RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a mobile app to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities, building on the popular PBS KIDS series Work It Out Wombats!
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marisa WolskyJanna KookJessica Andrews
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Growth in the US Latinx population has outpaced the Latinx growth in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees and occupation, further widening the ethnic gap in STEM. Mathematics has often identified as a bottleneck keeping many youth, especially minoritized youth, from pursuing STEM studies. Unequal opportunities to develop powerful math assets explain differences in math skills and understanding often experienced by minoritized youth. Implementing culturally responsive practices (CRP) in afterschool programs has the potential to promote math skills and motivation for youth from minoritized groups. However, extensive research is needed to understand which culturally responsive informal pedagogical practices (CIPPs) are most impactful and why. This project aims to identify and document such practices, shed light on the challenges faced by afterschool staff in implementing them, and develop training resources for afterschool staff to address these challenges. This 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.
The fundamental research questions addressed by the project focus on (1) which CIPPs matter most in the context of a STEM university-community partnership engaging Latinx youth, and (2) in what context(s) and under what conditions do these CIPPs relate to positive outcomes for both youth participants and college mentor/facilitator. A third aim is to build capacity of afterschool staff for implementing CIPPs in informal STEM afterschool programs. The first two aims are addressed through a mixed-methods research study which includes quantitative surveys and qualitative in-depth interviews with five cohorts of adolescent participants, parents, and undergraduate mentors. Each year, surveys will be collected from adolescents and mentors at four time points during the year; the in-depth interviews will be collected from adolescents, parents, and mentors in the spring. In total, 840 adolescents and 210 mentors will be surveyed; and 87 adolescents, 87 parents, and 87 mentors will be interviewed. The third aim will be addressed by leveraging the research findings and the collective knowledge developed by practitioners and researchers to create a public archive containing documentation of CIPPs for informal STEM afterschool programs and training modules for afterschool staff. The team will disseminate these resources extensively with informal afterschool practitioners in California and beyond. Ultimately, this project will lead to improved outcomes for minoritized youth in informal STEM afterschool programs across the nation, and increased representation of minoritized youth in STEM pursuits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alessandra PantanoSandra SimpkinsCynthia Sanchez Tapia
This project addresses the urgent need for the development of equitable approaches to early childhood STEM education that honor the diverse cultural practices through which caregivers (such as parents, grandparents, and other adults in children’s lives) support young children’s learning. Recent studies suggest that both formal and informal educational institutions often privilege Western or Eurocentric parenting practices, neglecting many families’ cultural practices and ways of learning. This study will bring together a group of caregivers, pre-K educators, researchers, and museum staff to investigate how families with young children negotiate among their own cultural practices and the types of STEM learning they encounter in museums, schools, and other community settings. The project team will work together to identify opportunities for informal STEM learning institutions to strengthen their roles as places that can bridge home and school environments and open up new possibilities for building on caregivers’ knowledge and cultural practices within this larger community context. The project will directly benefit the 330 families whose children attend the partnering public school each year, as well as hundreds of families who attend family events at the New York Hall of Science annually. Finally, by considering nuances in caregivers’ perspectives and experiences based on multiple facets of their identities, the research will reveal how structures in educational settings might be changed to become more inclusive and culturally responsive for the broadest possible audience of families.
This Pilots and Feasibility project seeks to 1) conduct exploratory research to understand caregiver engagement, defined as caregivers’ expectations, values, and practices related to their roles in children’s learning, from the perspectives of caregivers, and 2) engage in co-design efforts with caregivers and pre-K educators to explore how the museum can be leveraged as a material and creative resource to support caregiver engagement in STEM learning. This work will be carried out in the context of a long-term partnership between the New York Hall of Science and the New York City Department of Education. Methods will include in-depth interviews with caregivers, using narrative and intersectional research methods to extend existing studies on caregiver engagement in informal STEM learning, while taking into account multiple aspects of families’ social and cultural identities. This work will be carried out in Corona — a neighborhood in Queens, NY, largely made up of low-income and first-generation immigrant families. The project team will collaboratively interpret findings and engage in the initial phases of co-design work, which will include: reflecting on the systems currently in place to support caregivers’ involvement in children’s learning across settings; collaboratively generating new, culturally responsive strategies for leveraging the museum as a material and creative resource for families with young children; and choosing promising directions for further development and testing. Products from this work will include directions for new caregiver engagement initiatives that can be developed and refined as the partnership continues, and strategies for supporting equitable participation by caregivers, pre-K educators, and other community stakeholders in future research-practice partnerships.