations) related to identity and learning does the model provide for MVP Youth and community members? Data sources for the project include: fieldnotes, portfolios created by MVP Youth, youth pre/post interviews, observations of the learning sessions, a project documentary, surveys for youth and community members, interviews with community members, and audience feedback. The National Institute for STEM Evaluation and Research (NISER) will provide formative and summative evaluation about project activities. Formative feedback will be integrated into the ongoing research cycles. The research conducted will inform (1) the community learning model; (2) the integrated pedagogy and curriculum of the MVP Youth learning sessions that emphasize data science through design arts; and, (3) research on community learning and youth identity. Findings will be shared through conferences, academic and practitioner-focused journals, a video documentary, a Summit on Engaging Youth and Communities in Data, and a project website.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lynn HodgeElizabeth DyerJoy BertlingCarlye Clark
Artificial intelligence (AI) is in many of our everyday activities—from unlocking phones to running Internet searches to parking cars. Yet, most instruction on how AI works is only in computer science courses. The unique role that AI plays in making decisions that affect human lives heightens the need for education approaches that promote public AI literacy. Little research has been done to understand how we can best teach AI in informal learning spaces. This project will engage middle school age youth in learning abouts AI through interaction with museum exhibits in science and technology centers. The exhibits employ embodied interactions and creative making activities that involve textiles, music making, and interactive media. The research will build on three exhibit prototypes that teach about concepts including bias in data in machine learning, AI decision-making processes, and how AI represents knowledge. Female-identifying and Title 1 youth will be recruited as participants during the exhibit design iterations and testing. The 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
Researchers will explore two key research questions: 1) How can the design of interactive museum exhibits encourage interest development in and learning about AI among learners without a Computer Science background by using embodiment and creative making? and 2) How do embodied interaction and creative making mediate learning about AI in informal learning environments? The project will take a design-based research approach, iteratively building on existing exhibit prototypes and testing them in-situ with learners. Data sources and modes of analysis will include retrospective surveys to assess interest, content knowledge gain, creativity, learning talk analysis of audio recordings, and coding of embodied movements in video recordings. Learning talk analysis will identify instances of joint sensemaking during naturalistic interactions with our exhibit to reveal connections between sensemaking talk; learners' behaviors and embodied actions during real-time collaborative knowledge building; and outcomes in knowledge, interest, and creativity measures as elicited in retrospective surveys. The final set of exhibits will be rigorously evaluated with over 500 museum visitors. The key contributions of this work will include a set of rigorously tested exhibits, publicly available exhibit designs, a set of design guidelines for developing AI literacy museum exhibits, and an improved understanding of the relationship between AI-related learning and interest development, embodiment, and creativity.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Brian MagerkoDuri LongJessica Roberts
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Centering Native Traditional Knowledge within informal STEM education programs is critical for learning for Native youth. In co-created, place-based learning experiences for Native youth, interweaving cultural traditions, arts, language, and community partnerships is vital for authentic, meaningful learning. Standardized STEM curricula and Western-based pedagogies within the mainstream and formal education systems do not reflect the nature of Native STEM knowledge, nor do they make deep connections to it. The absence of this knowledge base can reinforce a deficit-based STEM identity, which can directly impact Native youths’ participation and engagement in STEM. Reframing STEM education for Native youth to prioritize the vitality of community and sustainability requires active consideration of what counts as science learning and who serves as holders and conduits of STEM knowledge. As highly regarded holders of traditional and western STEM knowledge, Native educators and cultural practitioners are critical for facilitating Native youths’ curiosity and engagement with STEM. This Innovations in Development project is Native-led and centers Native knowledge, voice, and contributions in STEM through a culturally based, dual-learning approach that emphasizes traditional and western STEM knowledge. Through this lens, a network of over a dozen tribal nations across 20 U.S. states will be established to support and facilitate the learning of Traditional and Western STEM knowledge in a culturally sustaining manner. The network will build on existing programs and develop a set of unique, interconnected, and synchronized placed-based informal STEM programs for Native youth reflecting the distinctive cultural aspects of Native American and Alaska Native Tribes. The network will also involve a Natives-In-STEM Role Models innovation, in which Native STEM professionals will provide inspiration to Native youth through conversations about their journeys in STEM within cultural contexts. In addition, the network will cultivate a professional network of STEM educators, practitioners, and tribal leaders. Network efforts and the formative evaluation will culminate in the development and dissemination of a community-based, co-created Framework for Informal STEM Education with Native Communities.
Together with Elders and other contributors of each community, local leads within the STEM for Youth in Native Communities (SYNC) Network team will identify and guide the STEM content topics, as well as co-create and implement the program within their sovereign lands with their youth. The content, practitioners, and programming in each community will be distinct, but the community-based, dual learning contextual framework will be consistent. Each community includes several partner organizations poised to contribute to the programming efforts, including tribal government departments, tribal and public K-12 schools, tribal colleges, museums and cultural centers, non-profits, local non-tribal government support agencies, colleges and universities, and various grassroots organizations. Programmatic designs will vary and may include field excursions, summer and after school STEM experiences, and workshops. In addition, the Natives-In-STEM innovation will be implemented across the programs, providing youth with access to Native STEM professionals and career pathways across the country. To understand the impacts of SYNC’s efforts, an external evaluator will explore a broad range of questions through formative and summative evaluations. The evaluation questions seek to explore: (a) the extent to which the culturally based, dual learning methods implemented in SYNC informal STEM programs affect Native youths’ self-efficacy in STEM and (b) how the components of SYNC’s overall theoretical context and network (e.g., partnerships, community contributors such as Elders, STEM practitioners and professionals) impact community attitudes and behaviors regarding youth STEM learning. Data and knowledge gained from these programs will inform the primary deliverable, a Framework for Native Informal STEM Education, which aims to support the informal STEM education community as it expands and deepens its service to Native youth and communities. Future enhanced professional development opportunities for teachers and educators to learn more about the findings and practices highlighted in the Framework are envisioned to maximize its strategic impact.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Juan ChavezDaniella ScaliceWendy Todd
Through the T523: Formative Evaluation for Educational Product Development course, our team conducted a semester-long formative evaluation for the Museum of Science, Boston (MoS) Gaia Exhibit. The Gaia Exhibit (Gaia) is a new, temporary art installation located in the MoS’s Blue Wing exhibition hall. Gaia that strives to inspire appreciation for the earth and climate change awareness. The exhibit displays imagery of the Earth’s surface on a twenty feet diameter, three-dimensional globe. Additional exhibit elements include projected questions on the floor to prompt reflection and exhibit-
The ICBOs (Independent Community-based Organizations), a group of fifteen community representatives from communities historically excluded from the sciences, share results from eight years of community-led de-colonial participatory action research. We wrote this white paper to share our findings and recommendations with funders like the National Science Foundation. These findings, recently published in BioScience (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac001), along with preliminary results from our current research, and our lived experiences point towards a critical need to change the existing
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen PurcellBobby WilsonMakeda CheatomJohn AnnoniTanya Schuh
Milwaukee has established itself as a leader in water management and technology, hosting a widely recognized cluster of industrial, governmental, nonprofit, and academic activity focused on freshwater. At the same time, Milwaukee faces a wide range of challenges with freshwater, some unique to the region and others common to cities throughout the country. These challenges include vulnerability to flooding and combined sewer overflows after heavy rainfall, biological and pharmaceutical contamination in surface water, lead in drinking water infrastructure, and inequity in access to beaches and other recreational water amenities. Like other cities, Milwaukee grapples with the challenges global climate change imposes on urban water systems, including changing patterns of precipitation and drought.
These problems are further complicated by Milwaukee's acute racial and economic residential segregation. With a population of approximately 595,000, embedded within a metropolitan area of over 1.5 million, Milwaukee remains one of the country's most segregated cities. There is increasing urgency to engage the public--and especially those who are most vulnerable to environmental impacts--more deeply in the stewardship of urban water and in the task of creating sustainable urban futures. The primary goal of this four-year project is to foster community-engaged learning and environmental stewardship by developing a framework that integrates art with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) experiences along with geography, water management, and social science. Synergies between STEM learning and the arts suggest that collaborations among artists, scientists, and communities can open ways to bring informal learning about the science of sustainability to communities.
WaterMarks provides an artist generated conceptual framework developed by Mary Miss / City as Living Laboratory (CALL) to help people better understand their relationship to the water systems and infrastructure that support their lives. Project activities include artist/scientist/community member-led Walks, which are designed to engage intergenerational participants both from the neighborhoods and from across the city, in considering the conditions, characteristics, histories, and ecosystems of neighborhoods. Walks are expanded upon in Workshops with residents, local scientists/experts, and other stakeholders, and include exploring current water-related environmental challenges and proposing solutions. The Workshops draw on diverse perspectives, including lived experience, scientific knowledge, and policy expertise. Art projects created by local artists amplify community engagement with the topics, including programming for teens and young adults. Free Wi-Fi will be integrated into various Marker sites around the city providing access to online, self-guided learning opportunities exploring the water systems and issues facing surrounding neighborhoods. Current programming focuses primarily on Milwaukee's predominantly African American near North Side and the predominantly Latinx/Hispanic near South Side. Many neighborhoods in these sections are vulnerable to such problems as frequent flooding, lead contamination in drinking water, inequities in safety and maintenance of green space, and less access to Lake Michigan, the city's primary natural resource and recreational amenity.
The WaterMarks project advances informal STEM learning in at least two ways. First, while the WaterMarks project is designed to fit Milwaukee, the project includes the development of an Adaptable Model Guide. The Guide is designed so that other cities can modify and employ its inclusive structure, programming, and process of collaboration among artists, scientists, partner organizations, and residents to promote citywide civic engagement in urban sustainability through the combination of informal STEM learning and public art. The Guide will be developed by a Community-University Working Group (CULab) hosted by UW-Milwaukee's Center for Community-Based Learning, Leadership, and Research and made up of diverse community and campus-wide stakeholders. In addition to overseeing the Guide’s creation, CULab will conceptualize onboarding and mentorship strategies for new participants as well as a framework for the program’s expansion and sustainability.
Second, through evaluation and research, the project will build a theoretical model for the relationships among science learning, engagement with the arts, and the distinctive contexts of different neighborhoods within an urban social-ecological system. The evaluation team, COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation, and led by Co-PI Donnelly Hayde, aims to conduct formative, summative, and process evaluation of the Watermarks project, with the additional goal of producing evaluative research findings that can contribute to the broader field of informal learning. Evaluation foci include: How does the implementation of WaterMarks support positive outcomes for the project’s communities and the development of an adaptable model for city-scale informal science learning about urban environments? 2. To what extent do the type and degree of outcome-related change experienced by participating community residents vary across and/or between project sites? What factors, if any, appear to be linked to these changes? 3. To what extent and in what ways do the activities of the WaterMarks projects appear to have in situ effects related to the experience of place at project sites?
The project’s research team led by PI Ryan Holifield and Co-PI Woonsup Choi, will investigate how visual artistic activities introduced by the programming team as part of the Walks (and potentially other engagement activities) interact with personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts to produce distinctive experiences and outcomes of informal science learning about urban water systems. The aim of the research will be to synthesize the results from the different WaterMarks sites into an analysis generalizable beyond specific neighborhoods and applicable to other cities. The project's research questions include: 1. How does participation in Walks focused on visual artistic activities affect outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning about urban water systems? 2. How do outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning vary across different urban water topics, participants from different demographic groups, and contrasting sociocultural and biophysical contexts?
This Innovations in Development project is led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), in collaboration with City as Living Laboratory (CALL) and the COSI Center for Research and Evaluation.
This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
The Accessible Oceans study will design auditory displays that support learning and understanding of ocean data in informal learning environments like museums, science centers, and aquariums. Most data presentations in these spaces use visual display techniques such as graphs, charts, and computer-generated visualizations, resulting in inequitable access for learners with vision impairment or other print-related disabilities. While music, sound effects, and environmental sounds are sometimes used, these audio methods are inadequate for conveying quantitative information. The project will use sonification (turning data into sound) to convey meaningful aspects of ocean science data to increase access to ocean data and ocean literacy. The project will advance knowledge on the design of auditory displays for all learners, with and without disabilities, as well as advance the use of technology for STEM formal and informal education. The study will include 425 participants but will reach tens of thousands through the development of education materials, public reporting, and social media. The study will partner with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Discovery Center, the Georgia Aquarium, the Eugene Science Center, the Atlanta Center for the Visually Impaired, and Perkins School for the Blind.
The project will leverage existing educational ocean datasets from the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative to produce and evaluate the feasibility of using integrated auditory displays to communicate tiered learning objectives of oceanographic principles. Integrated auditory displays will each be comprised of a data sonification and a context-setting audio introduction that will help to make sure all users start with the same basic information about the phenomenon. The displays will be developed through a user-centered design process that will engage ocean science experts, visually impaired students and adults (and their teachers), and design-oriented undergraduate and graduate students. The project will support advocacy skills for inclusive design and will provide valuable training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students in human-centered design and accessibility. The project will have foundational utility in auditory display, STEM education, human-computer interaction, and other disciplines, contributing new strategies for representing quantitative information that can be applied across STEM disciplines that use similar visual data displays. The project will generate publicly accessible resources to advance studies of inclusive approaches on motivating learners with and without disabilities to learn more about and consider careers in STEM.
This Pilots and Feasibility Studies project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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.
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.
Potential STEM talent is lost each day for some of the most underserved and underrepresented populations in our nation's incarcerated men, women, and youth. With years devoid of quality STEM education and opportunities while in prison, incarcerated individuals are often significantly underprepared in STEM and for the STEM workforce. This educational debt exacerbates the pattern of marginalization for these vulnerable populations. Their STEM literacy, employability and potential for earning sustainable wages upon release are stifled. This deficit in opportunity is especially stark for underrepresented groups in the United States. Roughly 61% of the prison population is non-white, which far exceeds the national average of 35%. The U.S. also has the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, incarcerating 698 men, women, and youth for every 100,000 people. Equally unsettling, for the first time in American history the population growth rate for incarcerated women has outpaced men by almost 2 to 1 for the past 25 years. While there are many contributing factors to the high rate of incarceration in the U.S., high quality prison STEM education programs have been shown to help counter socio-economic and education debts through greater STEM knowledge attainment, successful societal integration, and increased wage and advancement potential, which increase the likelihood that formerly incarcerated individuals and their children can live productive lives. The NSF INCLUDES STEM Opportunities in Prison Settings (STEM-OPS) Alliance endeavors to build a national network aimed at providing and supporting viable pathways to STEM for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. Using a collective impact approach, the Alliance will work collaboratively with key stakeholders and the target population to advance extant and untapped knowledge on high quality prison STEM education and opportunities. This work builds on efforts supported by the National Science Foundation, including exploratory work piloted by two NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots. If successful, this Alliance has the potential to significantly transform the face of the STEM workforce and the narrative regarding the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated and their potential to succeed in STEM.
The STEM-OPS Alliance is comprised of partner organizations committed to ensuring that STEM preparation during and post incarceration is commonplace and successful. During its first year, the Alliance will focus on establishing its national network through a shared vision and goals and a collective impact approach. It will conduct systems ecology mapping to inform the supports and resources needed for the target population to succeed in STEM. Focus groups and interviews will be conducted with incarcerated middle/high school aged youth to better understand their experiences in K-12 schools and with STEM education prior to and during incarceration. The results of the mapping and youth study will be used to inform the future work of the Alliance. Affordances the network endeavors to achieve include: (a) creating accessible STEM opportunities for the target populations through STEM courses, in-prison laboratories, research experiences for undergraduates (REUs), internships, and mentoring, (b) a culturally responsive platform to connect formerly incarcerated job seekers with STEM employment opportunities, (c) an evidence-based toolkit for effective STEM in-prison program design and implementation, (d) an annual convening of key stakeholders and representatives from the target populations to share learnings, disseminate findings and resources, and support the growth and development of the Alliance, and (d) leveraging connections to the greater NSF INCLUDES National Network. A formative and summative evaluation will be conducted by an external evaluator. Through its network, the STEM OPS Alliance is well poised to directly impact 700-880 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women and reach a significant number of organizations working to improve STEM opportunities and outcomes within prison contexts.
This NSF INCLUDES Alliance is funded by NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES), a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in discoveries and innovations by focusing on diversity, inclusion and broadening participation in STEM at scale. Significant co-funding has also been provided by the NSF Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program and the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning Program (AISL).
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:
Eden BadertscherStanley AndrisseJannette CareyRich Milner